1994 Grammy winner for Best World Music Album. American composer, musicologist and guitar legend Ry Cooder teams with North Indian musician Vishwa Mohan Bhatt to create an exquisite musical realm, with both musicians playing exceptional slide guitar. Their collaboration evokes musical elements from many cultures and styles. Percussion by Sukhvindar Singh on tabla and Cooder's 14-year-old son Joachim on dumbek. The album is included in Tom Moon's 2008 book 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die.

The new edition moves from New York classics by Liquid Liquid and Bill Laswell's Material to early Detroit machine music, Belgian New Beat and a healthy dose of UK originals from Pigbag, Quando Quango and more on seminal labels like Y and Factory. Watch out too for rare gems from unexpected sources including Sisters Of Mercy side project The Sisterhood, '70s prog collective Isotope and free jazz legend Ornette Coleman.DISCO NOT DISCO is packaged in a deluxe digipak with full booklet featuring sleeve notes by Bill Brewster, author of 'Last Night A DJ Saved My Life', extensive track by track notes and rare photos.

Ernest and persuasive while it's spinning, the better qualities of this 2006 recording of Tchaikovsky's Piano Trio dissipate soon after the disc stops. With pianist Yefim Bronfman, violinist Gil Shaham, and cellist Truls Mørk as partners in the proceedings, the playing itself is first-class. Each is a highly regarded virtuoso, and collectively they form an agile but cogent chamber ensemble. Interpretively, their focus is on expressivity.

Originally released in 1982 by Arista in the U.K. and reissued on CD by the Dutch Disky imprint in 2001, Celebration serviceably culls some of the better moments from Simple Minds' first three albums: 1979's Life in a Day and Reel to Real Cacophony and 1980's Empires and Dance. Given the sadly neglected status of the band's early catalog – meaning anything that was released prior to 1982's breakthrough New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84) – through the early 2000s, it is doubly unfortunate that a compilation like this remained out of print for an extended period of time.

The father of Swedish music’ and ‘the Swedish Handel’ are two descriptions of Johan Helmich Roman (1694 – 1758), one of Sweden’s most important composers. Roman composed around twenty Assaggi (Assaggio has been translated as ‘sample’, ‘essay’, ‘study’ or ‘experiment’) and they range from multi-movement works to single movements, with some surviving as just fragments. They are beautifully written for the violin and reveal a startling musical imagination at work.

Nils Kugelmann likes telling stories. That much is clear from the titles of his compositions…from the way he talks when he introduces them at concerts…and – naturally – from the music itself. ‘For me, making the connection between music and stories, feelings and situations is so important,’ says the bassist/ composer/ bandleader, now based in Berlin. ‘At concerts I consciously talk to the audience and go into the background of each piece in some detail. It’s something I enjoy. I can hardly imagine presenting music on stage without having this kind of communication.’ Above all, however, the music which Nils Kugelmann plays and composes has real urgency, strong energy and hypnotic power. As an artist he has broken through in a way that no other double bassist of the under-30 generation in Germany has done, in particular his way of making his instrument the central feature of his music. Immediately after completing his master's degree in 2022, Kugelmann launched his debut album ‘Stormy Beauty’ on ACT. German media called him a ‘bass berserker’ and a ‘mega-talent.’ Awards, sold-out concerts duly followed. Kugelmann has a core trio, but beyond that he is free to play in the contexts and styles he likes – first and foremost in a duo and quartet with pianist and composer Shuteen Erdenebaatar.

The young Argentine cellist Sol Gabetta has emerged at the top of the heap with some speed in the 2010s. She merits the double greatest-hits album represented by this release, and it will be welcomed by listeners who haven't quite focused on her meteoric career. You get only one full-scale concerto, but it's a good one: Gabetta has a real way with Elgar, and the compilers did well to feature his music on most of disc one. You get the fresh interpretations of repertory recital and encore pieces that have really endeared Gabetta to ordinary concertgoers. Sample the marvelous Fauré Pavane, Op. 50, an excellent example of how with Gabetta, less is often more.

Sol Gabetta has established herself as one of the most promising cellists to emerge in the first decade of the 21st century, with a substantial international career as a soloist and with a growing number of recordings. While she has drawn most attention for her performances of the standard concerto and chamber music repertoire, she has also championed contemporary works by composers as diverse as Takemitsu, Ligeti, Gubaidulina, Rihm, and Vasks.

Mariani Klavier quartett returns with Vol 3 of their critically acclaimed Brahms & Gernsheim series for Audax Records, pairing Johannes Brahms' dramatic Piano Quartet in C Minor, Op 60, a masterpiece of rich textures and emotional depth, with the lush Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 41, by Friedrich Gernsheim-an exquisite, yet underappreciated gem of the Romantic repertoire. The ensemble's exceptional craftsmanship breathes new life into these pieces, drawing out the vibrant contrasts between Brahms' intense passion and Gernsheim's sweeping lyricism. A compelling exploration of two composers who shaped the late 19th-century chamber music landscape, this release offers a triumphant conclusion to the series.

Few people nowadays seriously believe Vivaldi wrote the same concerto five hundred times. But the view that there is little variety in Vivaldi's oeuvre is still widely held. Louis T. Vatoison, in the programme notes to this recording, has a strongly different perception: "a Vivaldi concerto must (…) be seen as an individual 'snapshot', whose instrumental layout or formal structure implicitly reveal at what period, and sometimes even for whom it was written". The music on this disc gives ample evidence for this view.

Together with its artistic director Julian Azkoul, the United Strings of Europe develop engaging programmes with the aims of finding threads between different works and epochs, musical cultures and backgrounds, of blending the familiar with the new and of encouraging people to listen to works in different ways and discover new repertoire.

A complete collection of Brahms’s work for trio, illuminating the span of his career in new, Italian-made recordings. Over the course of almost 40 years, the greater span of his career, Brahms composed five trios in different instrumentations. Whereas he wrote piano sonatas and later symphonies within specific periods of his life, Brahms always returned to songs and to chamber music. The piano is the central, unifying presence in the trios, and often the dynamic engine driving their material forward.

Violinist Arabella Steinbacher, the Luxembourg Philharmonic and conductor Gustavo Gimeno present violin concertos by Beethoven and Lentz. Beethoven's violin concerto may well be the most iconic contribution to its genre, and to Steinbacher, it is the most "sacred" and sublime in the repertoire, never ceasing to reveal new perspectives.

In this superb programme structured around major pieces composed in the last ten years of Mozart’s life, Anna Prohaska and Riccardo Minasi sweep away the image of the well-mannered figure that tradition has tended to impose. They paint a bracingly complex portrait of the Salzburger after his move to Vienna, subtly blending the maestro’s historical expertise with the vigour and freshness of Resonanz, here in electrifying form.

Greek mythology has profoundly shaped society, influencing cultural norms, traditions, and even giving rise to celebrated works like those of Claude Debussy, which redefined Western art music and revolutionized the flute’s role within it.