A Lenten oratorio in the Italian tradition of sacred opera, Il Dolore di Maria Vergine is widely held to be the outstanding masterpiece in the genre by Alessandro Scarlatti. Structured in two extended parts, it assigns roles to the Virgin Mary, St John, Nicodemus and to a High Priest named Onìa. The challenge taken on by the composer and his anonymous librettist early in 1717 was to make a mere four characters effective as vehicles for conveying the drama of the Passion, moving as Bach does from the capture of Jesus in Gethsemane, to his interrogation by Pilate, his scourging and crowning with thorns, his journey to Calvary and his crucifixion and death.

50th-anniversary reissue of Rory Gallagher's 1971 sophomore solo album, Deuce. The Deluxe 4 CD box set includes a new mix of the original album, 28 previously unreleased alternate takes, a 6-song 1972 BBC Radio In Concert performance, and 7 session tracks from Germany's Radio Bremen. The package contains a 64-page hardback book with a foreword by Johnny Marr from The Smiths, unseen images, essays, and memorabilia from the album recording.
Released in November 1971, just six months after his solo debut, Rory Gallagher's second album was the summation of all that he'd promised in the wake of Taste's collapse, and the blueprint for most of what he'd accomplish over the next two years of recording…

The first album and the perfect place to start. Wild, raucous, crazy music straight out of the South Side clubs. The incessant drive of Hound Dog's playing is best heard on "Give Me Back My Wig," "55th Street Boogie," and "Taylor's Rock," while the sound of Brewer Phillips' Telecaster on "Phillips' Theme" gives new meaning to the phrase "sheet metal tone." One of the greatest slide guitar albums of all time.

"Goin' Out of My Head" is the fifteenth album by American jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery, arranged and conducted by Oliver Nelson, it was released in 1966. It reached number 7 on the Billboard R&B chart. At the 9th Grammy Awards Goin' Out of My Head won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Individual or Group.
Guitarist Wes Montgomery had a hit with this version of "Goin' Out of My Head" but musically it is little more than a pleasant melody statement. Accompanied by a wasted all-star big band given arrangements by Oliver Nelson, Montgomery mostly sticks to playing themes, even those as dull as "Chim Chim Cheree" and "It Was a Very Good Year." Recordings like this one disheartened the jazz world but made him a household name and a staple on AM radio. Heard three decades later, the recording is at its best when serving as innocuous background music.

British progressive pioneers Henry Cow was the leading group of the Rock In Opposition (R.I.O. for short) movement, initiated by their drummer Chris Cutler. All members of Henry Cow have been involved in collaborations with Canterbury groups and artists at one point or another, and most of them still are. Their music aged amazingly well over the last 20 years due to diverse influences: some of its roots in the Canterbury school, most notably early Soft Machine, other influences (Frank Zappa, Bela Bartok, Kurt Weil). The group functioned more or less as a collective, with a true group identity that changed from album to album as members came and went.
Henry Cow's first album, "Legend" (read "Leg End"), is considered by many their most accessible, and makes a good starter. Their sound draws on modern classical music, jazz and experimental music…

Looking back on 20 years of creative growth since the electro-pop band's inception, The OMD Singles is logically and chronologically arranged. The earliest recordings, 1980's "Electricity" and "Messages," prove electric messages were being channeled from such German pioneers as Kraftwerk and Neu! These English boys were enamored of melody, though, and it was not long before such dulcet, song-like structure became self-evident, as in 1984's "Tesla Girls." From then on, it is a steady climb in coherence, with synth rhythms downplayed in order to bring the melodic theme to the front. The pinnacle of this progression is OMD's memorable "So in Love" (1985) and "If You Leave" (from 1986's Pretty in Pink). The album closes with their last hit, 1996's glam-influenced autobiography "Walking on the Milky Way"…

Sinuous rhythms, conversational singing, and, most of all, intricate, bluesy guitar playing characterize Cale's performances of his own songs. This compilation, covering 11 years of recording, includes the songs Eric Clapton, who borrowed heavily from Cale's style in his 1970s solo work, made famous: "After Midnight" and "Cocaine."

George Harrison's albums have been notoriously uneven, but despite the rough patches, his talent for songcraft never really left him, as the compilation The Best of Dark Horse (1976-1989) proves. A 15-song retrospective covering five albums, The Best of Dark Horse contains nearly every gem from 33 1/3, George Harrison, Somewhere in England, Gone Troppo, and Cloud Nine, including "Crackerbox Palace," "All Those Years Ago," "Got My Mind Set on You," "Cloud 9," "When We Was Fab," and the lovely "Blow Away." For most casual fans, the record will be a welcome summation of a hit-and-miss era of Harrison's career.

Issued by Collectors Dream, the Saturday Night Special (Ready for Rock 'n' Roll Part II) disc pulls together a cash-in collection of classic rock covers. In the late 1980s, they had their greatest hits with like Rock Me, Once Bitten, Twice Shy or Save Your Love. Over the same period, the songs from seventies heavy weights Aerosmith ("Same Old Song and Dance"), Lynyrd Skynyrd ("Saturday Night Special"), Led Zeppelin ("Dazed & Confused"), Thin Lizzy ("Sarah") and Van Halen ("Unchained") carry the sharpest teeth from the recording. Saturday Night Special is the follow-up album to the Collector's Dream Series Ready For Rock N Roll.

Happy Xmas, Eric Clapton's first Christmas record in a career that's spanned over four and a half decades, certainly bears its share of seasonal charm, but it's also of a piece with the warm, amiable music he's made in the 2010s. Like Old Sock and I Still Do before it, Happy Xmas relies on songs from other songwriters (he wrote only one tune, the slow-burning "For Love on Xmas Day") and cooks to a cozy groove that's grounded in the blues but also encompasses soul, reggae, rock, and a bit of vaudeville shuffle ("Xmas in My Hometown"). This homey atmosphere is certainly suited for the season, even if it rarely sounds like a typical holiday record.

The Calidore Quartet begin their new cycle of Beethoven's complete String Quartets with the Late Quartets, a 3-volume set of Opp. 127, 130, 131, 132, 133 & 135. Performances of the Calidore String Quartet are renowned for their "deep reserves of virtuosity and irrepressible dramatic instinct" (New York Times). Their unique "balance of intellect and expression" (Los Angeles Times) is complemented by the feeling that "four more individual musicians are unimaginable, yet these speak, breathe, think and feel as one" (Washington Post).

This marriage of four players with impressive pedigrees proved to be the success story of 1982 when Asia's debut lodged itself at the top of the U.S. album charts for two months. The album spawned a massive number four single in "Heat of the Moment," a follow-up Top 20 hit in the sweeping "Only Time Will Tell," and a handful of other tracks that received heavy radio play despite going against the grain of the new wave styling of the day. Produced by Mike Stone, Asia's strengths were the powerful vocals of John Wetton, the nimble, classically tinged guitar work of Steve Howe, Geoffrey Downes' majestic keyboard playing, and anchoring the band, Carl Palmer's propulsive drumming. The lyrics are overwrought at moments, but there's no denying the epic grandeur of the music, which provided some much-needed muscle to radio at the time, and did so with style.