Released the year after he was voted Best Acoustic Guitarist for a second time by Guitar Player magazine, Australian virtuoso Tommy Emmanuel further establishes his esteemed reputation with this collection of festive covers, All I Want for Christmas.

Los Angeles native Candye Kane is the 21st century version of Bessie Smith, singing a tough, smart, sassy, and showbiz-savvy blend of blues and soul that takes no prisoners of any persuasion. Kane has been a lot of things in her life, from a mother and serious student to a pinup girl and actress (both on-stage and in risque movies), and she even did a stint as a serious, full-tilt punk rocker. She’d be just another fringe player in L.A. except for one thing – she can sing like nobody’s business and she has a sexy, intelligent, and passionate musical vision to match her voice. On Sister Vagabond, her tenth album, Kane has really put it all together for her finest studio outing yet, mixing blues, torch soul, and funky swing numbers together into a smart and brassy whole, helped immeasurably by the brilliant guitar playing of longtime cohort Laura Chavez.

The younger brother of bluesman Eddie Burns, singer/guitarist Jimmy Burns followed in the family tradition, becoming a staple of Chicago's West Side club circuit after a long absence from the spotlight. Born February 27, 1943 in Dublin, Mississippi, he cut a handful of singles early in his career, but upon marrying and starting a family, he largely applied the brakes to his musical aspirations to focus on domestic life. Burns performed only rarely in the decades to follow; however, with his children all grown in the early 1990s, he rekindled his career, following up a hard day of operating his barbecue stand by cutting loose with a set of soulful blues at the Smokedaddy, his regular venue. In 1996, at the age of 53, Burns finally issued his long-awaited full-length debut, Leaving Here Walking. Stuck In The Middle is Jimmy Burns first studio album since 2003 and follows his excellent live set Live at B.L.U.E.S, released in 2007.

After his highly variable Mahler cycle, it’s very good to be able to report that David Zinman is back in top form for Brahms. For the most part, these are splendid performances, beautifully played and recorded. The very opening of the First symphony sets the tone: rich, emphatic, but not exaggerated. Textures are clear, bass lines unusually audible. Zinman handles some of Brahms’ most intransigent bits of orchestration, such as the opening of the Third symphony, with its perpetually syncopated accompaniment, with effortless mastery. The inner movements of all four symphonies are without exception perfectly paced, including the slow movements of the Second and Fourth symphonies.

V. Williams is a composer representing British late-blooming nationalist music. Synthesizing the influences of his country's folk songs, musical traditions, and Impressionism, he has established a gentle, conservative, yet unique style. These symphonies, which express the anxieties and hopes of modern people, are his signature works, and are characterized by their grandeur, beauty, and familiarity. Slatkin's performance is a masterpiece with a very clear and clean interpretation.

Rising star Aleksandra Kurzak is a Polish coloratura soprano who tackles a diverse repertoire of arias on her 2011 Decca debut. Beginning with Rossini, Kurzak's "Una voce poco fa" demonstrates her power, solid technique, and unique dark vocal color. Her sound is clean, and she is clearly a wonderful musician, as she gives careful attention to each phrase and score marking: she is not simply a singer with a good, big sound.

Schumann's set of string quartets, Op. 41, his only published contribution to the genre remain a sheer masterpiece of 19th century chamber music repertoire. Esteemed theorist & composer Moritz Hauptmann said: 'His [Schumann's] first, which delighted me immensely, made me marvel at his talent… it is cleverly conceived and held together, and a great deal of it is very beautiful'. The works are performed by the Doric String Quartet, among the most impressive of the young quartets on the classical music scene today.

Anton Eberl is often referred to when discussing contemporaries of Beethoven and Mozart. He was one of Beethovens leading rivals in the field of instrumental music, but unfortunately most of his work has disappeared. Having studied with Mozart there was no other composer whose works were more frequently passed off a Mozarts than Anton Eberl. The Piano Concertos opp. 32 and 40 presented here are performed on a period pianoforte and follow the model of the solo concerto developed toward the end of the eighteenth century as realised exemplarily and individually in Mozarts Piano Concertos.

Bernard Herrmann, born in New York in 1911 to Russian immigrants, is best known today as a composer of film music. Most notably he worked with Alfred Hitchcock on classic productions such as North by Northwest, Vertigo, and Psycho, as well as on Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. But despite his strong ties to Hollywood, Herrmann always thought of himself as a composer who worked in film, and never as a ‘mere’ film composer.

Directeur musical de l'Ensemble Baroque de Limoges depuis 1991, violoncelliste et gambiste de renommée internationale, soliste, chef d'orchestre et chercheur, Christophe Coin est reconnu comme l'un des plus mûrs et des plus créatifs musiciens de son époque. Il est fondateur du Quatuor Mosaïques, l'un des rares Quatuors à pouvoir fêter ses vingt ans d'existence.

Il s'agit d'œuvres relativement précoces, composées avant son installation à Madrid alors qu'il était encore un musicien itinérant. Le jeune Boccherini a probablement joué ces concertos à Vienne et durant ses tournées de concerts à travers l'Europe jusqu'à son séjour à Paris en 1767–68. La critique parisienne fut peu favorable — un journaliste a rapporté son jeu comme « Aigre» et qu'il était peu applaudi — mais cela était probablement plus dû au fait que son public était peu habitué à entendre le violoncelle comme instrument soliste qu'à une quelconque lacune technique de sa part. Boccherini a été un pionnier dans l'émancipation du violoncelle du carcan de la basse continue.

Louisiana Red (born Iverson Minter) was a flamboyant guitarist, harmonica player, and vocalist. He lost his parents early in life through multiple tragedies; his mother died of pneumonia a week after his birth, and his father was lynched by the Klu Klux Klan when he was five. Red began recording for Chess in 1949, then joined the Army. After his discharge, he played with John Lee Hooker in Detroit for almost two years in the late '50s, and continued through the '60s and '70s with recording sessions for Chess, Checker, Atlas, Glover, Roulette, L&R, and Tomato, among others.

Johann Gottlieb Graun (1702/3-1771) began his musical studies at the famous Kreuzschule in Dresden. Subsequently he acquired his legendary prowess on the violin from two of the most excellent teachers of the time: the Vivaldi disciple, Johann Georg Pisendel in Dresden and Giuseppe Tartini in Padova. Very early in his career, during his service as concertmaster in Merseburg, Graun got acquainted with Johann Christian Hertel (1697-1754), an outstanding viola da gamba virtuoso; they remained friends throughout their lives, corresponding frequently. This may be the reason for Graun's apparent knowledge of the technical possibilities of the viol: his compositions for this instrument - not less than 22 large-scale works are extant - bear witness to this.

The variety here is more in the programming than in the playing. Dvorak’s Romantic Pieces open to a brand of melodic effusion that every household would know if more violinists chose the set as regular repertory. The original was scored for two violins and viola, but the violin-and-piano version is equally effective. Akiko Suwanai plays them well, and both she and Boris Berezovsky are especially successful at sustaining the long-breathed Larghetto.

Nel vastissimo catalogo delle opere di Antonio Vivaldi (circa 1.000 numeri considerando le appendici), la musica da camera rappresenta una parte non considerevole e, probabilmente, una delle meno note rispetto alla frequentatissima produzione concertistica e sacra, a cui si è agggiunta, negli ultimi anni, quella operistica. Per quest'ultima si pensi, ad esempio, alle recenti produzioni dell'etichetta "Naive" o alle arie d'opera riscoperte e magistralmente eseguite in forma di concerto da Cecilia Bartoli.