Born in 1875, Ravel was fêted during the 1920s and ’30s as France’s greatest living composer – a remarkable achievement considering the obstacles placed in his path by the ultra-conservative Parisian musical elite of his time. (Ravel was expelled from the Paris Conservatoire twice!). His unique musical style, combining classical form and impressionistic harmony, makes his work immediately recognisable.

This Blu-ray sampler with carefully selected concerts accompanies Seiji Ozawa's impressive career over 3 decades. Seiji Ozawa was not only Japan’s best-known conductor but also the founder of the Saito Kinen Festival in Matsumoto, which in 2015 was renamed the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival. Special feature included in this edition from Matsumoto: on the occasion of Maestro Ozawa’s 80th birthday, Martha Argerich and Matthias Goerne joined the orchestra to perform Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, Op. 80, plus a rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ - a deeply emotional moment for the Maestro!

Animals is the tenth studio album by English progressive rock group Pink Floyd, released in January 1977. A concept album, it provides a scathing critique of the social-political conditions of late 1970s Britain, and presents a marked change in musical style from their earlier work. Animals was recorded at the band's studio, Britannia Row, in London, but its production was punctuated by the early signs of discord that several years later would culminate in keyboardist Richard Wright leaving the band. The album's cover image, a pig floating between two chimneys on Battersea Power Station, was conceived by bassist and writer Roger Waters, and photographed by long-time collaborators Hipgnosis.

Delivered in the wake of Phil Collins' massive success as a solo star, Invisible Touch was seen at the time as a bit of a Phil Collins solo album disguised as a Genesis album, and it's not hard to see why. Invisible Touch is, without a doubt, Genesis' poppiest album, a sleek, streamlined affair built on electronic percussion and dressed in synths that somehow seem to be programmed, not played by Tony Banks. In that sense, it does seem a bit like No Jacket Required, and the heavy emphasis on pop tunes does serve the singer, not the band, but it's not quite fair to call this a Collins album, and not just because there are two arty tunes that could have fit on its predecessor, Genesis.

Simon & Garfunkel's second album, Sounds of Silence, was recorded 18 months after their debut long-player, Wednesday Morning, 3 AM – but even though the two albums shared one song (actually, one-and-a-half songs) in common, the sound here seemed a million miles away from the gentle harmonizing and unassuming acoustic accompaniment on the first record. In between, there had been a minor earthquake in the pop/rock world called "folk-rock," which resulted in the transformation of their acoustic rendition of "The Sound of Silence" into a classic of the new genre, complete with jangling electric guitars and an amplified beat that helped carry it to the top of the charts.

The Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute took place on 11 June 1988 at Wembley Stadium, London, and was broadcast across 67 countries to a worldwide audience of 600 million people. Mandela was still an imprisoned anti-apartheid revolutionary at the time of the concert, but the event is considered a pivotal step leading to the eventual release of Mandela, in February 1990, following 27 years of incarceration. Unlike the Live Aid concert a few years earlier, the 1988 concert was not primarily a fundraiser (even though it made £5million) but an event intended to raise the awareness worldwide of the injustice occurring under the apartheid regime in South Africa at the time. Most pertinently, it was staged to highlight the lengthy imprisonment of Nelson Mandela and others senior ANC members, who had been arrested and held for attempting to change the system almost in the country 30 years before.

After gaining some recognition from the success of the band's previous album, Bachman-Turner Overdrive got around to recording Not Fragile. Not only had one of the three Bachman brothers (Tim, the rhythm guitarist) left the band to BTO's advantage, but Randy Bachman and C.F. Turner had clearly grown musically. To the album's benefit, most of the material on Not Fragile are the band's much-liked rock anthems, ranging from the hyper-distorted title track, through the famous but far more timid song "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet." Indeed, for hard rock fanatics, it doesn't come much better than on Not Fragile. Randy's electrifying lead guitar is here more raucous than ever before, as are his rowdy vocals (particularly noticeable on the predictable, but fun "Sledgehammer"). The man steals the show on Not Fragile through his extensive and often astounding guitar solos…

This ninth volume of the Haydn2032 series focuses on the composers psychological subtlety in its focus on a central work: his Symphony no.45, known as the Abschieds-Symphonie (Farewell Symphony), composed in 1772. It is said to have got its nickname from a symbolic message Haydn conveyed to Prince Esterházy when he and his orchestra were required to stay longer than planned in the Princes summer residence. On the occasion of the symphonys first performance, Haydn had arranged for the musicians to leave their places one by one during the final Adagio.

Vox Iberica – Sequentia’s long-term project to record music from three of Spain’s most important musical sources – begins with music from the so-called Codex Calixtinus, a 12th century manuscript containing liturgical chant and polyphony in honour of Saint James the Apostle, otherwise known as Santiago, whose relics have been venerated by pilgrims since the Middle Ages in the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. For this recording, the eight men’s voices of Sequentia join to record the complete polyphony found in this magnificent collection of sacred music, including some of the earliest polyphony to be clearly notated in a European source.

Writers on Mozart sometimes take him to task for the alleged mixture of style in the C minor Mass, in particular the use of florid, 'operatic' solo writing amidst all the severe ecclesiastical counterpoint. To object is to misunderstand the nature of Mozart's religion, but it takes a performance as stylistically accomplished as this one to make the point in practice. The usual stumbling-block is the 'Et incarnatus', with its richly embellished solo line and its wind obbligatos. Sung as it is here, by Sylvia McNair, beautifully refined in detail, it's indeed passionate, but passionately devout.

To date, Rammstein haven't been able to equal the excitement and power of their breakthrough 1997 album, Sehnsucht, and while Rosenrot suffers that fate, there's an EP's worth of brilliance and one track that towers above them all. Just as exciting as their massive hit "Du Hast," "Te Quiero Puta!" is a glorious blend of the group's usual Teutonic crunch and mariachi music that earns the exclamation point in its title. It's loco to hear Rammstein with bright horns and Latin vocalists and just about as odd to hear them with Sharleen Spiteri - lead singer for the classy pop act Texas - whose sweet and somber vocals make "Stirb Nicht Vor Mir (Don't Die Before I Do)" sound very dreamy, very Nightwish. The out of control "Zerstören" and "Benzin," with its biting social commentary on the world's addiction to oil, are the final two tracks for the hypothetical four-star EP, since the rest of Rosenrot sounds a bit too formulaic…

John Coltrane's debut for the Impulse label was a bit unusual, for the great tenor and his quartet were joined by a medium-sized backup group on Eric Dolphy arrangements of "Africa," "Greensleeves," and "Blues Minor." "Africa" in particular is quite memorable although Coltrane would not pursue any further recordings in this direction in the future, making this a change of pace in his discography.