If you wanted a one word summary of this, their second night in Tokyo, it would be WOW! Discipline gets things underway but it’s Thela that really establishes that King Crimson are in the house with a truly smoking rendition that they seem very reluctant to let go of at the number’s conclusion. “Here’s a new song for the next King Crimson album” says Belew as they launch off into a blistering Manhattan / Neurotica. Levin’s growling bass and Bruford’s frantic shuffle puts this version into a league of its own. Throw in a frantically wild opening solo from Fripp and a howling counterpoint from Belew at the end and you’ve got a truly astonishing version of this Crimson classic before it was nailed down the following year. Having encouraged the audience to overcome their sense of reserve by getting them to stand up and come to front after a barnstorming Indiscipline, following Neil Jack And Me, Ade has to tell the now-overly enthused punters not to stand on the seats as any damage would have to be met by the band! This is a great sounding audience recording. The bright undistorted sound allows the band, who are on brilliant form, to come over loud and clear.

"Dear Ophelia" is a journey to the inner voices that we humans carry within us. With Shakespeare's Ophelia (Hamlet), one of the most interesting and powerful female figures in European cultural history, soprano Meredith Wohlgemuth and pianist Jinhee Park explore the emotional landscapes that connect us across time and cultures in their debut album. "Ophelia's story, filled with vulnerability and silence, helped us both to unlock something very personal and essential within us, and in her we found echoes of ourselves. At its core, this album is about relationship and connection between people, across time and through music, about the inner truth of being human," the pair confess in the booklet.

The musical collection by Antonia Padoani Bembo entitled _Produzioni armoniche_ (Harmonic Productions) contains cantatas and arias that together establish an intriguing portrait of the singer-composer born around 1640 in the Veneto. She received help from the guitarist-composer Francesco Corbetta who most probably accompanied her when she sang for Louis XIV, thereby obtaining a life-long pension with which to live in a women's community in Paris.

Joseph Gibbs is one of the 18th century’s best-kept secrets; his music is characterful and individual, fusing the best of Italianate virtuosity with English and quirky Gibbs-ian humour. Despite the obvious brilliance of his compositions, the 8 Solos for Violin and Basso Continuo, Op. 1 of c. 1746 are one of only two published sets of music, and there are scant references to Gibbs in the years after his death. However, the re-emergence of his portrait (painted by Thomas Gainsborough) in the early years of the 20th century sparked a curiosity and interest in Gibbs’s music, which has been described as amongst ‘the finest English violin sonatas of the century’.

So langsam, aber sicher neigt sich das Jahr seinem Ende zu. Und wie immer um Nikolaus herum versorgt euch die neue »Bravo – The Hits 2025« mit den größten Hits der vergangenen zwölf Monate.Den besten Charts-Pop, wie Ed Sheerans »Azizam« oder Gracie Adams’ Megahit »That’s So True« findet ihr unter den 24 Songs ebenso wie die angesagtesten Tracks aus Urban und Hip-Hop. Nina Chuba, Zartmann, Rosé & Bruno Mars – sie alle sind auf »Bravo – The Hits 2025« vertreten.Fans von Gitarrenmusik kommen bei den Newcomern von Royel Otis und Lola Young voll auf ihre Kosten. Und wer Elektro-Beats zum Dancen bevorzugt, kann sich unter anderem zu Oimaras Nummer-eins-Song »Wackelkontakt« so richtig gehen lassen.Aber auch brandneue Titel wie Lady Gagas »The Dead Dance« und Sabrina Carpenter mit »Tears« sind auf »Bravo – The Hits 2025« zu finden. 2026 kann also kommen!

To inaugurate their collaboration with harmonia mundi, Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra have recorded a programme as subtle as it is unexpected, with two seldom-heard masterpieces of 1913. From the bitingly ironic Shakespearian portrait of an ageing knight (Falstaff), to an existential meditation inspired by Poe (The Bells), both these ‘literary’ scores dramatically prolong the enchantments of a dying romanticism.

For more than fifteen years, the Freiburger Barockorchester has been travelling across Germany, from Freiburg to Berlin. While the journey takes only a few hours today, it was quite another story in the eighteenth century: what music might have accompanied travellers along these roads?

