Austrian vocalist Udo Jürgens is best known as the winner of the 1966 Eurovision Song Contest. But a career that spans over four decades has established him as one of the European mainland's most popular performers; his combined international sales exceed over 100 million units. Jürgens was born on September 30, 1934, in Klagenfurt, Austria. He was just 16 when he won an Austrian radio songwriting competition with "Je T'Aime." His success built from there over the next decade and, in 1961, he scored his first international hit when his composition "Reach for the Stars" was recorded by Shirley Bassey. Three years later, Matt Monro was similarly successful with Jürgens' "Walk Away" – a song that the Englishman first encountered at the 1964 Eurovision Song Contest, where Jürgens, representing Austria, performed it in its original language as "Warum Nur Waru." Jürgens finished fifth in the 1964 Eurovision event; the following year he finished fourth with "Sag Ihr, Ich Lass Sie Grüben." The third time proved the charm: he sang "Merci Chérie" to glory in 1966. (English singer Vince Hill promptly scored a U.K. hit with an English-language version of the song.)

It should come as no surprise that Enrique Iglesias' 2008 Greatest Hits begins in 1999, when he made the leap from the Latin market into the mainstream. All his very successful '90s albums on Fonovisa are bypassed, written off as prehistory, so the spotlight shines only on his English-language singles of the new millennium: the club tracks and syrupy slow songs that gave him a significant number of crossover hits. With the exception of a couple of minor blips on the charts like 2000's "Sad Eyes," all these are here, starting with 1999's "Bailamos" and "The Rhythm Divine," running through 2000's "Be with You" and 2001's "Hero," stopping for 2004's "Not in Love," winding up with 2007's "Do You Know? (The Ping Pong Song)" and wrapping up with two new duets, "Away" with Sean Garrett and "Takin' Back My Love" with Ciara. While this approach may lop off half of his career, it also does exactly what hits collections should do: it gives the casual listener the hits they want to hear and nothing else.

Romain Leleu and his musical partner Julien Gernay, captivated by the sounds of the unique instruments in the Musée de la musique, invite us on a whirlwind tour around the land of the French trumpet and cornet. Other musicians have joined them to add a touch of horn and trombone to these pieces, whether originals or transcriptions of emblematic works from a ‘Belle Époque’ indeed!

Rock of Life is an album by Australian singer-songwriter Rick Springfield. It was released on RCA Records in 1988. The disc peaked at a modest #55 on the Billboard album chart, selling approximately 350,000 copies in United States. It was the least successful of Springfield's six RCA releases.

A compilation released in various territories outside the U.S., including the U.K., The Ultimate Collection covers Whitney Houston's career through 1998's My Love Is Your Love, containing most of the notable singles she released throughout the '80s and '90s. It's a fairly straightforward set, though there are some alternate mixes in place of original versions (including "I'm Your Baby Tonight"), which is not noted on the outside of the packaging. Some will find fault in the number of notable exclusions, including "Miracle," "You Give Good Love," "I Believe in You and Me," and "All the Man That I Need" – all of which were Top Ten R&B singles in the States. But that is more an issue of space than poor track selection.

Here is the 12th volume in the complete chronological recordings of Lionel Hampton as reissued by the Classics label. It opens with Hamp's final five recordings for the MGM label, waxed in Los Angeles on October 17, 1951. This was a 20-piece big band using charts written by Quincy Jones, and the music it made feels much different from what's to be heard in the next leg of Lionel Hampton's odyssey, a Norman Granz-produced quartet session with Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown and Buddy Rich, recorded in New York on September 2, 1953. While the big band sides are exciting and fun, with a hip vocal by Sonny Parker on "Don't Flee the Scene Salty" and a singalong routine led by Hamp on "Oh Rock," the quartet swings cohesively, stretching out for six, seven or nearly eleven minutes, for the LP era had begun and Norman Granz encouraged extended improvisations. The combination of Oscar Peterson and Lionel Hampton, whether cooking together on "Air Mail Special" or savoring the changes of a ballad like "The Nearness of You" made spirits to soar and sparks to fly.

