After a relatively quick turnaround, German metal masters Rammstein added another highlight to their discography with eighth album Zeit. Like many other artists around the world, a postponed tour during the COVID-19 pandemic forced the band back to the studio to funnel their creative juices into a new album, erasing any fears that it'd be another decade before hearing a follow-up to 2019's Untitled. Much like that catalog triumph, Zeit is yet another step forward in artistic growth and maturity; it might even be Rammstein's most thoughtful and poignant record to date. Yes, even with a song titled "Dicke Titten" ("Big Tits"). The title track is a towering accomplishment of power and restraint, an unexpected meditation on time and aging that finds hulking frontman Till Lindemann contemplating mortality against a swelling backdrop of angst and drama provided by guitarists Paul Landers and Richard Z. Kruspe, bassist Oliver Riedel, drummer Christoph Schneider, and keyboardist Flake Lorenz.

This attractive mixed programme of Telemann’s works featuring flute or recorder has been designed by Ashley Solomon to celebrate Florilegium’s 25th anniversary. The triple concerto for flute, oboe d’amore and viola d’amore in E major stands out as one of the composer’s most beguiling masterpieces: the limpid opening Andante sounds like a serene evocation of sunrise that anticipates the mature Haydn by several decades; the soloists Solomon, Alexandra Bellamy and Bojan Čičić play with elegant finesse, and also conjure up refined melancholy in an intimately conversational Siciliana. The double concerto for recorder and viola da gamba in A minor is a charming example of Telemann’s taste for synthesising French and Italian musical styles with elements of Polish folk music; Florilegium’s civilised elegance in the French-style Grave, gently Italianate sway in the Allegro, and Solomon’s duet with gambist Reiko Ichise in the Dolce has pastoral sensitivity. At the heart of the programme is Ihr Völker hört, a cantata for solo voice and obbligato instrument that was published in the first instalment of the series Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst. Clare Wilkinson’s softly convivial and articulate singing communicates the cheerful Epiphany text.

'When all is said and done, Kuijken and Hyperion have given us perhaps the most fully satisfying recording yet of the work—one not likely to be challenged for some time'(American Record Guide)

The US composer Stanley Grill was strongly influenced in his writing by his passion for music of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. He already has a long-standing collaboration with the original sound ensemble Pandolfis Consort, and many of his works have been dedicated to the orchestra founded by violist Elzbieta Sajka-Bachler; the Pandolfis Consort's album "Und das Lied bleibt schön" now presents several works by the composer, who was born in New York in 1954. In alternating instrumentation with soprano Lisa Rombach and countertenor Nicholas Spanos, songs and song cycles based on poems mainly by R. M. Rilke, but also Heinrich Heine, Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger and Rose Ausländer are interpreted. In addition to these vocal works, there are also three songs without words for two violas, violoncello and theorbo on this recording.

Superb Bayreuth performance in starkly effective staging, despite a mediocre video transfer. Hofmann is an ideal hero, Armstrong a touching if overparted Elsa, and Roar and Connell sturdy villains. (BBB Music Magazine)

It's the late Vier ernste Gesänge, Op. 121, that get the big print on the cover of this release by the awe-inspiring baritone Matthias Goerne, but actually the music on the album falls into a neat early-middle-late classification scheme. The group of middle-period settings of poetry by Heinrich Heine doesn't even get graphics on the cover, but these are fascinating. Brahms wrote a lot of songs, but you couldn't do better than the selection and performances here for a cornerstone collection item. Beyond the sheer beauty of Goerne's voice is an ability to shift gears to match how Brahms' style evolved. If you want to hear his real slashing, operatic high notes, check out the Lieder und Gesänge, Op. 32, settings of poems by the minor poets Georg Friedrich Daumer and Karl August Graf von Platen. These rather overwrought texts add up to a kind of slimmed-down Winterreise, and they catch the spirit of the still-young Brahms with his strong passions, elegantly controlled. The Heine settings, which come from several different sets of lieder, are not that often heard and are in some ways the most compelling of the group here.

The LPO Live label already boasts one Eighth – Tennstedt, live in the same venue in 1991 – worthy of a place at the summit of the Eighth’s discography. Now it has a second.

This DAF overview from Mute's Grey Area pulls from Alles Ist Gut, Gold und Liebe, and Für Immer, the three Conny Planck-produced albums Robert Görl and Gabi Delgado released on Virgin during 1981 and 1982. It's even-handed in its selections, with six tracks off Gold und Liebe and seven each from the other two. Virtually all the highlights are here, and almost all of them dish out the impossibly clenched, bruising rhythms and barked vocals DAF perfected during this phase. The slower, sleazier, and even more sinister material ("Im Dschungel der Liebe," "Prinzessin") is also well represented. Naturally, this is the best dose of early electronic body music short of Mute's fine 1998 album reissues.

The next-to-last volume in the CPO complete recording of Johann Kuhnau’s cantatas once again presents outstanding examples of German Lutheran church music. "They reinforce the positive impression created by the previous volumes. The singers very much know their way around Kuhnau, and this knowledge is rendered audible. The instrumental parts are perfectly executed" (musicweb international of Vol. 6).

Wolfgang Carl Briegel placed these very consoling words at the center of the dedication that he formulated in 1671 for his Zwölff madrigalische Trost-Gesänge for five or six voices together with basso continuo. After Briegel had served without interruption over two decades at Gotha’s ducal court, he resigned from his post as court music director and solemnly bade farewell to his employer, the local lord Ernst I, Duke of Saxe-Gotha, with the publication of these twelve songs of lament.

The operetta Die Fledermaus is Johann Strauss' most brilliant and best-known stage work. It's a glittering comedy packed with Viennese music that has become a firm favourite in opera houses all over the world. A top international cast really have a ball in this highly-acclaimed 1984 New Year's Eve performance from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in which Placido Domingo makes a very stylish British conducting debut. Kiri Te Kanawa stars with her celebrated performance as Rosalinde, and the charismatic Austrian baritone Hermann Prey is Eisenstein, one of his trademark roles. The cast also includes Benjamin Luxon as Dr Falke and Hildegarde Heichele as Adele.