The 17 selections on this disc represent the earliest recordings by one of the most important and definitive jazz combos in history. These are interesting because Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond on alto sax had established the basic sound long before bassist Gene Wright and drummer Joe Morello would join them for the 'classic quartet' era. One other thing that is interesting is even though recording technology was relatively crude in the very early 1950s the sound quality on this album is more than acceptable.

The Hollywood Years Vol. 1. Tangerine Dream has composed scores for dozens of films. The process of creating for the cinema always leaves the performer with loads of unused material. The Hollywood Years, Vol. 1 features unused soundtrack material composed and performed by Edgar Froese and Jerome Froese. (While they are credited with composing and performing, some of the material sounds very familiar, like it is from the lineup with Christopher Franke and Paul Haslinger.) Tangerine Dream's proliferation in this arena has yielded some excellent music that can stand on its own. It also has yielded, understandably, some uneven pieces and even some absolute losers. The Froeses handpicked this material and it is very good-to-excellent e-music…

EMI's Immersion Edition of The Wall offers a new remaster of the original album, a remaster of the previously released concert album Is There Anybody Out There: The Wall Live, a DVD containing a documentary among other visual highlights and, finally, two discs of demos from the band and the album's chief songwriter, Roger Waters. These demos are the true highlight of the box, and they've been arranged into seven separate programs, all arranged chronologically and tracing the development of the album from Waters' solo demos through relatively rough full-band run-throughs. The first Programme, running 22 tracks, is devoted to the original Waters solo demos and runs through the entire album in miniature, then the second Programme adds a few selections from the full band. These are quite subdued and slow, a clear outgrowth from the moody malevolence of Animals…

Released in the States by the small Janus label (with an updated cover), 1977's 'No Second Chance" was co-produced by Anderson and Thomas. Like the debut, the material was again largely written by Thomas and similarly managed to combine gorgeous group vocal harmonies with a hard rock sound that still had a distinctive commercial sheen. Propelled by Thomas' instantly recognizable growl, imagine a pub band like Ace deciding they liked rock guitar and you'll get a good feel for tracks like 'Johnny Hold Back', 'Pressure Point' and 'Guitar Hero'.

The Huddersfield Choral society has one of the longest and most fruitful relationships with Handel s famous Messiah than perhaps any other chorus in the world: they first performed it in concert during their inception year of 1836, and have continued to do so annually since 1860 with concerts the world over as well as in their hometown of Huddersfield. Recorded live in concert in December 2010, this new recording combines the famous ensemble with the Northern Sinfonia and four world-class professionals, under the direction of Jane Glover CBE. The disc begins with John Wainwright s Christians Awake , a traditional addition to the Messiah programme at their concerts in Huddersfield.

For his first CD with La Dolce Volta, Olivier Latry has chosen a programme devoted to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. This recording, made on the massive Cavaillé-Coll organ of Notre-Dame de Paris, of which he is titular organist, raises a number of fascinating questions. “My approach highlights several paradoxes: the notion of performing these key works of Protestantism in one of the most emblematic centres of Catholicism, first of all, but also of playing them on an instrument that is, to say the least, far removed from the Baroque and Classical style of organ building.” - Olivier Latry

Written more than 15 years apart, these two scores, juxtaposed here for the first time, successively illustrate the somewhat morose ‘Nordic’ inspiration of the composer of Ein deutsches Requiem, then a more intimate poetic feeling, and finally a communicative serenity, the headiness of a ‘Hungarian’ dance in the Quartet, a sort of wild csárdás with quasi-orchestral force in the coda of the Quintet.