This was Cheap Trick's comeback album after a commercially fallow period, and deservedly so. The songs (not all penned solely by the band, which some hardcore fans objected to) are almost uniformly smart, hooky pop rockers in the best Trick tradition.

„Surely, Cheap Trick didn’t intend for the title of Busted, their 1990 sequel to their surprise 1988 commercial comeback Lap of Luxury, to be as prophetic as that of its predecessor, but this vacant, radio-ready rocker finds the group at an unquestionable nadir. It’s not just the sound – although the shimmering skyscraper production admittedly does the group no favors, neutering Roy Wood’s “Rock N Roll Tonight,” turning its swing into a stiff martial march – it’s the paucity of material that is so dispiriting, the group either turning in pastiches of their trademarks or surrendering completely to the whims of studio hacks, whose tunefulness eclipses that of Nielsen and Zander, this time around.

Although Cheap Trick's fourth studio album, „Dream Police“, was ready for release at the beginning of 1979, it was delayed for nearly a year due to the surprise success of their hit single "I Want You To Want Me" and album „At Budokan“. When it did finally come out in September, it became the band's biggest studio album, peaking at #6 on the charts and going platinum.

„The career choices of Rockford, IL's most famous quartet are always perversely peculiar: After a strong return to straight power pop for Standing on the Edge, Cheap Trick promoted Standing's engineer Tony Platt (AC/DC, Patto) to producer and inauspiciously squeezed out the Doctor. Overbearing keyboards trample through decent ideas ('Take Me to the Top,' sole single 'It's Only Love') and careen into bizarre throwaways ('Man-U-Lip-U-Lator,' the Kiss-referencing 'Doctor'), resulting in the shrill nadir of bad '80s radio or lost Rundgren records.

"The Golden Violin – Music of the 20s" is Daniel Röhn's tribute to one of the most prolific cultural eras of recent history. Daniel Röhn brings the jerky flickering images and the high spirited, extravagant hurly-burly to musical life with romantic sounds from Rachmaninoff through the evergreens of Kurt Weill to the jazzy echoes of Gershwin.

Danish composer Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen (1932–2016) wrote string quartets all his life. Fourteen in all; the first three dating from 1959, the last ones from 2013. Launching its complete cycle of Gudmundsen-Holmgreen’s string quartets, the Nordic String Quartet here presents the first six quartets: Honesty meets schoolboy pranks, obstinacy meets doubt, yes meets no – Gudmundsen-Holmgreen’s string quartets are full of such clashes. We start at one point and end at a totally different one. Never fusty, often entertaining, always adamant.

The career of Polish composer Alexandre Tansman flourished in Paris after the First World War, though its only in recent years that it has begun to be explored in depth on disc. A refined but spiritually engaged neo-Classicism remained a constant feature of his musicmaking in Europe and in his temporary American exile, whether in the beautifully evocative travelogue Visit to Israel or in the clarity of the Interludes and Caprices.

Double premiere – first recording and first performance: Franz Liszt never finished his mature opera Sardanapalo. Now 170 years old, the first act refracts the world of mid 19th-century opera through the prism of Liszt’s unmistakable voice. Kirill Karabits directs Liszt’s own orchestra in Weimar, where the music was composed, in a programme of burning, Byronic romanticism.

Bach and Gabrielli: the focus of this recording is an unusual musical match involving the famous 6 Suites for violoncello solo by Johann Sebastian Bach and the little-known 7 Ricercari for violoncello solo (1689) by Domenico Gabrielli of Bologna, the first example of a work for unaccompanied cello in history, and thus the only precedent and possible model for the Bach masterpiece. In what ways are the two series of compositions linked? Cellist Mauro Valli is convinced that there is a connection between the two for a number of reasons, including the preponderant correspondence of the keys.

„Standing on the Edge's only highlight comes from the silvery-sounding "Tonight It's You," which peaked just outside the Top 40 at number 44 in the fall of 1985. Like 1983's Next Position Please, Standing on the Edge finds the band without any pizzazz or rock & roll exuberance. The tracks are dull and colorless, with only the single sporting any signs of enthusiasm from any of the band's members. Sleepers like "This Time Around," "How About You," and the ridiculous "Wild Wild Women" are subpar considering what Cheap Trick's capabilities are.

Strangely enough, Cheap Trick's big breakthrough, 1979's „At Budokan“, was almost never released stateside. The band had become superstars in Japan on the strength of their first three studio albums, and when they toured the country in '78, several of their shows were taped for a Japan-only live release. When the resulting album began racking up impressive sales in the U.S. as an expensive import, Epic wisely released it domestically, where it peaked at #4 on the Billboard charts and spawned the top ten hit single "I Want You To Want Me."

Cheap Trick's self-titled debut is a '70s rock masterpiece. Although it doesn't contain many renowned songs, it does have superbly underrated compositions and electric performances, and a dark undercurrent is encountered throughout. The melodic hard rock has pop leanings at times, but the album was wisely recorded raw (by Aerosmith producer Jack Douglas), and such disturbing topics as pedophilia, serial murderers, suicide and prostitution are touched upon.

„Though Cheap Trick's second album, In Color, draws from the same stockpile of Midwestern barroom favorites as their debut album, it was produced by Tom Werman, who had the band strip away their raw attack and replace it with a shiny, radio-ready sound. Consequently, In Color doesn't have the visceral attack of its predecessor, but it still has the same sensibility and a similar set of spectacular songs.