As part of the 2017 Manchester International Festival, New Order played a five-night residency at a special place, Old Granada Studios, where Joy Division made their television debut in 1978. To make the event even more special, the band added a 12-member synthesizer orchestra to their regular lineup and utilized the striking stage design of visual artist Liam Gillick. They were inspired by the setting to play a set that spanned their entire career from their early days as Joy Division to 2015's Music Complete. Most albums rated a song apiece and the selections weren't obvious ones for the most part. For example, they don't play late-period highlight "Crystal"; they instead play "Behind Closed Doors," which was the B-side. The choices are striking, and it makes it clear that the band's catalog is extremely deep…

Here is confirmation that Francesco Piemontesi belongs to a small elite: he is a pianist that other pianists go to hear. He is awesome and speculative in the A major while in the B-flat he achieves greatness without recourse to idiosyncrasy or extremes. Even in a crowded field of celebrated recordings, Piemontesi’s performances are wholly exceptional, enlightening if exhausting at every level. They are crowned by Pentatone’s beautifully natural sound.

Although the first violin virtuosos came mainly from Cremona, Brescia or Mantua, it was Venice that swiftly emerged as the principal centre for the development of instrumental music. Moreover, it was there that most collections of this music were printed all through the seventeenth century. It is curious to note that all these virtuosos obviously enjoyed sharing their success with their colleagues: for, alongside works for one or two violins and continuo, almost all the composer-violinists gathered together on this disc conceived sonate, canzone or sinfonie for ensembles of three or four violins. In addition, these compositions often make use of bichoral or echo effects.

It is true that images have the power to keep a trace of the past. Gottfried von der Goltz and the Freiburger Barockorchestra prove with this recording that music too conceals the secret of the memory deep within. Though rarely played, much less recorded, Mozart’s youth symphonies bear the reminiscence of the child the composer used to be, as well as including the seeds of his future masterpieces.

"Tramas" is the 2019 album by Francesco Venerucci. A disc composed of nine tracks, all original, ranging from jazz to Mediterranean music to get to the sound of New Orleans, crossing Africa and Europe. For the second time alongside Venerucci (the first was in his previous work "Early Afternoon") the American saxophonist Dave Liebman, one of the most important interpreters of world jazz of the last fifty years. Still other sounds are found in the disc such as: the trumpet of the Spanish Ricardo Formoso, the double bass of Tancredi Emmi and the drums of Bruno Tagliasacchi Masia.

The transition between the Renaissance and the Baroque eras did not mark one sudden change of forms or styles, nor did it signal the end of what Claudio Monteverdi called the prima pratica, or the primary practice of Renaissance polyphony. However, a new emphasis on powerful emotional expressions became a central feature of what he dubbed the seconda pratica, which came to the fore with the development of opera, most notably in Monteverdi's L'Orfeo in 1607. Composers paid special attention to the innovations in the music of Venice, which eventually spread throughout Europe in the 17th and early 18th centuries, and such figures as Monteverdi, Antonio Lotti, and Antonio Caldara, long associated with the city, became exemplars of the new Venetian style, in both secular and sacred music.

On 20 June 1819, 200 years ago, the famous composer Jaques Offenbach was born in Cologne as "Jakob" Offenbach. The young cellist Raphaela Gromes, who already received excellent reviews and even celebrated chart successes with her first two albums for Sony Classical, has come up with a very special Offenbach album for the anniversary, having already presented Offenbach's "Hommage à Rossini" in a highly praised premiere recording on her last Rossini album. For, before Offenbach was acclaimed in musical theatre, he himself had a great career as a cellist and was even celebrated throughout Europe as the "Liszt of the cello"

It was when the young Haydn was appointed Kapellmeister to Prince Nikolaus Esterházy that he composed his Missa Cellensis, a work of vast proportions, whose popularity is demonstrated by the many surviving copies. In this interpretation full of vivid contrasts, the RIAS Kammerchor and the Akademie für Alte Musik confirm their extraordinary ability to reveal every subtlety of a composition that possesses almost operatic energy.

This release is part of the complete cycle of Vaughan Williams' symphonies undertaken by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the energetic Martyn Brabbins holding the baton. Like others in the series, the reading of the Symphony No. 5 is a strong performance, understated in the English way, with themes arising naturally, as if organically. Listen to the emergence of the second theme in the opening movement for a good idea of what to expect from the whole. The big news here is the presence of a new Vaughan Williams work: the Scenes Adapted from Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, composed in 1906.

"Until They Feel The Sun" is the first release from Seattle based prog band, Moon Letters.
The album functions as a 51-minute suite, with melodic themes carrying through the compositions and providing a sense of unity in spite of the variety of sounds. The sonic palette ranges from majestic full-band anthems to delicate acoustic passages to quick odd-meter instrumental workouts. Trew’s voice is expressive and appealing, with a vulnerable quality to it that carries a lot of emotion whether he’s nearly whispering or belting out a big climactic phrase. The band is amazingly tight, with coordination that would do a math-metal band proud, full of varying accents that they all hit together. Keyboard sounds tend to the classics: organ, piano, electric piano, Mellotron-like choir and strings, and Moog-like leads…