Fourth production of the ALEA label, second volume of Pierre de Bethmann’s ESSAIS, two years and nearly sixty concerts after the first volume was released in 2015. With Sylvain Romano on the double bass and Tony Rabeson on the drums, the trio pursues its journey, gleaning ideas from every new shared experience, continuing its exploration of a variety of musical traditions, subjecting each member’s choices to different arrangements, and above all to the spirit of the moment. The same spirit which led the three musicians back to the Recall Studio in June 2017 to record their new album, in a setup drawing each time closer to live conditions, in an exceptional setting capable of suspending time and capturing the raw energy of musicians only too eager to play.

Duke Jupiter's 5th album (1982) was the band's most polished rock 'n roll effort to date and could have produced a number of hit singles. Radio embraced This is Japan and I'm Available, but Coast to Coast failed to promote the album, and it quickly became buried under the Ds in the record bins.

After two mildly successful, vaguely new-wave albums, Bay Area bar band Huey Lewis and the News (several of whose members had backed Elvis Costello on MY AIM IS TRUE) hooked up with mega-selling producer Mike Chapman and released 1983's SPORTS. The album dominated both AM and FM radio throughout 1984, aligning it with THRILLER, PURPLE RAIN, SHE'S SO UNUSUAL, and Madonna's early singles as definitive pop music of its era. SPORTS is genial frat-boy rock at its finest. Singles 'The Heart of Rock and Roll,' 'Heart and Soul,' 'I Want a New Drug,' and 'If This is It' comprise half of the album, and these songs have stood up to repeated listens. Hearing SPORTS today, the album still sounds surprisingly fresh, all the more remarkable when one considers how poorly other hits of the day have fared.

Although Diamond has continued to sell healthy quantities of his albums and to fill arenas for his concerts, Heartlight and its title song, which was a Top Ten hit, were his last record releases as what might be called "a front'line artist," one who makes contemporary music for a contemporary audience and sells a million copies on release. It's a typical album for Diamond at this point, full of romantic sentiments rendered in highly produced settings and employing the cream of L.A. studio musicians, but lacking the excitement of his early work and the ambition of his middle period.

This is probably the most personal album that Simone issued during her stay on Philips in the mid-'60s. On most of her studio sessions, she worked with orchestration that either enhanced her vocals tastefully or smothered her, and she tackled an astonishingly wide range of material that, while admirably eclectic, made for uneven listening.

This is a prime example of an informal studio jam session in the critical period when John Coltrane was perfecting his 'sheets of sound' approach. The emerging tenor star is the focal point in a quintet filled with serendipitous connections. Kenny Burrell, Tommy Flanagan, and Paul Chambers were at the forefront of an emerging generation of young Detroit modernists; Burrell, Coltrane, and Flanagan had proved their compatibility a year earlier on The Cats (OJC-079); and Jimmy Cobb was poised to become a regular partner of Coltrane and Chambers in the Miles Davis sextet. The tenor/guitar duet 'Why Was I Born?' is a unique gem in an album filled with assured and eloquent blowing.

Coltrane does not do the old Dexter Gordon/Leo Parker duet number, "Settin' the Pace," in this set. The overall title merely refers to his preeminence in the jazz world at the time the recording was released in the early Sixties. Recorded in 1958, this session comes from a time when Trane had already played in the Miles Davis quintet and the Thelonious Monk quartet, and was frequenting Rudy Van Gelder's New Jersey studio in recording situations backed by the Red Garland trio. This threesome–Garland, Paul Chambers, and Arthur Taylor–was a Prestige entity on its own, but had already released such albums with Coltrane as Traneing In and Soultrane.

The pianist Martin Helmchen has now joined Alpha for several recordings. Acknowledged as one of the leading pianists of his generation, an eminent interpreter of the German repertoire, Helmchen will explore various periods and composers (including Messiaen!), but Beethoven will have a preponderant place in his forthcoming recording projects. Before the complete concertos, planned for 2020, he tackles the Diabelli Variations, ‘a climax in the life of a pianist’.

The Järvi family is a pillar of Estonian musical life. Paavo is now director of the Pärnu Festival, held in August each year, which brings together the finest Estonian musicians, joined by the cream of European orchestras: members of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Orchestre de Paris etc. Paavo Järvi (recently appointed music director of one of the world’s leading formations, the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich) frequents all these instrumentalists regularly, and now works alongside them, ‘unpretentiously, in a warm, collegial manner’ for a series of highly convivial concerts on the shores of the Baltic: ‘magical and incredibly appealing’, says Die Welt.

The stunning new album from Howard Griffiths and the Munich Chamber Orchestra. Compositions by Franz Danzi, Mozart's contemporary, acclaimed composer of early classical music. The Cello Concerto in E minor is performed by young French cello virtuoso Aurélien Pascal. The Paris musician, born in 1994, began his musical education at the Paris Conservatory and took masterclasses with János Starker.

Alpha continues its collaboration with the Festival d’Aix en-Provence and its Academy, which will celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2018. We invite you to discover artists of great talent who take us on a trip to Auvergne, Sicily, Armenia and Azerbaijan thanks to Luciano Berio’s Folk Songs, to Andalusia with Falla’s Psyché on a poem of Georges-Jean Aubry, and to the world of Jules Renard with Ravel’s Histoires naturelles.

Decca has been granted exclusive worldwide rights to make the first recording of Chant Funèbre, the piece everyone believed lost forever.

The great Czech conductor and his beloved orchestra perform a definitive Má vlast.

The elegant, but impassioned musicianship of Augustin Hadelich evokes the violinists of the ‘golden age’ of the early and mid-20th century. Winner in 2015 of the inaugural Warner Music Prize, Hadelich now releases his first recording for Warner Classics: Paganini’s 24 Caprices for solo violin. These works of proverbial virtuosity were conceived by the flamboyant Nicolò Paganini to test and showcase every aspect of a violinist’s skills. As Gramophone has written, Hadelich “meets and surmounts all obstacles, yet it's not technical wizardry that most impresses but his musicianship.”

This is the album Handel lovers have been waiting for: a handpicked selection of Handel opera arias that Franco Fagioli, one of the most outstanding countertenors in our days has chosen himself.