Rudy Adrian’s second release on the Lotuspike label, Desert Realms, is a beautifully crafted study in deeply serene and contemplative soundscapes, exploring the spectacular stillness and vast landscape of the American Southwest desert. Rudy’s compositions are by themselves both vast and serene, but an additional level of emotion is provided by the poignant and moving flute expressions of Nick Prosser on a few of the tracks. Prosser’s stirring musical statements interact with Rudy’s vast soundscapes, filling the spectacular sonic vista with just the right amount of life and feeling; reminding the listener that although the desert realms may appear at first stark and barren, they are in fact full of life and captivating beauty.

This disc is a perfect example of what a quartet recording, especially of standard repertoire, should do. It is fresh and invigorating and invites us to reexamine the work of a composer whom we think we know very well. In this second volume of its Mendelssohn series, the Eroica quartet simply dazzles–the ensemble's previous foray (which was its debut recording) clearly was no fluke. As far as the Eroica quartet is concerned, Mendelssohn's quartets are the equal of any of his larger-scale works, and these players show that they can generate the muscle and power to match their conception. The first movement of the third quartet is marked "Molto Allegro vivace".

Chailly has radically rethought his approach to these works, re-examining the scores and returning to the recorded interpretations of a generation of conductors alive during Brahms lifetime, principally Felix Weingartner and one of his Gewandhaus predecessors Bruno Walter.

John Paul makes the first ever recording of the complete Well Tempered Clavier, performed on Lautenwerck. The Lautenwerck, or lute harpsichord, is similar to a harpsichord, but it has gut strings, and this has a far more mellow sound. Bach himself owned a lautenwerck, and was very fond of the instrument. Bach's keyboard works were not written strictly for the harpsichord. He would doubtless have seen performance on The Well Tempered Clavier on the lautenwerck as being completely appropriate.