This was to be the end of the line for Italian word-setting by Viennese composers: once the confident sentiments that belonged to the poet Metastasio's opera seria felt the chill and threatening wind of Enlightenment and Revolution, their time was up. Even we, for the most part, prefer to remember the German-speaking Beethoven, Schubert and Haydn. So it is good to be reminded of their responses to the Italian muse (usually as part of their craft-learning student work) in this particularly well-cast recital. Central Europe, in the person of Andras Schiff meets Italy, in Cecilia Bartoli, to delightful, often revelatory effect.

Their reputation growing by leaps and bounds, including a huge underground following in the U.S. – they were able to tour there even without one domestic release available, while at one point Dead Can Dance was the biggest selling band in 4AD's history – Perry and Gerrard once again did the business with Aion. Its cover taken from Bosch, Aion's medievalism was worn more openly than ever before, with songs adapted from centuries-old material. The beautiful, entrancing "Saltarello," with lead performance by what sounds like an old wind instrument, comes from an Italian dance of the 14th century, while the mysterious moods of "The Song of the Sibyl" derive from 16th-century Catalonia. The group's command of not merely recording possibilities – witness the exquisite layering of vocals on the opening "The Arrival and the Reunion" – but of musical traditions, instruments, and more from around the world was arguably never stronger. Gerrard's vocals in particular have an even stronger, richer feeling than before, not merely able to command with its power but softly calm and seduce.

The 11 20th-century violin works included on Anne-Sophie Mutter's meaty four-CD compilation were recorded between February 1988 and January 1997. Mutter is a dazzling performer. Her performance of the Sibelius Violin Concerto throbs with new-dawn optimism. Her intense dialogue with pianist Lambert Orkis is spiked with wit in Bartók's Violin Sonata No.2 , the only chamber piece in the set.

First time available on CD, Cold Sun from Austin, Texas was recorded in 1970 in the legendary Sonobeat studios, where the Mariani and Johnny Winter first LPs were produced. The Cold Sun band are considered contemporaries of Velvet Underground and The Fugs, often listed as being in a similar vein but inspirations for this unique piece actually go back to the desperated, haunted Joe Meek. All songs lyrically express dark, mystic poetry with the true 60s psychedelic floating/distorted fuzz spirit presented in short compact mini-epics along with several mind blowing long tunes, such as "Ra-Ma", "Here In The Year" and "Fall".

Rammstein's first album was about what was to be expected from a bunch of Germans who happily grew up on everything from Skinny Puppy to Depeche Mode to Laibach and back again, not to mention plenty of skull-crushing metal straight up. Precisely brutal and often brilliantly arranged - the band aren't per se inventive, but they bring everything together to make something astonishingly radio-friendly out of something that isn't necessarily - Herzeleid in particular is the logical conclusion of KMFDM's self-referential electro-metal. The band freely invokes its own name throughout the way that group did in its songs - the final tune is called "Rammstein," to top it all off - and the riffs readily connect the dots between the older band's clipped guitar bursts and their even more compressed nu-metal equivalents…

On the face of it, pianist Oscar Peterson (whose virtuosity always allowed him to play an infinite amount of notes) and Count Basie (who made inventive use of silence and space by emphasizing single rhythmic sounds) would seem to have had little in common. However they both swing, and there was a definite overlapping in their repertoire. Peterson's Basie tribute is a near-masterpiece. With guitarist Herb Ellis, bassist Ray Brown, and guest drummer Buddy Rich all playing quite sympathetically, Peterson's arrangements make the nine Basie-associated songs (along with Peterson's original "Blues for Basie") all sound quite fresh and lightly swinging. Quite a few of these renditions (particularly "Easy Does It," "9:20 Special," "Broadway," and "One O'Clock Jump") are instantly memorable.

The story of Campo di Marte (named after an area of Florence) is a familiar one in the annals of Italian progressive rock. Like many of their fellow countrymen they released one album and due to a lack of interest and record company promotion split up. In fact the band had already called it a day before the album was released. Nevertheless it remains an important release and well worth seeking out for anyone with more than a passing interest in the genre.
Musically the band played classical influenced symphonic prog alternating with a heavy rock style. Fans of PFM should find much to their liking and parallels can be drawn with De De Lind on the heavier sections. A high standard of musicianship is present and the albums subject matter deals with the futility of war. Confusion may arise with the sequencing of the album…

Greatest Hits (& Some That Will Be) was released in the fall of 1981, summarizing a remarkable seven-year stretch of extraordinary success that began when the iconoclastic Red Headed Stranger, Willie Nelson's first album for Columbia, became a smash hit not long after its 1975 release. From that point on, Nelson became an American popular music icon and a fixture at the top of the country charts, something that was all the more remarkable because he rarely played it safe: he sang pop standards, jammed like the Grateful Dead, recorded tributes to heroes like Lefty Frizzell, and did duet albums with both mentor Ray Price and fellow maverick Leon Russell.

This album is inspired by the history of the Hundred Years' War in the 15th Century, in which the brave and - in modern terms - emancipated young woman Jeanne D'Arc, the Virgin of Orléans, played an important key role. It is a musical hommage to the brave of this world and the principle of revolutionary thoughts and acts.
Jeanne D'Arc - the French heroine immortalized and appreciated in electronic music. This studio album was recorded shortly before the live concert in the Friedrichstadtkirche (French Cathedral) in Berlin in July 2005. Enjoy this exciting musical tribute.

Giuseppe Cambini has had a bad press for almost two centuries: Mozart told tales of his jealousy and intrigue, and the sheer size of his output – at least 600 instrumental works, a dozen operas, and more – has prompted further suspicion (there is nothing worse than being facile). He composed almost as many string quintets as Boccherini (with whom he played as a young man) and even more quartets, and he wrote nearly 100 works in the fashionable Parisian form of the time, the symphonie concertante.

This recording of Richard Strauss's opera Elektra by De Nederlandse Opera (The Netherlands Opera) was made in November 2011 at the Amsterdam Music Theatre. In addition to an impressive cast, it features the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and the Toonkunst Choir Amsterdam conducted by Marc Albrecht.

The transcription on this CD was prepared by the eminent Polish-Jewish composer from Lvov, Józef Koffler, who arranged the Variations for a chamber orchestra (flute, oboe, English horn, bassoon and string quintet). This transcription, completely unknown until only recently, is undoubtedly one of the best 20th-century transcriptions of Bach's music.