Digitally remastered 2 five star albums on a single CD from the King of the Blues from 1969 and 1971 and both are home to King's signature song "The Thrill Is Gone". The original studio version was on "Completely Well" and the live version on "Cook County Jail". Both records on their own are simply two of the brightest highlights of the master's career, but this coupling makes this disc a double-your-pleasure affair!

Musical treasures from great Russian composers, ideally interpreted by the Russian conductor Samuel Friedmann with philharmonic orchestras of his mother country that represent the great music tradition of Russia.

In Mussorgsky's oeuvre the charecteristic features of Russian music are especially prominent. He was a visionary and revolutionary personality in music.

An excellent guitarist with a soulful sound and the ability to uplift any funky jazz date, Jimmy Ponder has appeared on many recordings during his long career, over 80 as a sideman and 15 as a leader. Ponder began playing guitar when he was 14 and considers Wes Montgomery and Kenny Burrell to be his two main early influences and Wes Montgomery later on. Offered a job with Charles Earland after having only played guitar three years, Ponder waited until he graduated from high school and then spent three years with the organist's group, recording several dates with Earland. He worked and recording with Lou Donaldson, Houston Person, Donald Byrd, Stanley Turrentine, and Jimmy McGriff and in the early '70s moved to New York (from Philadelphia), leading his own groups.

The Enescu Project began life in the concert hall and has now been faithfully recorded to create this album. The programme is devoted to the music of the great Romanian composer and violinist George Enescu, and to that of his contemporaries and friends, creating a sense of the context in which Enescu was composing. Enescu studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Massenet and Fauré; rubbed shoulders and shared a stage with Bartók and Ravel; was the dedicatee of a sonata by Ysaÿe; and Debussy attended the premiere of Enescu’s First Symphony. Music by these composers, for different instrumental combinations, leads us to the focus of the album: Enescu’s beautiful Octet for strings, a work composed when he was only 19 and which had a profound impact on violinist Nicolas Dautricourt when he first heard it. Dautricourt is joined for this recording by a gathering of exceptional string players, and the album booklet includes a QR code that takes listeners to the spoken texts included in the original concert version of this fascinating project.

SOMM Recordings celebrates the 150th anniversary of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s birth with insightful, deeply felt accounts of his String Quartets Nos. 1 and 2, coupled with Gustav Holst’s Phantasy Quartet, by the Tippett Quartet.

SOMM Recordings is delighted to announce the second volume of Romantic Revolution, a revelatory exploration by pianist Michael Dussek of the musical relationship between his ancestor, Jan Ladislav Dussek, and Fryderyk Chopin. Volume II focuses on music composed during the period 1789 to 1846 spanning the early years of Dussek’s compositional career and the final years of Chopin’s.

Fernando Sor was born at a time when the guitar enjoyed increasing prominence. He differed from other virtuoso-composers for the instrument such as Giuliani and Carulli due to his far greater sense of harmonic refinement. Sor’s studies and exercises have been fundamental to guitarists for two centuries, and his sequence of Themes and Variations are his best-known compositions. His three collections based on popular French melodies have enjoyed popularity as has Les Folies d’Espagne avec Variations et un Menuet, but his masterpiece remains the Introduction et Variations sur un Thème de Mozart, a sublime example of his skill.

The place of Domenico Scarlatti in the history of 18th century music is certainly exceptional. This exquisite and imaginative group of works is included in the fourteenth volume of Scarlatti’s manuscript sonatas preserved in the Marciana Library in Venice. Although known as keyboard sonatas, research reveals that they were very likely to have been conceived for performance on the violin – multi-movement works, often showing the presence of figured bass accompaniment, rapid changes of register and numerous passages better suited to a violin than a keyboard instrument all support the theory. This is flashy and virtuosic writing for violin at its finest.

By compiling all of Peter Frampton's biggest hits – in their hit versions, so "Show Me the Way" and "Baby, I Love Your Way" are from Frampton Comes Alive, not the studio albums – onto one disc, Greatest Hits functions as the definitive retrospective on the guitarist. It has a better selection than the single-disc Classics, Vol. 12, and it is more concise and listenable than the double-disc box Shine On: A Collection, which means it's the only collection that provides an effective, manageable overview of Frampton.

The title cut of this near-classic album became a sort of theme song for Ernestine Anderson, but it is not the only high point. The singer sounds in top form on such fine material as "As Long As I Live," a touching "Old Folks," "My Shining Hour," and "Poor Butterfly." With fine assistance from pianist Monty Alexander, bassist Ray Brown, and drummer Frank Gant, Ernestine Anderson is heard throughout in prime form, sounding quite enthusiastic and powerful.

“An ode to silence” is how harpsichordist Jean Rondeau has described Bach’s Goldberg Variations. “I feel they were written for silence, in the sense that they take the place of silence,” he says. “All Bach is there in the Goldberg Variations … all music is there … and I will no doubt spend my life working on them.” To prepare his interpretation he consulted an original printed edition of the work, containing Bach’s own markings and corrections. “Through delving into this precious musicological source, I was able to make what I felt to be the most authentic choices.” Rondeau performs the set of variations in its complete form, with the indicated repeats and with judicious insertion of moments of silence.