The music of Bach has always been a specialty of the Choir of King’s College, who dedicated their first ever recording to him in 1929 for HMV. This collection includes their best renditions of cantatas, the Christmas Oratorio, the Magnificat and St Matthew Passion. Featuring Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Philip Leger, David Willcocks, Stephen Cleobury and more.

Here we are in the middle of July, time to refresh ourselves with music and do our holiday homework, by immersing ourselves with delight in this collection of the most beautiful works inspired by the summer season. From Vivaldi to Gershwin and Schubert to Debussy, it will evoke the pleasures of balmy summer evenings, the joys of idleness, the stifling heat, the song of the cicadas and that of the harvesters. The major artists from our rich catalogue are featured in On a Summer Evening: Vilde Frang, Mady Mesplé, Simon Rattle, Jean-Pierre Rampal…

With Breakfast in America, Supertramp had a genuine blockbuster hit, topping the charts for four weeks in the U.S. and selling millions of copies worldwide; by the 1990s, the album had sold over 18 million units across the world. Although their previous records had some popular success, they never even hinted at the massive sales of Breakfast in America. Then again, Supertramp's earlier records weren't as pop-oriented as Breakfast. The majority of the album consisted of tightly written, catchy, well-constructed pop songs, like the hits "The Logical Song," "Take the Long Way Home," and "Goodbye Stranger." Supertramp still had a tendency to indulge themselves occasionally, but Breakfast in America had very few weak moments. It was clearly their high-water mark.

Part of our retrospective dedicated to the pianist and benedictine monk Thierry de Brunhoff. All the recordings made for Pathé during his very brief career have been put online for the very first time. His discretion, his infinite ease with the piano, his deep understanding of the scores and his sudden decision to leave secular life have shrouded him in an aura of mystery, making him a veritable legend in piano circles. The unprecedented refinement he displays in this Schumann collection is one of the supreme testimonies to this incomparable talent, which we only wish he had graced us with for longer.

Drums Between the Bells is a collaboration by producer Brian Eno and poet Rick Holland. It was recorded just after Eno finished work on 2010's Small Craft on a Milk Sea, his debut for Warp, and it followed on the release schedule less than a year later. In that sense, the timing was good for such a risky project. Music and poetry are often difficult companions, and combining them is best left to experts; fortunately, Eno is just such an expert. Although Holland is an obscure poet, he first came to Eno’s notice back in the late ‘90s (through a university project), and his poetry is very good. Although his words and thoughts are impressionistic, his themes are easier to peg: urban living, science, and the intersection of philosophy and biology. The music is almost entirely Eno’s own, with only a few tracks featuring guest credits - much less so than his previous album…

Until he joined John's Children, in March, 1967, Marc Bolan had never even owned an electric guitar. And once he quit the band, it is said, he abandoned it as quickly as everything else which that band represented - freakbeat pop, adrenalined psych, electric soup. In fact, Bolan never lost sight of his electric destiny, even as Tyrannosaurus Rex sawed away on their acoustic toys, a point which producer Tony Visconti cottoned onto the first time he ever saw the duo play, "Marc sitting crosslegged on stage playing his strange little songs in a wobbly voice, while Steve Took was banging on his bongos." Visconti himself was a novice producer, "holding out for something really different and unusual. I thought Marc was perhaps that." He was, and the album which he and Took delivered emphasized all the qualities which Visconti had spotted that night at the UFO club…

Bob Margolin's goal with this CD was to perform the type of blues-oriented music that he plays at home for his family. Through overdubbing, he is very much a self-sufficient one-man band. The variety of music that he performs spans several idioms, ranging from jump blues and "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You" to lowdown blues, Bob Dylan's "Tears of Rage," a few songs reminiscent of Muddy Waters (with whom he played regularly for seven years) and an occasional instrumental. Margolin's musicianship is impressive, his vocals are heartfelt, his originals are colorful and his spoken word story on "You Never Know" is realistic while containing a moral. This CD is easily recommended for blues fans.

By the mid-'60s, vibraphonist Cal Tjader was recording regularly for Verve in a wide variety of settings but with pretty consistent success. For this popular outing, Tjader plays a few then-current Latin numbers (including Clare Fischer's famous "Morning"), revives "Manteca," and performs a pair of Kurt Weill standards ("My Ship" and "The Bilbao Song"). With Jerome Richardson, Seldon Powell, and/or Jerry Dodgion prominent on flutes, such sidemen as the young pianist Chick Corea, guitarist Attila Zoller, bassist Richard Davis, drummer Grady Tate, and some fine charts written by Oliver Nelson, the music is quite catchy and accessible, commercial but still creative within the genre.