Gerhild Romberger, Bernard Haitink, Bavarian Radio Chorus and Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra featuring Augsburger Domsingknaben, Gerhild Romberger (contralto), Juliane Banse (soprano)

Most classical music lovers know – or at least know of – J.S. Bach’s The Art of Fugue. It’s sometimes described as the composer’s greatest creation, and spoken about in terms of its mathematical beauty, purity of musical thought, and thematic complexity. But strikingly, none of these descriptions tell us very much about what the music actually sounds like – or indeed what The Art of Fugue is, and who it’s for.

This late 1967 album found the Hollies making some modest adjustments to the psychedelic era: occasionally trippy studio effects, a sitar on their most psychedelic track ("Maker"), songs that didn't always deal with boy-girl relationships. In fact, however, the group's focus remained where it usually was: modest but pleasing, similar-sounding catchy tunes with high harmonies and strumming guitars. It's not remarkable or essential, but it's certainly pleasant enough, and a bit better than their earlier 1967 LP, Evolution, with some of their better album-only cuts ("Postcard," "Pegasus," "Butterfly," "Away Away Away").

In the last quarter of the 16th century, the madrigal spread well beyond Italy. Over 85 books of Italian madrigals were printed in Antwerp, mainly by Pierre Phalese the younger, giving a place of choice to both Italian and local composers. Thanks to research into the collections published at the time, La Compagnia del Madrigale is unveiling the world premiere of works taken from the volumes that made the genre such a success. It reveals their full potential and establishes the madrigal as a cosmopolitan art form.

39-track collection of every A- and B-side from Edmunds’ years on Swan Song Records on double-CD and double-LP • Featuring material written by and with Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, Bob Seger, John Fogerty, Chuck Berry, Graham Parker, Huey Lewis, Rodgers & Hart, and more. • Mastering and Restoration by multiple Grammy-winner Michael Graves with liner notes from Joe Marchese (theseconddisc.com) Robert Plant and his Led Zeppelin cohorts—Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham—launched Swan Song Records in 1974. Rock ’n’ roll revivalist Edmunds wasn’t as unexpected a choice as some might have felt at the time; Plant was a big fan and would indulge his own love of vintage rock ’n’ roll and R&B with his 1980s band The Honeydrippers.

The New Orleans barrelhouse boogie piano specialist's earliest sides for OKeh, dating from 1940-1941 and in a few cases sporting some fairly groundbreaking electric guitar runs by Jesse Ellery. Dupree rocks the house like it's a decade later on two takes of "Cabbage Greens" and "Dupree Shake Dance," while his drug-oriented "Junker Blues" was later cleaned up a bit by a chubby newcomer named Fats Domino for his debut hit 78 "The Fat Man."

As the tumultuous 1960s crashed into the '70s, few American bands could match the fevered output, unified vision, and consistent hit-making ability of Creedence Clearwater Revival. Despite hailing from Northern California, bandleader John Fogerty rooted his imagination in the Deep South, fusing vivid Southern imagery with a distinctive brand of rock & roll that combined swamp pop, blues, R&B, and country. Viewed as outliers in the Bay Area's overwhelmingly psychedelic music scene, CCR's punchy roots rock delivery, blue-collar work ethic, and comparative sobriety helped them quickly surpass their peers and become one of the most prolific and popular bands in the country. This 1987 ten-CD box set, distributed by ZYX Music, includes all of their studio albums, plus the live release Live In Europe and the Creedence Country & Chooglin' ​​compilations.

The piano trio in Jazz - it does not get more essential than this. On these ten CDs fifteen excellent alliances of piano, bass, and drums present prime examples of what has often been called Jazz' "chamber music". A perfect and poignant introduction to the genre, this collection of nineteen original albums also serves as a beautiful reminder of just how diverse this instrumental combination could be made to sound in the late 50s and early 60s. Just listen to the way a standard like Cole Porter's "What Is This Thing Called Love" is interpreted by Bill Evans with his trio of Scott La Faro on bass and Paul Motian on drums or by Barry Harris, who also played with Miles Davis back in his hometown of Detroit, when accompanied by Joe Benjamin and Elvin Jones. Or how differently "Caravan" sounds when played by Thelonious Monk on his tribute to Duke Ellington or by the eminent Kenny Drew. Take away the bio- and discographic details and all musicological mumbo jumbo and the music will speak for itself, always deeply touching and emotionally sublime, perfectly suited for a Sunday at the riverside - or any other weekday or location for that matter.

