Jerome Hines, Elizabeth Schwarzkopf and Franco Corelli star in this recording from La Scala of Handel’s “Eracle” (Hercules) recorded live on the 29th December 1958.

The Wooden Prince and The Miraculous Mandarin are – together with the earlier opera Bluebeard’s Castle – the only stage works by Béla Bartók. They stand apart from the more abstract and often more explicitly folk-related character of the music that we primarily associate with the composer. They are nevertheless major achievements that in different ways highlight Bartók’s imaginative use of the modern orchestra. Set in an enchanted forest, The Wooden Prince is based on a fairytale-like libretto featuring a prince and princess.

Like each of its two predecessors in Naive's bizarrely costumed, irresistible Vivaldi bassoon concertos series, Sergio Azzolini and his back to the future original instrument crew find beauties in the music written for the bassoon that defy gravity. Interleaved with the haunting minor key songs and harmonies are courtly B flat expressions of affection and pleasure. The recordings, made at the Church of the Madonna della Formigola, Cortifella Pieve, Brescia, are audiophile as always. The great notes by Sergio Azzolini are titled Mystery of the Bassoon. The bassoon is in fact the instrument assigned the largest number of solo concertos after those written for the violin, the composer's own instrument.

Teaming with Greg Kurstin – a producer best-known for helming Adele's Grammy-winning 25, but also a musician in his own right, collaborating with Inara George in the savvy retro duo the Bird and the Bee – is a signal from Paul McCartney that he intends Egypt Station, his 18th solo album, to be a thoroughly modern affair. It is, but not in the way that the glitzy 2013 album New, with its fair share of Mark Ronson productions, was. Kurstin doesn't specialize in gaudiness, he coaxes his collaborators to act like a bright, colorful version of their best selves, which is what he achieves with McCartney here. Apart from "Fuh You" – a vulgar throwaway novelty recorded with Ryan Tedder – Egypt Station is a handsome and clever collection where McCartney hits many familiar marks but the difference is, he gets there in a different fashion than before.

A beautiful, melancholy melody that is loved across borders and time.Jazz Bar, Japan's best-selling jazz compilation, is back for it's 24th year.In the world of jazz, it is believed that great performances produce great songs. The famous and legendary jazz saying, 'Jazz has only great performances without great songs,' aptly expresses this. There is no doubt about this. If you listen to Miles' famous 'Autumn Leaves,' you can perfectly understand how the chanson 'Autumn Leaves' quickly became a great jazz masterpiece. However, I think there is also the opposite idea that 'great songs produce great performances,' and that it's okay to have that. I always select songs for 'Jazz Bar' with that sentiment in mind.

Schumann told Wasielewski that he had composed his Violin Sonata in A minor at a time when he was 'very angry with certain people'. Whether or not that anger found its outlet in creative energy, he managed to complete the entire work within the space of less than a week. The Sonata is alone among Schumann's symphonically conceived chamber works in being cast in three movements, rather than four. The relative concision results from the fact that Schumann's middle movement takes a leaf out of Beethoven's book, and combines the functions of slow movement and scherzo. No less intensely passionate than the A minor Sonata is the Violin Sonata in D minor Op 121.

Gesualdo is now known to have composed some of the most intensely expressive music ever written – and is also known for the lurid details of his private life. The French ensemble A Sei Voci has rich-toned voices which illuminate this extraordinary music; this release is among the ‘second generation’ of Gesualdo recordings following the pioneering work of the Deller Consort in the 1970s. Their success paved the way for wider recognition of Gesualdo’s genius in the 1990s.