Recorded in October of 1968, Any Day Now marks Joan Baez's first foray into the recording studios of Nashville, armed with an entire program of Bob Dylan's material and backed by a stellar cast of Music City's finest session players.

The album represented a further shift from the strictly traditional folk music with which Baez had begun her career in that, for the first time, she included electric backup in the form of Bruce Langhorne's electric guitar (which was nonetheless subtle).

Like most live albums, this two-record set was a profit-taking release on which the artist re-presented many of her old songs for a new acceptance now that she had a larger pop audience.

Judy Collins found herself in the Top 40 with her adaptation of "Amazing Grace."

With a cast of instrumental all-stars, folk vocalist Judy Collins creates a mini-masterwork on "Who Knows Where the Times Goes".

On April 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th 2018 the legendary Hans Theessink Birthday Bash concerts took place at the Metropol in Vienna. Fans and musical friends came from all over Europe and North America to celebrate Hans’ 70th birthday. The atmosphere was splendid and the performers took us on a marvellous musical journey. The 70 Birthday Bash album is a unique document full of great moments and unusual sessions. Hans Theessink is a great singer, songwriter and a virtuoso guitarist whose great love for American roots music has, over the years, given us some cracking album’s full of blues, rock ‘n roll and country-folk music.

Completed in 1936, two years after the hugely popular Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Rachmaninov’s Third Symphony was considered by the composer to be one of his finest works. Both this and the Symphonic Dances, his last work, offer a summation of his late style in blending intense rhythmic energy with rich romanticism. Leonard Slatkin and the DSO’s recording of the Second Symphony (8.572458) was hailed by BBC Music Magazine as “a performance warmed by musicians who clearly love this symphony”.

The flourishing genre of the comic opera had its roots in eighteenth-century Italian opera buffa, whose irrepressible brio was soon taken up outside the country's borders. In France it produced opéra comique and operetta, and in German-speaking countries Spieloper and Viennese operetta. Some of the world's most popular comic opera overtures, filled with gorgeous tunes, brilliant orchestration and race-to-the-finish endings, are presented here. They include staples of the concert repertoire such as Hérold's dramatic Zampa, the textual delicacy of Wolf-Ferrari's Il segreto di Susanna and the vivid colour of Lortzing's Zar und Zimmermann.

The success of Bizet’s opera Carmen has overshadowed the rest of his output, but this fascinating orchestral programme, which includes a number of seldom performed works, reveals more of his talent for writing colourful, atmospheric and melodic music. The Overture in A was Bizet’s first orchestral work and unperformed in his lifetime, while the Marche funèbre was originally the prelude to an opera about love and vengeance, now lost. The dramatic overture Patrie captures the mood following the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–71, while the Petite suite is a set of orchestrations of movements from Jeux d’enfants (Children’s Games). Conceived in Italy as a symphony, after Bizet had won the Prix de Rome, Roma occupied the composer for 11 years before the final version heard here.

Bernard Lagacé has long been a North American leader in the revival of the classical organ. His main focus being on music from the Baroque period of which he is a known specialist, he possesses a broad repertory from most musical periods.

This wide-ranging programme of English music for strings includes the world première recording of Howard Goodall’s moving And the Bridge is Love, in which Julian Lloyd Webber plays cello, and of William Lloyd Webber’s The Moon, only performed for the first time in 2014. There are also established classics such as Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro, Op. 47, as well as novelties in the case of the never-before-recorded arrangements by Elgar’s friend and biographer W.H. Reed of the two Chansons.

Eddie Higgins and his trio (which includes Sean Smith on bass and Joe Ascione on drums) have complied a an album of jazz favorites including Cole Porter's "Begin The Benguine" and Jacob Gade's "Jalousie."

Tchaikovsky has long maintained his position as among the most popular of all composers, his unequalled gift for melody and colourful orchestration given added depth through a rich Russian soulfulness. The Second Piano Concerto has always lived under the shadow of the famous First but, played here in the composer's original version, is full of life-enhancing character and emotion. Both this and the Concert Fantasia also contain beautiful chamber-music sections allowing unique interaction between soloist and orchestra.

Ravel orchestrated his piano pieces Alborada del gracioso and Pavane pour une infante défunte to great effect; the former gains in suggestive colour, and the latter evokes nostalgic pathos. Another orchestrated work is the Menuet antique, which is redolent of old French dance forms. Rapsodie espagnole, Ravel’s first major orchestral work, shimmers with expectancy and bursts into Spanish dance rhythms, themes he pursued in Pièce en forme de habanera. His earliest orchestral work, the ‘fairy overture’ Shéhérazade, is all that remains of a planned opera based on The Thousand and One Nights. The famous Boléro, an ‘orchestrated crescendo’ of undimmed power, has proved one of the most popular works in all classical music.

Immensely influential, the remarkable Symphonie fantastique was composed while Hector Berlioz was suffering an intense and unreciprocated passion for the Irish actress Harriet Smithson. Its autobiographical tale describes a young musician’s opium-poisoned nightmares of jealous despair and fatal justice following the murder of his beloved. Berlioz wrote a second movement cornet solo into a subsequent revision of the score, here included as an optional extra. He wed his sweetheart actress but, recuperating in Nice, wrote Le corsaire after the final breakup of their marriage.