Wonderful Life is the debut album of English singer Black, released on August 31, 1987. It peaked at #3 on the UK Albums Chart in September of that year. All songs written by Colin Vearncombe unless otherwise noted. Black (born Colin Vearncombe, Liverpool, England) is an English singer-songwriter, who enjoyed mainstream success in the late 1980s. William Ruhlmann of Allmusic described Vearncombe as a "smoky-voiced singer/songwriter, whose sophisticated jazz-pop songs and dramatic vocal delivery place him somewhere between Bryan Ferry and Morrissey."

The Apprentice was mostly completed a full two years before it was released. Martyn's record label, Island, rejected the tapes of the songs in 1988, even though artistically they were not too far removed from his previous release, Piece by Piece. In fact, this album turned out to be the more cohesive of the two. Eventually released by Permanent Records, it's by and large a well-crafted collection of songs. Its only weaknesses are the sometimes too-strong dependence on synthesizers and the song "Deny This Love," which is Martyn doing bad dance music (and featuring a truly horrible a cappella introduction). Otherwise, it's an enjoyable album.

Winner of the 2022 York Early Music International Young Artists Competition, Protean Quartet makes its Linn debut with an eclectic programme that transcends musical eras. Taking polyphony as a starting point, the versatile young quartet ventures into various epochs, ranging from Purcell’s Pavan Z. 752, Chacony Z. 730 and Dance from the opera Dioclesian, to Schubert’s String Quartets Nos. 4 and 13 (‘Rosamunde’) by way of Josquin’s famed ‘Mille regretz’. Although different in style, these works show an equal care in the treatment of every individual voice, each one meticulously played by Protean Quartet's outstanding musicians. A multifaceted album which will delight existing polyphony enthusiasts and create many more!

In the second half of 18th century, keyboard music in Tuscany was flourishing. Many composers wrote music for both the fortepiano and the harpsichord: the former, which was invented just before the turn of the 18th century in Florence by harpsichord maker Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655–1731), rose to an incredible degree of popularity in the last decades of the century at the expense of the latter, which experienced the last moments of its glorious history. At any rate, it was by no means uncommon that composers published music intended to be played on either instrument, as almost all keyboard pieces written in Tuscany during the 1780s were explicitly addressed per il clavicembalo o fortepiano (for the harpsichord or piano).

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).