With their highly anticipated album "Hotel Tango" Trio Agora invites us on a journey through the history and development of the tango. From its roots to its manifold manifestations worldwide, the trio presents tango as a unique mixture of European, South American and African idioms. With arrangements and dedicated compositions, the trio explores the genre from a personal perspective. Look forward to a reimagined version of Astor Piazzolla's "Las cuatro estaciones porteñas," works of Stravinsky, Gardel, Ravel, Ginastera and more.

The origins of Host, the new project featuring Paradise Lost vocalist Nick Holmes and guitarist Greg Mackintosh, do not trace back to their 1999 album bearing the same name but instead to the West Yorkshire music clubs of the mid-to-late 1980s. While Holmes and Mackintosh were already certified heavy metal fanatics ("metal thrashing mad" as Holmes equates), they were equally drawn to the New Wave and Goth music scenes. The pounding rhythms, sublime melodies and undercurrent of darkness drew them in, creating immediate earworms and a desire to delve further. Holmes and Mackintosh’s soon-to-be burgeoning career as pioneering Gothic doom metallers in Paradise Lost may have cast this fix to the side, but the sounds and aura never left them. In fact, it only grew stronger with each passing decade…

Apart from his popular Canciones negras, written more than half a century ago, the compositions of the now 87-year-old Montsalvatge (in 1999) have made little impact on the musical public in general: many of his works remain unrecorded – the opera Puss in Boots, the Indian Quartet, the five Invocaciones al Crucificado and the virtuoso Harpsichord Concerto, to name only four. But there are two Montsalvatges – one with a more traditional manner, and a later more trenchant, experimental and individual. From his earlier period comes the Sinfonia Mediterranea, composed three years after the Canciones negras; its lack of fashionable ‘modernity’ tempted him at one time to consider rejecting it completely. I’m glad he didn’t, for it’s an attractive (if slightly overlong), warmly romantic work that includes melodies of a popular cast.

Mozart's affectionate quotation from Martín y Soler's Una cosa rara in the Don Giovanni dinner music suggests he admired his Spanish contemporary, whose music was praised by others as 'sweet' and 'graceful'. Such descriptions remain apt for a charming and brilliantly executed performance that's essential for anybody curious about late 18th-century opera beyond Mozart.

Christmas Oratorio is topical, it’s also universal. It doesn’t require lights or tinsel or presents under the tree to instruct, inspire, and/or entertain, especially if it is presented in as fine a performance as this one fashioned by Stephen Layton and his cohort. Layton is the director of music at Trinity College, Cambridge (having succeeded Richard Marlow), and his choir is top-notch, as is the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, mercifully identified as OAE. OAE’s roster is rife with such familiar names from the period instruments movement as Margaret Faultless (who is just that here) and Alison Bury. To mention Anthony Robson, oboe, and David Blackadder, trumpet, is not to slight any of the other players.

Kurt Masur's achievement is defined above all by his relationships with two orchestras exemplifying vastly different traditions. Having spent some 20 years as Kapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, which traces it's roots to the 15th century, he became the transformational music director of the New York Philharmonic, an embodiment of the New World. Through all this, his musical integrity remained consistent. As the New York Times wrote: "He brought to the podium the ardent conviction that music-making was a moral act that could heal the world." Masur himself put things more simply: "My goal is meaningful playing… What counts is to be able to communicate the composer's meaning to the audience… When I conduct Beethoven, I wouldn't like to replace Beethoven. He should be in your mind, not me." This 70CD set consolidates the entirety of the catalogues that Masur built for EMI and Teldec between 1974 and 2009.

Terms such as “fastidious”, “intimate” and “quietly nuanced” have long been applied to the immensely respected Ingrid Haebler’s interpretations. She was a “purist” in the best sense of the word and has often said that she always sought to convey the essence of the music and the structure and the message of the work, without anything to disrupt it. With an imposing discography, Haebler was regarded by many as Philips’ “house pianist”. Decca now proudly presents her Complete Philips Recordings on 58CDs in tribute to this rare and special artist.

On the Who's final album with Keith Moon, their trademark honest power started to get diluted by fatigue and a sense that the group's collective vision was beginning to fade. As instrumentalists, their skills were intact. More problematic was the erratic quality of the material, which seemed torn between blustery attempts at contemporary relevance ("Sister Disco," "New Song," "Music Must Change") and bittersweet insecurity ("Love Is Coming Down"). Most problematic of all were the arrangements, heavy on the symphonic synthesizers and strings, which make the record sound cluttered and overanxious. Roger Daltrey's operatic tough-guy braggadocio in particular was beginning to sound annoying on several cuts. Yet Pete Townshend's better tunes - "Music Must Change," "Love Is Coming Down," and the anthemic title track - continued to explore the contradictions of aging rockers in interesting, effective ways…