Hurt & The Merciless marks a musical culmination for The Heavy, a mesmerizing blend of their trademark rock’n’roll classicism and funk and soul grooves, with added sonic experimentation. Self-produced, the band's main aim when recording was to capture the powerful energy of their live show—that life-affirming spark of rock’n’roll when anything feels possible. The 12 track album features lead single "Since You Been Gone," with its lolloping groove, plus the spiky garage-rock anthem "What Happened To The Love?" and is their strongest batch of songs to date.

Karl Richter’s recordings of Bach’s orchestral and sacred music influenced an entire generation of musicians and listeners, presenting the conductor’s unique sound and style. When Richter recorded Bach’s works, he freed them from a ponderous tradition that had mired the music in romantic sounds and idiom. Richter lightened Bach’s music, and, with an orchestra of outstanding musicians, helped bring it toward the more modern interpretations that listeners have become familiar with today. This is still a bit far from the historically-informed performances that are pretty much the norm, but there is a unity and natural originality that comes through the music in these recordings.

As one of the most popular California pop/rock bands of the '70s, the Doobie Brothers evolved from a mellow, post-hippie boogie band to a slick, soul-inflected pop band by the end of the decade. Along the way, the group racked up a string of gold and platinum albums in the U.S., along with a number of radio hits like "Listen to the Music," "Black Water," and "China Grove." The roots of the Doobie Brothers lie in Pud, a short-lived California country-rock band in the vein of Moby Grape featuring guitarist/vocalist Tom Johnston and drummer John Hartman.

As it has wowed musicians for over a century, the magic of New York City fired the imagination of superstar pianist Lang Lang who is joined by a one-of-a-kind cast of collaborating artists for the creation of his new album, New York Rhapsody. From the haunting reveries of Gershwin and Copland to the in-the-moment intensity of songs made famous by Alicia Keys, Lou Reed and Don Henley, New York Rhapsody rediscovers the dazzle and the soul of America s most symbolic city as great artists have imagined them.

The Giulini set on DG, with Cappuccilli, Cotrubas and Domingo is exceptional: searching, humane, powerfully registered… It can also be said that neither Bonynge nor Sinopoli search out the score's prevailingly dark sonorities as surely as Giulini (in his insistence on the score's dark colours and his interest in its portrayal of primary human affections.

Drei Jahre nach seinem bis dato erfolgreichsten Album "La superbe" meldet sich Frankreichs prominentester Vertreter des Nouvelle Chanson mit "Vengeance" ("Rache") zurück. Bei wem er sich mit seinem siebten Album rächen will, lässt der Franzose offen. Fest steht: "Vengeance" enthält 14 Tracks, die in Paris und Biolays Lieblingsstudio, dem ICP in Brüssel, aufgenommen wurden.

Based in São Paulo, Metá Metá have played a key role in the city’s thriving experimental music scene, mixing samba and Afro-Brazilian candomblé with jazz and rock. Now they have added north African influences, inspired by visits to Morocco, in an album that constantly changes style and pace – often in the same song. Opener Três Amigos sets the mood, starting as an atmospheric piece with an Arabic edge and relaxed vocals by Juçara Marçal, before switching to a furious blitz of sound by saxophonist Thiago França and guitarist Kiko Dinucci, who played a key role in an extraordinary recent album from Elza Soares. Elsewhere, the songs vary from the cheerful and breezy Toque Certeiro (featuring scat vocals from Marçal that have the easy charm of Joyce Moreno) to passages that sound like an angry Brazilian post-punk thrash, influenced by their country’s political crisis.

'Testament' is Rachel Barton Pine's very personal homage to the music of J. S. Bach, on which she performs the composer's complete Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin in the acoustic of her hometown St. Pauls Church in Chicago, where she first heard and fell in love with Bach's music.

The recipient of the 2012 City of Leipzig Bach Medal, Masaaki Suzuki has earned an enviable reputation as an interpreter of the music of J. S. Bach as a reviewer in Intl Record Guide has put it: 'With Suzuki you can hear Bach's heart beat'. To a wide audience he is known as the director of Bach Collegium Japan, and the moving force behind the ensemble's acclaimed recordings of Bach's complete sacred cantatas. Perhaps less well known is that he began his career at the age of 12! playing the organ at church services in Kobe, where he was born. Suzuki has remained true to the organ throughout his life, and for BIS he has previously recorded Bach's German Organ Mass, as well as programs of Buxtehude and Sweelinck. He here appears on a disc combining some of Bach's best-loved works for the instrument, including the D minor Toccata and Fugue, the Partitas on O Gott, du frommer Gott, BWV 767, the Canonic Variations, BWV769, and the celebrated Prelude and Fugue in E minor, BWV548.