The Best Of The MPS Years presents you all the classics and highlights of George Duke’s time at the Black Forest label on one album.

The album title – Words Unspoken – alludes to the instant musical understanding found by the members of this nimble quartet assembled by great British reedman John Surman. „My idea was to put together some musical ideas that would offer a collective sense of purpose but still be open enough to allow each of us to suggest other ways of developing the material together. Everything fell into place immediately. But I soon realized it wasn‘t so much the musical ideas that made it work, it was the musicians.”

The elemental power of ancient folk music is the lifeforce that drives the compositions of Veljo Tormis (1930-2017). As the great Estonian composer famously said, “I do not use folk song. It is folk song that uses me.” This sentiment is echoed in definitive performances by the Estonian Philharmonic Choir and the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Tõnu Kaljuste, for decades one of Tormis’s closest musical associates.

The third album from Levon Eskenian’s remarkable ensemble is its most adventurous to date. As well as reclaiming the music of esoteric teacher G. I. Gurdjieff for folk instrumentation, Zartir situates Gurdjieff in a tradition of Armenian bards and troubadours including Ashugh Jivani, Baghdasar Tbir and the legendary Sayat-Nova. In parallel, an emphasis on pieces for sacred dance reaches its apex in The Great Prayer, an entrancing collaboration between the Gurdjieff Ensemble and the National Chamber Choir of Armenia, which draws upon ritual music of multiple faiths.

When the world-renowned Canadian pianist came to Villingen in 1961, there was a mood of intense excitement all round. Hans-Georg Brunner-Schwer (HGBS), former owner of the hifi dynasty SABA who died in 2004, had just set up the first version of his studio, equipped with the most advanced recording technology of the time, above the living-room in his villa. This was the bait used by the piano enthusiast to attract the famous pianist to the Black Forest.

In InfInIte Bach, the avant-garde cellist Maya Beiser elevates our sensory perception of the solo cello Suites of J. S. Bach in the expanded realm of spatial audio. Anchoring her body and instrument in the studio space, she reimagines this seminal Baroque work in a visceral experience that is both immersive and transcendental. The multilayered sounds of her cello emerge as ethereal and illuminated, like ambient lights and shadows tempering the overwhelming force of tradition.

Cellist and producer Maya Beiser's latest solo album reimagines Terry Riley’s epic In C as a series of ever-evolving cello loops and drones. In her multi-cello solo version, the C string - the cello’s lowest, most resonant string - forms the depth and sonic architecture of the album. Enveloped by live drumming by Shane Shanahan and Matt Kilmer, Maya creates a hypnotic, rapturous soundscape that re-envisions this epic minimalist masterpiece.

A genre-defying new album, Salt unfolds as a ritual in movement—a sonic pilgrimage through loss, memory, resistance, and return. The album begins in stillness, in the suspended breath of a woman turning to look back, and from that moment it travels across centuries and sonic landscapes, carrying fragments of Baroque hymns, sacred chants, and contemporary lamentation.

Suede share new single "Dancing With The Europeans" Today, Suede (aka The London Suede) released "Dancing With The Europeans", the third single off their upcoming record, Antidepressants.

The key to Buxtehude’s trio sonatas, both for performers and for listeners, is an awareness of the stylus fantasticus which German composers of the late 17th and early 18th centuries developed in response to the new freely inventive style of Italian composers such as Claudio Merulo and Girolamo Frescobaldi. ‘It is the most free and unrestrained method of composing,’ wrote one contemporary theorist. ‘It is bound to nothing, neither to any words nor to a melodic subject, instituted to display genius and to teach the hidden design of harmony and the ingenious composition of harmonic phrases and fugues.’

John Stanley was born in London on 17 January 1712. A precocious musician, by the age of nine he was playing the organ (probably as an occasional deputy) at All Hallows, Bread Street. When the titular organist there – the composer and harpsichordist William Babell, a former pupil of Handel – died on 23 September 1723, an eleven year-old Stanley was appointed in his place. At the age of 14 he was chosen as organist at St. Andrew’s, Holborn and at the age of 17 became the youngest person ever to obtain the BMus degree from Oxford University. In 1734 he was appointed organist to the Society of the Inner Temple, a position he held until his death.

Recorded in Perugia between 2023 and 2025, a major new set of Schumann’s song output for mixed voices – vocal duets, trios and quartets – by a fine team of Italian singers, and led by the pianist Filippo Farinelli.

Billy Joel Drops Massive 155-Song ‘And So It Goes’ Companion Playlist. Seven-hour playlist features unreleased live recordings and outtakes, including the first-ever performance of "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant". Following the premiere of the second part of Billy Joel’s And So It Goes documentary, the Piano Man dropped a massive 155-song companion album on digital services featuring unreleased recordings and more.

Probably the most perfect version ever recorded of Mozart’s concertos with the incredibly difficult Natural Horn. The use of period instruments, a movement which began in the middle of the past century, is no longer a passing fad or something novel. Rather, it represents a fundamental part of our musical culture whose importance goes far beyond the simple nostalgic or poetic recreation of a score. The “archaic” technical characteristics of period instruments often force performers to seek solutions that, while resulting in a sound closer to historical reality, often surprise the listener. Technical constraints are even more evident in wind instruments, given that the significant evolution in their construction has accentuated the differences that emerged over the course of their development.

Tomorrow Held is the visionary new album by twenty-something mould-breakers and conservatoire-trained virtuosos, fiddle player Owen Spafford and guitarist Louis Campbell. Eight largely instrumental tracks that hold space, resolve into mystery, that fold in elements of jazz, post-rock and chamber classical music while raiding the folk music toolbox. Call it what you want: post-folk. Trad-noir. Folk nihilism. Then know that Spafford Campbell are blazing a trail that erases genre, finds gold in the embers. Forget about tomorrow, they say. Welcome to the now.