One thing is certain in this uncertain world – you can trust Ashley Hutchings to do interesting things with various areas of British folk and rock music. In the case of the Albion Dance Band, under its various names, the focus was on mutating traditional English dance and folk music, which led to escapades involving traditional tunes, Morris dancers, double drummers, dance callers, Philip Pickett's entire collection of medieval instruments, and serious rock guitar front lines that tend to leap onto the hay cart and start blazing away. The Prospect Before Us is particularly unusual, even for Hutchings and the Albions – a number of the tracks were recorded live in the studio, complete with dancing by the Albion Morris Men, an effort that resulted in some especially raucous moments: the bonus version of "Merry Sherwood Rangers" is far more staid than the live rendition that made it to the original version of this album. An essential purchase, we think.

Legendary guitarist Mike Stern has been celebrated for his versatile playing style since he first hit the scene in the 1970s, transcending genre by performing with Blood, Sweat & Tears, Miles Davis, Jaco Pastorius, The Brecker Brothers, David Sanborn, Béla Fleck, Yellowjackets and more. With Echoes and Other Songs, Stern brings together an all-star group of musicians (including Chris Potter, Jim Beard, Christian McBride, Antonio Sanchez, Richard Bona & Dennis Chambers) for 11 brand-new originals that will captivate and unite guitar and jazz fans of all generations.

The program “Musical Moments by Schubert and Rachmaninoff” explores two distinct approaches to the same musical concept. For Schubert, Musical Moments embody an intimate form, where simplicity and poetry unfold through brief and elegant pieces. Composed in 1827, a year before his death, these six miniatures distill the essence of his work, alternating between lyrical melodies and darker atmospheres, as a tribute to the fleeting nature of time.

The best lineup of the multifaceted Japanese psychedelic band.

In his Symphonie fantastique, the young Berlioz bared his soul in music, torturing himself with passion — some might say obsession — for his beloved. Through tender love scenes, a thrilling march to the scaffold, and an opium-induced nightmare, Berlioz’s riveting masterpiece is unforgettable.

Our new album ‘Echoes Across Borders’ is brought to you by principal clarinettist of the Welsh National Opera Thomas Verity and British-Hungarian pianist and composer Michael Csányi-Wills. This album takes as its jumping-off point Polish composer Mieczysław Weinberg’s Clarinet Sonata. Its resonances are then answered in Csányi-Wills’s brand new Clarinet Sonata. References to Jewish themes emergent in both works take centre stage in Michael’s Variations on a Ukrainian Theme, which takes as its source material a recording of a song by a 19-year-old concentration camp prisoner from 1945 – the same year that Weinberg wrote his Sonata. Finally, we come full circle but heard afresh, with a cross-genre realisation of Weinberg’s Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes by a contemporary klezmer band.

Giuseppe Martucci was one of the formative figures in the re-establishment of Italian instrumental music in the second half of the 19th century. His orchestral music had advocates as powerful as Mahler and Toscanini, and his piano concertos won admirers. His solo piano music was performed mostly by him, and today remains virtually unknown. These compositions offer verdant, colourful melodies, striking dance themes, and elegant music crafted for the salon. There are also some flamboyant and virtuoso challenges, tracing a lineage back to Scarlatti.

This ambitious and beautifully produced two-CD set includes nearly all of Iannis Xenakis' chamber music for strings, piano, and strings and piano combined. Chamber music constituted a small part of the composer's output, since large ensembles and large forms were vehicles more commensurate with the aesthetic of his monumental, granitic music. There are no small pieces here, though; in each of these works, ranging from solos to a quintet for piano and strings, Xenakis was able to express his uncompromising vision no less ferociously than in his orchestral works. While all of the pieces have an elemental character, many with a visceral punch, the actual sound of the music is surprisingly varied, and the individual works have distinctive and individual characters. In spite of the weightiness and rigor of the music, the tone is not necessarily heavy, and some pieces, like Evryali for piano and Dikhthas for violin and piano, have moments of what could almost be described as whimsicality.

Wozu auch der Einsatz historischer Instrumente gehört, die in diesem Fall die Merseburger Hofmusik eingebracht hat. An der Orgel ist Denny Wilke zu erleben. Für die großen, aufwühlenden Chöre sorgen der Philharmonische Chor Dresden und das Collegium Vocale Leipzig – allein schon an der Besetzung merkt man: Das ist ein großes Werk, in das man eintauchen kann wie in einen Film.