It's quite easy to place Roberta Flack near the top of the pile of singer/songwriters who changed the course of pop music, not only soul music, during the '70s. She was fortunate enough to deliver the velvet-smooth ballad "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" to an unsuspecting public, and followed it up with an onslaught of ballads that would keep her on the charts for the remainder of the decade. From start to finish, this greatest-hits compilation is the most comprehensive look at her finest moments available on record. From her legendary string of duets with Donny Hathaway to her duets with Peabo Bryson and Maxi Priest that kept her at the top of the charts through the '80s, they're all here.

Schubert set the poetry of over 115 writers to music. He selected poems from classical Greece, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, from eighteenth-century German authors, early Romantics, Biedermeier poets, and Heine. The Deutsche Schubert-Lied-Edition presents all Schubert’s Lieder, over 700 songs, grouped according to the poets who inspired him. Thanks to the Bärenreiter’s Neue Schubert-Ausgabe (New Schubert Edition), Tübingen, which uses primary sources, the performers have been able to benefit from the most recent research of the editorial team.

As director of Musica Antiqua Koln, Reinhard Goebel was constantly on the lookout for musical treasures from the Baroque. In Dresden and Leipzig after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Goebel secured access to original manuscripts which allowed him and his Musica Antiqua Koln to record some of the most insightful Bach albums in DG's history. This 13CD box presents Goebel's finest J.S. Bach recordings for DG including The Brandenburg Concertos, Orchestral Suites and Chamber Works.

Liszt’s sonata is regarded by many as his ultimate masterpiece and it ranks alongside other “greats” in the pantheon of piano repertoire. This was not always the case, however, and in the 19th century it was met with extreme reactions, from admiration to suspicion and envy. The critic Eduard Hanslick declared “Anyone who has heard this and finds it beautiful is beyond help”, while Wagner heaped praised upon it (perhaps unsurprisingly). Alfred Brendel has called it “the most original, powerful and intelligent sonata composed after Beethoven and Schubert”.

Violinist Daniel Lozakovich was already a veteran at 18, having made his debut at age nine and signed to Deutsche Grammophon at 15. It may seem that each year brings a prodigal new violinist, but Lozakovich, a charismatic soul who boxes on the side, bow hand be damned, is one of the best. His Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35, is muscular and unafraid of a little gravel in the tone. Sample his finale, a broad, arch-Russian thing where he is ideally backed by his mentor, Vladimir Spivakov, leading the new National Philharmonic Orchestra of Russia. Lozakovich grabs your attention from the start but never overplays the transitions.