A phenomenal Blues album by the late great Albert King. It is a true classic from the exceptional material he recorded on the Stax label.

The "Great" C major Symphony was the last symphony that Schubert composed – a “Finished” to follow his "Unfinished", the first two movements of which he had just completed before discontinuing work on it (for reasons unknown). Schubert began this composition in August 1824, or possibly even as late as March 1825. Most of the work on it took place in the summer of 1825, during the longest journey of his life.

Lena Hall, a singular artist who authentically and explosively brings the worlds of Rock and Broadway together, is releasing a series of EPs every month in 2018. The Obsessed series features stripped-down vocal-intensive covers of one artist/band with whom Lena is "obsessed." Subscribe on YouTube for new videos weekly. Lena Hall is a Tony Award winner and Grammy nominee, recently portraying the dual starring roles of Hedwig and Yitzhak in Hedwig and the Angry Inch in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Following her Tony-winning Broadway run, she toured North America with Josh Groban on his Stages tour. She originated the role of Nicola in the Tony-winning musical Kinky Boots, and can be seen on HBO’s Girls, Amazon Prime’s Good Girls Revolt, and heard voicing the fan-favorite role of “Countess Coloratura” on My Little Pony. In 2018, Lena will be appearing opposite Jennifer Connelly in TNT’s science fiction epic Snowpiercer.

They are sung pieces, in verse and vernacular language, known in that period as human tones (or just tones) when they were profane, and divine tones when they were religious. Those composed in the first half of the 17th century were mostly polyphonic, which reveals that, in this period, polyphony was still thought to be the highest and most prestigious. The Book of Human Tones, preserved at present at the National Library of Spain under the signature M 1262, constitutes, with its 222 works, a privileged sample of all the aspects.

Almost every pianist, it seems, wants to record Ravel, but virtually all of them have overlooked a treasure trove of music for solo piano: the composer’s short score for Daphnis et Chloé. Some parts of it are unplayable by a single pair of hands, but with judicious arrangement this working draft can be mined for diamonds. Only a handful of musicians have made their own suites for solo piano; here the Lithuanian pianist Indre Petrauskaite, carefully observing Ravel’s original textures, has produced something new: a 40-minute concert suite of unsuspected Ravel for solo piano that also respects the dramatic outline of the original ballet.

This is the first recording of the complete works for violin and piano by the Russian composer Vissarion Shebalin (190263). He was a close friend and colleague of Shostakovich, who said of him: 'Shebalin was an outstanding man. His kindness, honesty and absolute adherence to principle always amazed me. His enormous talent and great mastery immediately earned him burning love and authority with friends and musical community'. Like Shostakovich, Shebalin was condemned at the infamous 1948 composers' congress in Moscow and kicked out of his job at the Moscow Conservatoire.

To the extent that he is remembered at all, the Dresden-born August Alexander Klengel (1783–1852) retains a toe-hold in music history thanks to a monumental set of 48 canon and fugues. But Klengel was an important early-Romantic composer and celebrated piano virtuoso, with a reputation that stretched from St Petersburg to London.

The American composer George Antheil (190059) enjoyed the sobriquet the Bad Boy of Music thanks to the mechanistic scores of his early career. This anthology of piano music from the last twenty years of his life reveals a muse that could also be affectionate, flirtatious and capricious but the Bad Boy occasionally re-emerged, as in the diabolical mischief of the wild, peppery, Prokofievan toccatas also recorded here. Ms. Judy Pang is increasingly on demand as an inventive solo and chamber musician with eclectic repertoire.

Robert Schumann rated the string quartet genre very highly, describing it as ‘noble’ and considering it to be one of the most revealing in terms of compositional craftsmanship. Possibly it was the high regard in which he held the genre that for so long stopped him from actually completing a quartet of his own – although he had first seriously considered writing one in 1828, it took almost 15 years before he was ready to fully commit to the idea. Once he had done so, there was no returning: during some hectic summer weeks in 1842, a year which is often called ‘Schumann's chamber music year’, he completed the three string quartets of his Op. 41, presenting them to his wife Clara on her 23rd birthday in September. In her diary she wrote ‘… they delighted me to the utmost. Everything in them is new, clear, expertly worked out and always idiomatic.’

Considered to be one of the great Nordic symphonies of its time, Wilhelm Stenhammar's Symphony No. 2 in G minor was a long time in the making. Stenhammar the conductor and pianist was a leading figure in the musical life of Sweden and Scandinavia, but in his role as composer he struggled with self-doubt, feeling that his knowledge of musical theory was insufficient. In 1910 he decided to address this perceived shortcoming, and began an intensive study of counterpoint which included setting himself several thousand assignments over the following decade. At the same time, between 1911 and 1915, Stenhammar composed his G minor symphony, and against this background it is hardly surprising that it displays his preoccupation with counterpoint, its final movement a grandiose double fugue.

The Goldberg Variations, or – to use the original title – ‘Aria with diverse variations’ counts as a milestone in Western music history. With good reason: the huge work and its highly systematic structure demonstrate with utmost clarity Bach’s immense skill as a composer. Books and treatises have been written to analyse how it is constructed, amazing both musicologists and mathematicians. But as the Danish accordionist Andreas Borregaard writes in his own liner notes to this disc: ‘the Goldberg Variations are so much more than a gigantic, sounding sudoku. Each variation is an expressive universe unto itself, and the music passes through almost every corner of the human spectrum of emotions.’

In opera, specific voice types are often associated with certain types of characters. Numerous and diverse associations exist also for the bass voice, who can be a father, a villain, an elderly man, a religious figure, a comic character- or, indeed, a combination of the above. One recurring association for this voice type, however, deserves particular attention: that with evil, wicked, even diabolical characters. It is on that immensely fascinating association that this collection of arias is focused. The nineteen selections- composed by Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Wagner, Meyerbeer, Berlioz, Gounod, Offenbach, Verdi, Boito, Mussorgsky, Stravinsky and Getty- take us on a journey through a period spanning some two hundred years, exploring how composers working in diverse national and institutional contexts and writing in an array of styles and genres exploited the bass voice to engage with the depiction of such characters.

Called ‘the God of the Indian violin’, Lakshminarayana Subramaniam has collaborated with leading representatives of Indian and Western classical traditions, from Ravi Shankar to Yehudi Menuhin. But with a strong belief in music as a universal language he is also a leading figure in fusion music, collaborating with musicians of all genres and nationalities, from Stephane Grappelli or George Harrison to Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock.

The Waltzes are perhaps Chopin's lighter works, even though they remain distant from the world of dance-music written for the ball room. Just as his mazurkas, Chopin’s waltzes were not conceived for dancing. Chopin’s first waltz dates to 1824, when he was fourteen; the last he wrote was the last piece for solo piano he published, in 1847.

The Classics You Know is a brand-new collection of recordings performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Whether you are a fan of classical music or not, we guarantee that when you hear this music you will not be able to stop yourself from humming along!