From the Second Empire to the Roaring Twenties, Alexandra Soumm, the Orchestre de Chambre Pelléas and Benjamin Levy paint a dishevelled, nostalgic and swaying portrait of the City of Light that spans seventy years of music.

Passion, solitude, nostalgia, the pain of the world, flight, death — these are the typical themes of Romanticism. Konstantin Krimmel has already explored this era of extreme emotion in Saga, his first recital album (Alpha549). Now, with collaborative pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz, he plunges even deeper into this cosmos. "I simply love telling stories. Even as a child, I loved listening to old legends and tales", says Krimmel, who is indeed a fabulous storyteller-singer. The two artists have chosen here to compare songs by Franz Schubert and Carl Loewe that embody these great themes. The two composers, both masters of the Lied, had very different destinies: Loewe lived to be 72 years old, more than twice as old as Schubert, who had died aged 31.

No fewer than four major composers — Fauré, Debussy, Schoenberg and Sibelius — were inspired by Maurice Maeterlinck’s play Pelléas et Mélisande (1892). Given that we celebrate anniversaries of Fauré and Schoenberg in 2024, Paavo Järvi offers his reading of their settings of Pelléas et Mélisande with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, whose Music Director he was for almost ten years. Debussy was so involved with his own operatic setting of Pelléas et Mélisande that the famous English actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell turned to Gabriel Fauré to write incidental music for the play; this music then became an orchestral suite in four movements that is considered to be Fauré’s symphonic masterpiece. Schoenberg followed advice given by his much-admired role model Richard Strauss in 1902 and composed his own symphonic poem based on Pelléas et Mélisande. Its complex combinations of musical motifs and the rich fabric of the large-scale orchestra not only captivate us but also reveal his own vision of this archaic and yet universal story.

American listeners tend to remember Shocking Blue as the one-hit wonder behind the chart-topper "Venus," a melting pot of rock rhythms, country guitar licks, organ riffs, and Mariska Veres' heavily accented vocals. Sounding something like a cross between "96 Tears" and "Sugar, Sugar," "Venus" was not entirely representative of the group's first album, At Home. Like their fellow countrymen Golden Earring, Shocking Blue purveyed a mild strain of psychedelic rock, but leaned more toward country and folk music than bubblegum. Guitarist and principal songwriter Robby Van Leeuwen was already preoccupied with Americana at this early stage, from "Harley Davidson" and "California Here I Come" to a surprising rendition of the folk song "Boll Weevil" that sets the traditional lyrics to music reminiscent of the Easybeats' "Good Times."

After tackling Schumann, Liszt, Brahms, Schoenberg and Hindemith, Ulf Wallin and Roland Pontinen now focus their attention to the late-romantic English composer Edward Elgar. 'Mot d'amour', which takes it's title from one of his early compositions for violin, presents a substantial part of Elgar's output for violin and piano, which spans his entire career.

By the time Stanford received a commission from the Norfolk and Norwich Festival to write a choral work for them in 1884, he had, at the age of 32, already begun to assert himself as one of Britain’s leading composers. The Elegiac Ode was, however, his first mature foray into the world of major British choral festivals. Some of the Elegiac Ode had in fact been sketched three years earlier in 1881, but after the Norwich commission was received, Stanford evidently grasped the opportunity to complete the work in its entirety in July 1884.

This is a live album from Asia's MTV gig in Japan. The thing was, John Wetton left the band a week before the concert, so Greg Lake was brought it. Hearing his amazing voice singing Asia classics here is great. Steve Howe's guitar shines in this performance as well. Not to mention Carl Palmer, the guy is just an amazing drummer. Geoff Downes also adds a great keyboard solo, and overall his keyboards really add to the mix of the album. The entire performance sounds great with the remastering. It only gets four stars as the editing between songs isnt that good, and Greg Lake's voice isnt as good as Wetton's in certain parts. But overall, this is an amazing concert. Recomended to Asia fans. ~ B.K., Amazon

Though the soundtrack for Death Wish 2 may not sound like an interesting record on the surface, it is actually a significant release for any number of reasons. For one thing, it was the first album that Jimmy Page recorded and released after the breakup of Led Zeppelin, and the album serves as a fascinating transition from Zeppelin's final studio release, In Through the out Door, to the work Page would do with his ill-fated supergroup the Firm. In addition to containing Page's work with a full orchestra, there are several pieces that showcase his well-established ability to create eerie, unnerving guitar and synthesizer lines, mainly to serve as accompaniment to the film. Page also delivers three fully composed rock songs, "Who's to Blame," "Hypnotizing Ways," and "City Sirens."

Nocturnes, L 98 (also known as Trois Nocturnes or Three Nocturnes) is an Impressionist orchestral composition in three movements by the French composer Claude Debussy, who wrote it between 1892 and 1899. It is based on poems from Poèmes anciens et romanesques (Henri de Régnier, 1890).

Harmonic Divergence is the perfect companion piece to Steven Wilson’s highly acclaimed 2023 album The Harmony Codex. On this very limited nine track release, music from the original album has been remixed and reimagined by Wilson, alongside longtime bandmates/collaborators and like-minded bands and producers. The result is a warped mirror image of the original, where oblique electronics are replaced by spidery gothic guitar riffs and cyclical piano tracks are mutated and transformed for the dance floor.

I still remember the first time I heard Ahmed Malek. It was 2012. Back then I didn’t know much about Arabic music, but I was about to leave Berlin for a couple of weeks to go to Tunisia. I was working as a project manager for a music recoding session which ended up being released by Jakarta Records as the “Sawtuha” release. I knew I would have some time off during my stay and I was certain that I would dedicate some of this time to diggin. I asked some people whether they knew of any titles that I should look for. Roskow, who also ended up re-mastering this release, told me about an Algerian composer called Ahmed Malek whose music was also released in Tunisia.