Lully's 1685 Roland, on a subject apparently chosen by Louis XIV–its message is that loyalty to one's country and fighting battles is more important and noble than earthly love–was a great hit and played on-and-off in France and other European countries until 1750. The plot involves Angelique's vacillating love for Médor. She vacillates due to the fact that Médor is of "obscure lineage" and therefore beneath her station. He has undying, wild love for her. Roland adores Angelique also, but while she admires his knightliness, she is otherwise not interested. After Médor threatens suicide, Angelique gives in; they marry to great festivity at the close of Act 3.

This piece, a divertimento for string trio (violin, viola, and cello, was composed in 1788, the same year as the E-flat, G-minor, and Jupiter symphonies and the little C-major piano sonata, four of Mozart's best-known and greatest pieces. This divertimento is relatively little-known, yet it is the equal of those far-better-known pieces. Mozart was at the absolute height of his powers as a composer.

Our new complete recording of the organ works of Johann Pachelbel, the most important composer of the Southern German organ tradition, concludes with a total of three albums – all of them once again in SS and with first-class organists performing on selected organs. Our three protagonists, Michael Belotti, Christian Schmitt, and James David Christie, have produced enthralling recordings on which they demonstrate their expertise in performances on various outstanding historical instruments. This final volume of our complete edition adheres to the same policy as Vols. 1 and 2: it too is based on the new collection and edition of the composer’s extant oeuvre.

Hendrix had gone so long between albums, seemingly adrift stylistically at various times, that there's no telling exactly what direction he was finally going to end up working toward. This is a superb album, and a worthy if very different, earthier successor to Electric Ladyland's psychedelic excursions - the later tracks, ironically enough, cut at that album's long promised and long-delayed studio namesake - and also show him working in some genuinely new directions. For starters, Hendrix's voice emerges here as a genuinely powerful instrument in its own right - his voice was never as exposed in the mix of his songs as it is here; partly this is because Hendrix and engineer Eddie Kramer never finished embellishing the songs, or completed the final mixes…

The second ECM album from this Polish-Swedish-British edition of the Tomasz Stanko Quartet follows the critically-heralded Matka Joanna. As Jazz Journal wrote, 'Trumpeter Stanko's vibrant breadth of tone and poetic feeling for cross-rhythmic drama are second to none.' Leosia marks a further progression, incorporating six first-rate Stanko compositions in his brooding 'Slavic' style, darker than the darkest Miles (and incorporating a tribute to Lautréamont, literature's Count of Darkness), as well as bracing and exploratory duo and trio improvisations, and solos of the higherst calibre by all concerned. The group has an unusual claim on idiomatic completeness; it seems to summarize, in highly original manner, many of the important developments of jazz of the last 30 years…

Performed by the Shanghai Film Orchestra, conducted by Wang Yongji. Truly celestial and a different feeling than American / European performances of this famous piece. This CD also contains David Mingyue Lang's gorgeous Music of a Thousand Springs and his Zen (Ch'an) of Water. Highly recommended.