1995: fresh from finishing and releasing his magnum opus, 'Last Train to Lhasa', Toby Marks, aka Banco de Gaia, rolled down to Glastonbury Festival to play on the Avalon Stage in the Field of Avalon. The year was one of the first times dance music had been given significant space at the festival, and Toby’s set was much anticipated, with the marquee completely full by the time he came on stage. The set featured many of his most familiar songs, often given radically new arrangements, turning some previously un-danceable tracks into driving club tunes. Ed Vulliamy described it in his review for the Guardian as “electrifying: symphonic, epic, hugely lyrical music in the best traditions of the early Floyd, underpinned by synthetic energy but aiming at an appropriately earthy message, atop which a flute sometimes danced” and credited the show as the highlight of the year…

Sunset Boulevard, a 5CD box set and 2LP vinyl edition of Elvis Presley’s 1970s recordings in Los Angeles, is to be released by RCA/Legacy in early August. Over half of the 89 tracks on the 5CD edition are previously unreleased.

Chromatics is a word derived from the Greek noun (khrma), meaning color, and the Greek adjective (khrmatiks; colored). During the Renaissance, new music was composed in the Western world, opening up a palette of (timbral) colors for the first time. Before the Renaissance, music (in Gregorian chant) existed only to convey the word, not to make an appearance itself; this changed completely after the 15th century. Music, like painting, exploded into new forms and colors, and the era of the modern age was ushered in. Strange harmonies, mysterious voices - tones of passion and desire, of terror and fear, of the confusion of the sublime or of divine apparition… This is the world of musical colors that opened up in the age of the Chromatic Renaissance, giving rise to a music that is daring, adventurous and timelessly modern.

Naïve releases the third volume dedicated to Vivaldi’s violin concertos in its ground breaking project, the Vivaldi Edition. Multi award-winning violinist Duilio Galfetti is accompanied by acclaimed early music ensemble I Barocchisti under the direction of Diego Fasolis.

Chopin’s 21 Nocturnes, often described as ‘songs of the night’, are among the most well-known and beautiful of Chopin’s short solo piano works.

Preserved in three different libraries, the Marciana in Venice, the Library of the Naples Conservatory, and the State and University Library in Hamburg, the six cantatas that make up this world-premiere recording were composed by Benedetto Marcello in the early 18th century. These are thus youthful works, quite interesting for the originality of their writing, which helps us understand why their author was so highly regarded during his lifetime - even called the “prince of music” - and also by posterity, as he managed to blend his personal sensibility with lessons drawn from tradition and the influences of a life rich in cultural encounters.

Paul Hindemith described Reger as ‘the last giant of music’. When Schoenberg founded his Society for Private Musical Performances in 1918, Max Reger, along with Debussy and Bartók, was one of the most frequently performed composers. Admiring Reger as an important innovator, Schoenberg promoted his music because ‘he still remains unfamiliar’ and ‘I consider him a genius’. Even a century after his death, much of Reger’s music appears on concert programmes only very occasionally. This new album by the Gävle Symphony Orchestra and conductor Jaime Martín includes two of Reger’s finest orchestral works written towards the end of his life.