Matchless accounts of Brahms at his most lyrically reflective, plus a benedictory encore by Clara Schumann: this is another outstanding release from today’s pre-eminent violin and piano partnership.

Essential: a masterpiece of country-rock music
Neil Young’s 30+ career albums are as varied as any other artist, spanning psychedelic folk to folk-rock to hard rock to pre-grunge.

Written and recorded in 1973 shortly after the death of roadie Bruce Berry, Neil Young's second close associate to die of a heroin overdose in six months (the first was Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten),

For many, many years, On the Beach was Neil Young's great lost album. The LP didn't generate a lot of heat when it came out in 1974, and Young didn't release it on CD until 2003.

After the Buffalo Springfield imploded, Neil Young recorded his first, eponymous solo album, an elaborately overdubbed affair that cast him in the role of brooding singer-songwriter.

Camiel Boomsma: “Many of the pieces on this album I have been carrying with me for many years already. In choosing these works for the recording, I was very conscious of that fact. The longer you carry a piece with you, the more you see ‘who’ the piece is rather than what it is. Liszt’s music is like an unspoiled landscape. It’s raw, fragile, strong, uncontrolled, poetic and paradoxical. One of the very first works I discovered was Vallee d’Obermann. When I play this piece, I ask myself to open up to this and observe the story that unfolds.

Although the first violin virtuosos came mainly from Cremona, Brescia or Mantua, it was Venice that swiftly emerged as the principal centre for the development of instrumental music. Moreover, it was there that most collections of this music were printed all through the seventeenth century. It is curious to note that all these virtuosos obviously enjoyed sharing their success with their colleagues: for, alongside works for one or two violins and continuo, almost all the composer-violinists gathered together on this disc conceived sonate, canzone or sinfonie for ensembles of three or four violins. In addition, these compositions often make use of bichoral or echo effects.

Between 2003 and 2015, Ronald Brautigam recorded all of Beethoven’s music for solo piano – a huge undertaking resulting in a grand total of 15 highly acclaimed albums. Choosing to perform the works on the fortepiano, Brautigam began with a sonata cycle which caused one reviewer to talk of a challenge to ‘the very notion of playing this music on modern instruments, a stylistic paradigm shift.’ In 2010, after nine albums of sonatas, he went on to record the composer’s variations, bagatelles and other piano pieces – a staggering array of works ranging from a Bagatelle lasting 11 seconds to the monumental Diabelli Variations, and from a charming Rondo in C major composed by a 13-year old Beethoven, to what is often referred to as the composer's ‘Last Musical Thought’, an Andante maestoso dated 1826.

Dancing in the lively afterglow of Perfect Body, Mermaiden's internationally acclaimed Flying Nun debut, a new flame burns. The Wellington-based trio now approach 2019 with an eagerly awaited follow up. Enter the depths of their new album, Look Me In The Eye. The 9 track record will be released worldwide by Flying Nun Records on September 6th. Earmarked by the trio's April split single release ?You Maintain The Stain / Cut It Open, the group (made up of friends Lily West, Gussie Larkin and Abe Hollingsworth) are in new terrain. Exploring power and control in a confronting new lens, the trio are focused on the gatekeepers and dominators of the world; dissecting their power, one song at a time.

Only 20-year-old saxophonist Nikola Bankov recently recorded his debut album, in which the Norwegian publishing house AMP Music & Records AS showed interest. Under his heading will release a recording called Bright Future in the fall. The musician now sends a small teaser tasting album to the world. Nikola Bankov is studying at the prestigious The Royal Academy of Music in Denmark, but he has also joined his craft at the world famous Berklee College of Music and Conservatorium van Amsterdam. Nikol managed to subscribe with his debut album Bright Future to the Norwegian publishing house AMP Music & Records AS. The teaser will be released in the fall.

It’s never too late! Lisa Bell is releasing her first album of songs written completely by herself, Back Seat. While Bell’s music has its Americana influences, she trends towards jazz, bringing a smooth sense of confidence to her songs. On “I Can’t Stand the Rain,” Bell and her son create a rich soundscape to explore some stormy circumstances. Combining seamlessly together Bell’s expressive voice and ever-evolving writing chops, these finely-tuned elements combine to tell the story of an empty nester who, having spent years raising her children, is ready to climb back into the driver’s seat and chase down new dreams.

The E Street Band's Jake Clemons to release sophomore album, "Eyes on the Horizon". E Street Band sax player Jake Clemons will release his second solo album, Eyes on the Horizon , on September 6. The 10-track collection, is a follow-up to Clemons' 2017 debut Fear + Love , and finds the multi-talented artist musing on the social and political issues facing the planet.

Bearing the trademark of the most successful world music phenomenon of the era comes the solo debut of Cuban singer Omara Portuondo. A key artist in the original Buena Vista sessions, Omara was among the most talked-about discoveries to emerge from the project, and has since - in her touring with Ibrahim Ferrer - established a name for herself as a performer to reckon with. On an album noteworthy as the first reunion of the original Buena Vista musicians since the landmark sessions, Omara performs ballads and uptempo numbers with full big band support, by an ensemble studded with master players, including Ibrahim Ferrer, Rubén González, Compay Segundo, and Eliades Ochoa.

Toure recorded Savane in the Malian capital of Bamako, as part of a three-disc project dubbed the Hotel Mande Sessions, after the studio in which the albums were cut. Savane is the last, perhaps most eloquent, installment. In concept and execution, the sessions recall the magical combination of spontaneity and virtuosity that marked the debut releases from the Buena Vista Social Club. Toure offers reverberating, incantatory vocals to accompany his lean, hypnotically repetitive guitar lines.

“The inexpressible depth of all music, by virtue of which it floats past us as a paradise quite familiar and yet eternally remote, is so easy to understand and yet so inexplicable.” This quote by Schopenhauer evokes the mystery stripped to its very essence, which infuses Mozart’s solo piano works as well as the sister sonatas K 331, 332, 333. Both close to each other but different nevertheless, they are flooded with light, freedom, glee and nostalgia. But when Mozart bids us farewell, he says it in German “Lebewohl” which translated literally means “Live well.”