You'd get differing answers to the question of whether John Adams is America's greatest living composer, but he's the one to whom the country turned in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The demand for new work from him has only increased since he achieved senior citizen status. Fortunately, he's been able to meet that demand with distinctive large-scale works. Consider 2016's Scheherazade.2, recorded here by the violinist who premiered the work, Leila Josefowicz, with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra under David Robertson.

This 2017 concert, on the market by the end of the second week in January, marked the first Vienna Philharmonic New Year's Concert led by the sensational Venezuelan-American conductor Gustavo Dudamel. Those hoping, or fearing, that he would shake up the repertory of this Vienna institution, are given little material to work with; the program follows the time-honored pattern, with the Strauss family in the foremost position and The Beautiful Blue Danube in its proper place in the encores.

Petrenko s Tchaikovsky promises to be one of the most important orchestral releases of 2017. Universal praise from reviewers for the first volume of Symphonies 1, 2 and 5 bodes well for this eagerly-awaited release: Gramophone gave Volume One an Editor s choice and it reigned as a top 10 UK Classical chart title for 7 weeks in 2016.

George Enescu was an extraordinarily gifted and well-rounded musician: a virtuoso violinist, a world-class conductor, an outstanding pianist, cellist, and organist – even a fine baritone. He was hugely admired by many great musicians of his time, including the cellist and conductor Pablo Casals who described him as ‘the greatest musical phenomenon since Mozart’.

The greatest virtue of Bernard Haitink's live recording of Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 7 in E major with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is its stunning clarity, a characteristic noted in several of the conductor's other concert recordings, but one which is of paramount significance in this captivating CD. Bruckner's symphonic music has long been interpreted as architectural in form, and conductors have often let small details of articulation, dynamics, and tone color fall by the wayside while concentrating on the larger matters of structure and pacing.

Sony in Germany are to issue Falco 60, a new best of/rarities collection across a number of formats, to celebrate what would have been the 60th birthday of Austrian singer-songwriter Falco, who scored a memorable transatlantic number one back in 1985 with Rock Me Amadeus.