Pearl was Janis Joplin's valedictory. It was also her masterpiece.
Originally released posthumously in 1971, Pearl encapsulates Janis’s greatness. The first female superstar of the modern rock era, Janis was not only a powerhouse performer of rock and blues but also showed an innate affinity for soul, country-inflected folk and even the Great American Songbook.
This new, two-disc edition of Pearl includes nine previously unreleased selections. Disc One’s bonus tracks include the touching tribute "Pearl" composed by Full Tilt Boogie, while Disc Two chronicles Janis’s 1970 trans-Canada Festival Express tour, and is sequenced to recreate one of the spellbinding shows from that summer…

Recorded on an off night during a European tour in 1991, this is a warts and all, no overdubs, unplugged session that captures the father and son duo at their most uninhibited. Basically, Carey and Lurrie Bell sat down in a studio in Kouvola, Finland, let the tapes roll for three hours, and this is the result. Why the finished product languished for 14 years in tour manager/co-producer Chip Covington's closet is unclear, but Alligator's long delayed yet welcome 2004 release shows the timeless quality of this deep Delta blues. The songs are sung by both guitarist son Lurrie and harpist dad Carey, and range from well-worn standards such as "Rock Me" (featuring a stunning acoustic guitar solo), "Key to the Highway," and "Five Long Years," to originals that follow established blues patterns. It's a relatively low-key performance, but the twosome show a natural affinity for each other…

The Hep series of Teddy Wilson recordings has been largely superseded by the more complete Classics program. This release has 16 titles from Wilson's first four recording sessions as a leader of all-star bands (skipping his solo piano records). Since Billie Holiday has vocals on 14 of the 16 songs (every one except "Sweet Lorraine" and "Sugar Plum"); this material has been reissued numerous times, but the performances do contain their fair share of classics.

The end of the 60s was an important period in jazz, as well as rock music, in Poland and the rest of the world, with the development of many styles and trends in popular music. In 1970 the jazz rock fusion band, Laboratorium was formed in Kraków. Their music soon developed in jazz rock fusion, and so were pioneers in this music in Poland. In their first years, Laboratorium's music was acoustic, cleverly avoiding any limiting definitions. At the beginning of the 70's there was very limited access to Western recordings but this did not prove an obstacle for the band, because of the musicians searching and experimenting in the field. On the contrary and because of their relative isolation, Laboratorium developed an unique sound which was often noted in various critical reviews…

If the afterworld includes a red-light district, Erotic Rhythms from Earth would qualify as its soundtrack. The third recording from Austin, Texas programmer/multi-instrumentalist Shane O'Madden beckons you into an off-focus world of amorphous boundaries, one that hovers somewhere between eternity and soft-core carnality. Offering an assortment of quirky temptations too intriguing to resist, O'Madden blurs Middle Eastern textures (principally generated via violin) and ambient electronic wayfaring with sultry, unhurried trip-hop textures, subtle female cooing, and understated rhythms. It all combines to exude a beguiling mood of faint danger and fashionable decadence, where the final destination is a bazaar of hidden, delicious pleasures. If the disc's arresting cover image speaks to you, so, too, will this exotic, oddly accessible slice of imaginative trip-hop…

On True Colors, Cyndi Lauper began to edge her way into adult contemporary territory, but it was on her third album, A Night to Remember, that she concentrated all of her attention on becoming a self-consciously "mature" singer/songwriter. A Night to Remember doesn't always work, but not because she's incapable of performing polished, well-crafted middle-of-the-road material – "Time After Time" and "True Colors" prove that she could convincingly deliver ballads. Instead, the album bogs down because it assumes that labored arrangements and precisely detailed production are tantamount to musical sophistication. That said, there are some moments – such as the seductive "I Drove All Night" – that make a lasting impression, illustrating what Lauper was attempting to achieve with the record.

This 21-song set is representative of Roy Wood's always inventive work with the Move, Wizzard, and as a solo artist. It contains no fewer than three U.K. number one hits, in addition to the seasonal "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day," and which usually makes a chart appearance during the holidays. And the sound quality is uniformly fine, which certainly hasn't been the case with some reissues like The Best of & the Rest of Roy Wood & Wizzard, which is something of a companion piece to this disc.

Violinist Alexandra Tirsu presents her debut album comprising concertos by Dmitri Shostakovich and Paul Hindemith. Shostakovich's music has resonated with her since childhood, it's atmosphere reflecting the war stories she grew up with. Violin Concerto No. 1 unfolds like a psychological journey-from a shadowy opening to a fierce scherzo, an emotionally charged passacaglia, and a wildly ironic finale. Hindemith's rarely performed Violin Concerto, which Alexandra first explored at the ARD Competition in Munich, reveals a different voice: clear, structured, and quietly expressive. Recorded with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Vasily Petrenko, this album captures a moment of depth, identity, and emotional connection through two powerful 20th-century works.