A delightful anthology of lovely songs transcribed for clarinet and strings by Fabian Müller that will surely be welcomed by all lovers of the clarinet – and indeed perhaps appeal to followers of the morning radio programmes of Classic FM, who often feature miniature masterpieces of this kind. Fabio Di Càsola creates a true vocal line. He plays gently and phrases persuasively, with warmly beautiful timbre, so that one hardly misses the words of these outstanding songs (except perhaps in Schubert’s ‘Ave Maria’, Grieg’s ‘Ich liebe dich’ and Schumann’s ‘Mondnacht’).

Klaus Trumpf performs classical works for double bass: Jan Krtitel Vanhal's Concerto for Double-bass and Orchestra in D Major; Johannes Matthias Sperger's Sonata for Double-bass and Piano in D Major and Quartet for Double-bass, Flute, Viol and Violoncello in D Major on this 1998 German release of recordings made in 1984.

I bought this CD because I wanted to own once again a performance of the marvelous Karelia Overture, the Opus 10 of the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. Unlike the Karelia Suite, which has been recorded many times, the Overture is neglected. In the 1970's, Eugene Ormandy put out a first rate rendition with the Philadelphia Orchestra when they returned to RCA to do their recording, but I don't believe that it has ever been released on CD. This recording by Neeme Jarvi is pretty much one's only plausible option.

The concertos for flute and orchestra by Giuseppe Saverio Mercadante (1795-1870), are undoubtedly a type of repertoire which interpreters like to perform and audiences enjoy to listen to, being among the few examples of authentically Italian 19th-century instrumental music written by a composer who was mainly renowned in the operatic field. The writing is virtuosic, aimed at impressing the listener with the performer’s skill, and keeps to belcanto stylistic models, though not without more slowly-paced and melodic passages. The form is mainly in three movements and follows the Italian fast-slow-fast scheme. This recording edition differs from the other existing ones in that it is based on the manuscript sources, some of them autograph, as well as on a 19th-century printed copy.

Universal extends its series of discount-priced "best of" compilations with the unwieldy name "20th Century Masters/The Millennium Collection" to the quasi-classical realm with this Leonard Bernstein entry, which treads a fine line a bit awkwardly as a crossover release. Bernstein was, indeed, a popular composer, with a brace of hit songs (and one or two perennially popular cast albums) derived from his scores for the musicals West Side Story, On the Town, and Candide, and one towering achievement as a soundtrack composer, for Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront, to his credit; and he was also a vastly successful and popular recording artist in the classical field.

Bona Fide is a studio album from the legendary British rock band Wishbone Ash. It is the first studio album in six years (since 1996's Illuminations) and is the only studio album to feature guitarist Ben Granfelt. The band began on a two-year, worldwide tour in support of the album beginning in 2002. In the main, the album remains firmly within the parameters established by the band over many years, guitar driven vocal rock being the order of the day. The brief dabbling with prog nuances of the early albums are pretty much absent here, the emphasis being on gathering together a collection of highly accessible numbers.

Guitarist John Cephas and harmonica man Phil Wiggins, both natives of Washington DC, first joined forces in 1977, and for nearly 30 years now they've been turning out modern, shined-up interpretations of traditional rural blues, with Cephas increasingly adding his own songs to the mix. To their credit, the duo doesn't really try to replicate the traditional material they tackle, but rather they interpret it within their own framework, which means a lot of the rough edges are knocked off, an approach that is either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on where one stands on the issue of performance purity in the blues. Cephas & Wiggins just do what they do, and what they do is take marginal music (marginal as far as the general public is concerned, that is) and spiff it up for accessibility…