Breaking stereotypical expectations of a seasonal album, Voces8s new release Winter paints a portrait of the season through a sparse and powerful aural landscape, invoking a meditative, inspiring feeling of solitude and union.

Édouard Lalo made his mark on French music with his opera Le Roi dYs, but his instrumental output also has considerable historical importance, with its resolutely innovative aims for its time. More specifically, his concertante music rewards the attentive ear with a brilliant, skilfully constructed style, studded with fresh rhythmic and harmonic inventions that renew the melodic and orchestral language of the genre.

For over four decades Pinnock's name has been virtually synonymous with the early-music movement and, with a critically acclaimed Deutsche Grammophon discography of almost all the composers orchestral works, Mozart.

Neil Diamond's first regular album release for Columbia Records, following the success of the movie soundtrack Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Serenade is a slight effort characterized by Diamond's attempts to make pop sentiments seem more profound by grafting more auspicious art references onto them. But whether he's name-dropping Picasso or Longfellow, Diamond still has greeting card sentiments on his mind. Nevertheless, the catchiest of these autodidactic exercises, "Longfellow Serenade," which combines comments about "winged flight" with the exhortation, "Come on, baby, ride," was a Top Ten hit. Review by William Ruhlmann

Controversial at the time, delayed because of fights with the record company over lyrical content and the original title (Volunteers of America), Volunteers was a powerful release that neatly closed out and wrapped up the '60s. Here, the Jefferson Airplane presents itself in full revolutionary rhetoric, issuing a call to "tear down the walls" and "get it on together." "We Can Be Together" and "Volunteers" bookend the album, offering musical variations on the same chord progression and lyrical variations on the same theme. Between these politically charged rock anthems, the band offers a mix of words and music that reflect the competing ideals…