Fresh, innovative indie swing from Vienna. Originally a three-piece and now a quartet, Marina & The Kats has been one of the most exciting and trailblazing bands in Austria (if not Europe) for years, as anyone who has ever had the chance to catch one of their many high octane shows will confirm. Their new record "Different" is, on the one hand, as coarse as it is frank, infused with a reassuringly rough and ready swagger. It is also, understandably though, a musical reflection of the last year. A rollercoaster ride of a year that started promisingly with concerts in Israel, Germany and Austria, suddenly came to an abrupt halt. So too did the band as the ingrained drive and passion for the stage hit a metaphorical brick wall, leaving them to come to terms with the fact that life and making music had come to a complete standstill.

The first of Dvorak's nine symphonies and the last of his symphonic poems come here in a generous coupling, both of them among the longest works he ever wrote in each genre. The only rival version of the symphony on CD is the Kubelik, and that only comes in the six-disc DG set of the complete cycle. As for The Hero's Song, this is a real rarity. It is in fact the very last orchestral work that Dvorak wrote, in 1897 some seven years before his death. Unlike earlier symphonic poems, it has no specific programme, though the journey from darkness to light in the unspecified hero's life is clearly enough established.

When you ask people which superpower they would choose if they could have only one, many answer that they would want the power of flight. Although I personally would prefer invisibility, I also think there is something enviable about the freedom of being able to fly, to soar through the sky, above all the stress and troubles of life down on the ground. A lot has been said and written about how Vaughan Williams wrote The Lark Ascending during the 1st World War “when a pastoral scene of a singing bird on the wing seemed far removed from reality” (Betsy Schwarm, Britannica). I sometimes imagine people living through difficult times looking up at the lark, envying its life and freedom that they wish they had. It's a moving piece with soaring melodies and the lark's “silver chain of sound” (George Meredith's poem The Lark Ascending).

On this new release, Nadège Rochat performs Antonín Dvorák's Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104, and André Caplet's mystically spiritualized Épiphanie, Op. 22, together with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under Benjamin Levy. Nadège Rochat is a distinguished expressive voice among young cellists. Besides her wide-ranging musical interests in baroque, classical and romantic repertoire, she likes to explore forgotten composers, world music and contemporary pieces. She started to play the cello at the age of four and first studied in Geneva, then in Cologne with Maria Kliegel. She attended master classes with Heinrich Schiff and Anner Bijlsma among others, and graduated from the Royal Academy of Music under Robert Cohen where she now has a teaching assignment. She won several first prizes in Swiss, German and British competitions and won twice the Swiss SUISA prize for the interpretation of contemporary music.

Rainy Day Moments is a single-disc collection of songs from Savoy Jazz's relaunching of the Jazz for a Rainy Day series that 32 Jazz made extremely popular in the late '90s. The tracks are taken from the large catalog of the defunct Muse label and feature '70s, '80s, and '90s recordings by many well-respected jazz legends and some up-and-coming youngsters, too. This disc gives a good feel for the makeup of the discs in the series. It is a blend of giants like Grant Green, whose "Iron City" is the disc's highlight; Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Sonny Stitt; and lesser lights like Johnny Lytle, Pat Martino, and Carol Welsman. The music is relaxed throughout and the mood is unsparingly mellow. Although the songs date from well-beyond jazz's peak years, the performances are uniformly solid and the disc is a nice collection of mood music.

'Jonas' and 'Dives Malus' are particularly showy examples of the "sacred oratorios" with Latin texts chiefly taken from the Bible, which were extremely popular among the Italian aristocracy, both secular and clerical, throughout the 17th Century. Such musical theater pieces were the Counter-reformation's answer to the opera and secular oratorio, usually based on tales from Graeco-Roman sources, beloved of the Humanists. If any difference in the music is to be heard, it is that the sacred oratorios are more purely aesthetic and intellectual, while the secular oratorio is more easily comprehended by the untrained listener.

Multi award-winning violinist James Ehnes recorded this album during lockdown at his home. Recording commenced in the early hours of the morning when all was quiet in the house. The solo violin, recorded in the small hours during these troubled times, makes for a powerful and intimate listening experience. Ysaÿe’s six sonatas for solo violin are, together with JS Bach’s Sonatas & Partitas, the most important extended works for the solo violin. Ysaÿe composed each one of them with a particular violinist in mind, capturing their personality and characteristics of their playing.

Gary Moore might just be the greatest guitar hero America's never heard of, probably because only his recent blues recordings have benefited from proper distribution stateside. In fact, Moore has worn so many hats during his near 30-year career that the words eclectic and unfocused immediately come to mind. Victims of the Future arrived in the middle of the most consistent phase of his career - that of a heavy metal guitar slinger. Between the epic cold war-inspired title track and the massive riffing of "Murder in the Skies" (written about the Korean airliner shot own by Russian fighter jets), Moore assaults the listener with more guitar notes than appear in most careers. These are great songs though, and his powerful vocals are also very effective, especially on the hit ballad "Empty Rooms."

Oliver Nelson (on tenor and alto sax) meets Eric Dolphy (alto, bass clarinet and flute) on this frequently exciting sextet session with trumpeter Richard Williams, pianist Richard Wyands, bassist George Duvivier, and drummer Roy Haynes. Although Dolphy is too unique and skilled to be overshadowed in a setting such as this, Nelson holds his own. He contributed five of the six compositions (including "Screamin' the Blues," "The Meetin'," and "Alto-Itis") and effectively matches wits and creative ideas with Dolphy.

The Helsinki Police Orchestra releases a wonderful Christmas album! The orchestra conducted by Sami Ruusuvuori with the brilliant soloists Helena Juntunen and Mika Pohjonen create a holiday atmosphere with their beautiful versions of both Finnish traditional Yuletide songs and internationally known pieces. The Helsinki Police Symphonic Band is a professional symphonic band comprising 43 musicians. The band has been performing for over 70 years. It represents the Finnish Police through music in different events nationally and internationally and is especially known for its versatility. In addition to wind compositions, the band’s repertoire includes folk music, jazz, rock, pop and children’s music.

Hedvig Mollestad must surely be one of the hardest working musicians on the Norwegian music scene at the moment, with "Tempest Revisited" being her third album in a mere 18 months, all at a consistently high artistic level.

Transcriptions were an important part of Johann Sebastian Bach’s oeuvre. For a composer who never took formal composition lessons, they were pathways to knowledge that allowed him to assimilate different styles and expand his musical horizons.