The title La Gazza Ladra is translated as ‘The Thieving Magpie’, which as expected is a story based around the theft of some silverwear which a magpie has absconded for its nest, a crime which a servant girl is wrongly accused of. La Gazza Ladra is an "opera semiseria", a genre from Rossini’s time which was used to define a drama with a happy ending in which the innocent victim, unjustly condemned, should be saved from the scaffold at the eleventh hour and the rascal persecutor punished.

“A tribute to Nino Rota” is a collection of famous pieces by the composer Nino Rota, interpreted on the flute by Andrea Griminelli.

Joseph Moog, after recording both Brahms piano concertos for Onyx Classics, turns his attention to one of the most demanding and forbidding of piano concertos. Max Reger's concerto dates from 1910. This rugged giant of a concerto displays all Reger's formidable skill at using large orchestral forces with great clarity, making the piano part of the orchestral fabric. The concerto has much music that is both brilliant and poetic as well as passages of great turmoil. The album includes the 6 Intermezzi, which display a different facet of this complex composer. These are delightful pieces, tender, romantic with much poetry.

It has been 8 long years since the last record, and HYPOCRISY fans can feel the itch. WORSHIP is 11 tracks of precise, ferocious musicianship. Commonly inspired by the fusion of the modern and the ancient, HYPOCRISY has once more found a way to combine innovative ideas with classic sound in order to deliver something metalheads can enjoyably consume with awe and brutal vigor. As usual, all recording and mixing took place at Tägtgren’s Abyss Studio AB in Sweden while mastering was completed by Svante Forsbäck at Chartmakers Audio Mastering. Designed by artist Blake Armstrong (KATAKLYSM, IN FLAMES, CARNIFEX, etc.), WORSHIP’s artwork speaks to the history of the relationship between humanity and extraterrestrials.

Whether or not this album's title refers to bluesman Robert Johnson's classic song of the same name, Katatonia is still singing the blues in their own way here, even if their style has nothing else to do with the blues as a genre. Continuing in the vein of their previous release, Tonight's Decision, this is depressing, heavy alternative rock with a notable Cure influence - Katatonia is not really playing metal anymore here. The production has been sharpened on this album compared to its predecessor, accentuating the quiet verse/loud chorus dynamics the band so often uses, making the loud parts hit harder and the softer parts come through with more detail. Meanwhile, frontman Jonas Renske has continued to grow as a vocalist, showing greater range while also maintaining that worried, defeated delivery…

Roderick Williams and Iain Burnside complete their survey of Schubert's song cycles with this recording of Winterreise. Composed in the late 1820s, towards the end of Schubert's tragically short life, Winterreise (Winter Journey) is a setting of twenty-four poems by Wilhelm Müller and describes a traveller leaving the town which was the home of the object of his unrequited love, to embark on a long journey, through a chill, wintry landscape, which ends in near-suicidal despair. This recording represents the culmination of a project that started back in 2015, when Williams accepted the challenge to prepare and perform all three song cycles in one season at the Wigmore Hall in London.

Volume Eight of Mercury's partial transfer onto CDs of its mighty Complete Keynote Collection LP set contains some wonderful Red Norvo small combo swing sessions. "Subtle Sextology," "Blues a la Red," "The Man I Love," and "Seven Come Eleven" come from some sextet sessions that sound very much like the sextet 78s that Benny Goodman was putting out around then. That figures, because Norvo participated on many of the BG sides - and so did pianist Teddy Wilson and bassist Slam Stewart; the latter gets plenty of humorous hum-scat time on these sides, too. For "Russian Lullaby," "I Got Rhythm," and "Sing Something Simple," the personnel shuffles (Wilson and Stewart remain) and expands to a septet for which Johnny Thompson writes some creative charts. Norvo plays xylophone on "Lullaby" and delivers unquenchably swinging vibraphone solos at all times…

The classical decoder! Clément Lebrun is a born pedagogue: in just a few words, this inspired all-rounder makes the greatest works of classical music accessible… In this programme intended for all ears, he tells the story of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique , movement by movement, with the enthusiastic participation of the Orchestre de Paris (conducted by Quentin Hindley), which we also hear perform the work in its entirety under the direction of its eminent former music director Paavo Järvi. Classical is Fantastic!

The Beginning of Survival is a whopping 16-track collection from Joni Mitchell's Geffen period, recorded between 1985-1998, and carefully chosen by the artist as "commentaries on the world in which we live."
The sequencing here is so meticulous and effective that The Beginning of Survival feels like a topical song cycle rather than a compilation. Tracks trace meaning and impression onto other tracks; they inform and elucidate themes of resistance in the face of the dark deluge that began the culture war in earnest during the 1980s, and which has come to signify the nature of American society in the 21st century with no signs of anything but further fragmentation. The opening words of "The Reoccurring Dream" that begin this cycle state: "This is a reoccurring dream/Born in the dreary gap between/What we have now/And what we wish we could have"…

This album is a hand numbered limited edition of 1000 copies containing five world premiere recordings by Robert Zuidam, Calliope Tsoupaki, Celia Swart and Juan Felipe Waller.