A fantastic album as a leader from Sonny Red - a saxophonist who never got much chance to record under his own name, but always gave us something special when he did! Sonny recorded famously with Donald Byrd and Curtis Fuller in the 60s - but here, he's in an even hipper 70s mode of his own - a bit modal, a bit spiritual - in ways that make the whole album feel like some of the best 70s efforts on the Black Jazz label, with a righteous quality we might never have expected in Red a decade before! Sonny blows tenor, alto, and flute - all of them with a sharp, soulful edge - and he works here in a fantastic quartet that includes Cedar Walton on piano, whose own shadings give the record a lot of depth - plus the great Billy Higgins on drums, and Herbie Lewis on bass.

Released to raise money for victims of the Kobe, Japan, earthquake, this Amon Düül II disc from 1996, like the very similar Eternal Flashback, is actually material from 1969 to 1971 reworked through the wonders of plunderphonics by members of the group into one seamless, 65-minute-long space rock epic. It's not quite as radical as the John Oswald remix of the Grateful Dead's "Darkstar" on Grayfolded or the Can remix album Sacrilege, though it's still a quite fascinating bit of trickery, as bits of tracks from the first two albums, Phallus Dei and Yeti, are blended with previously unreleased material. The rhythms are often looped to retain the essence of the original album, but drawn out into long, hypnotic passages with oozes of guitar floating around them, while most of the vocal sections have been completely excised out, leaving this a complete instrumental workout…

Bird lives! This graffiti appeared around New York in the wake of Charlie "Bird" Parker's death on March 12, 1955 at th age of 34- and it still holds true today. The alto-sax-giant, one of the originators of Bebop, invented a method of improvising which Jazz musicians still use today. His fluent style, the ornithological sound of his alto, and the many Bop-standards h wrote from "Moose The Mooche" via "Scrapple From the Apple" or "Relaxin at Camarillo" to "Now's the Time" - made hir an icon of modern Jazz. This 10 CD-box-set documents the musical life of "Bird" through his original albums, including man rarities and contemporaries like Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Young, or Thelonious Monk.

After Robert's successful debut "Harmonic Ascendant" in 1979, the follow-up "Floating Music" appeared in 1980. An album full of surprises. Here you can hear sounds from self-built synthesizers, or the classic electronic sounds of 1980, as you know them from Klaus Schulze. An exciting album with a deep atmosphere that carries you into bizarre dreamscapes. Occasional weird sounds dissolve into Schroeder-typical sequencer runs, sometimes you think you're walking alone in the dark and see lantern lights streaking past you again and again. Wonderful for dreaming. Floating Music is one of his best albums!

85 years ago on January 6, 1939, a German-Jewish immigrant and passionate Jazz fan named Alfred Lion produced his first recording session in New York City founding what would go on to become the most iconic and longest-running Jazz label in the world. For 85 years Blue Note Records has represented The Finest In Jazz, tracing the entire history of the music from Hot Jazz, Boogie Woogie, and Swing, through Bebop, Hard Bop, Post-Bop, Soul Jazz, Avant-Garde, and Fusion, and — after being relaunched by Bruce Lundvall in 1984 — has remained the leading label dedicated to documenting today’s vibrant and creatively thriving Jazz scene under the leadership of current President Don Was, who took the helm in 2012.This collection, curated & selected by Don Was, uniquely represents its legendary catalog spanning the entire history of the music, with the pillars of Jazz history such as Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Ornette Coleman, Robert Glasper, Gregory Porter, Norah Jones and many others. 6 tracks out of 10 on CD1 are the latest remasters by Kevin Gray, made for Blue Note’s signature Tone Poet & Classic Vinyl series — available here for the first time in CD format. Presented in a 2-CD jewel with obi-strip, with an introduction by Don Was and a (translated) note about the history of the label by Mitsutaka Nagira, CD1 celebrates some of the most iconic Blue Note legends, while CD2 is representative of the current roster of Blue Note artists shaping the future of jazz.

Harpsichord star Mahan Esfahani approaches one of the greatest masterpieces of the Baroque repertoire with fresh eyes: Bach’s incomparable Goldberg Variations, which he presents in a unique virtuosic way.

In spite of the French title, and the conductor known for his interest in period performance, this is not the French Orphee et Eurydice of 1774; it is a different 'period version', the period in question being not Gluck's but that of Berlioz (or, as we shall see, nearly so). In 1859, Berlioz, always a passionate admirer of Gluck, prepared a version of the opera for the contralto Pauline Viardot. The alto version of the opera was of course the original Italian one, of 1762, for a castrato, but Berlioz wanted to incorporate some of the changes Gluck had made in 1774 and to use a French text. His compromise version has served as the basis for most revivals of the opera, in whatever language, from then until relatively recent times, though its four-act structure has rarely been followed.