Passion, loyalty and political conspiracy are the three pillars of Un ballo in maschera (1859), the ‘most operatic of all operas’. Set in 19th-century Boston, Mario Martone's atmospheric production for the Teatro Real brings out all the innate theatricality and drama of Verdi's work. World famous Argentinean tenor Marcelo Álvarez, in the role of Riccardo, leads a fabulous cast including Lithuanian soprano Violeta Urmana as his lover Amelia, and Elena Zaremba as the witch Ulrica. Jesús López Cobos conducts the Chorus and Orchestra of the Teatro Real in a performance that emphasises the lyricism and majesty of this wonderful work, in which grand opera and opera comique are woven together with classic Italian style.

On Philip Glass - Songs, Baritone Martin Achrainer and pianist Maki Namekawa give the world premiere recording of Glass's 1997 song-cycle Songs of Milarepa, about the spiritual journey of Milarepa, a Tibetan poet who lived 900 to 1,000 years ago. Martin Achrainer has quickly become a Glass specialist of a kind, having sung in multiple Glass operas including his breakthrough performance as Kepler, the title role of Glass's 2009 grand opera. Namekawa is one of the preeminent artists working with Philip Glass today. Chose by Glass in 2014 to be the first pianist to record his Complete Piano Etudes. The album concludes with Three Songs for Baritone and Piano which is a collection of songs drawn from two sources, Glass's 1989 song opera Hydrogen Jukebox which was created with Allen Ginsberg, and two songs from Monsters of Grace, a multimedia opera created with director Robert Wilson.

The familiar declaration that Enrique Granados’s suite Goyescas—Los Majos enamorados (The Majos in Love) and Isaac Albeniz’s Iberia form the twin peaks of Spanish keyboard music is accurate as far as it goes, but it does not go far. The good intentions behind this declaration ultimately parochialize, if not to say diminish, Goyescas as well as Iberia by qualifying them in relation to other piano works by composers from the Iberian peninsula, not in relation to the varied topographies of all piano works. From an international or cosmopolitan perspective, the Goyescas suite may be suituated between Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (1874), a memorial to the work of the artist Victor Hartmann, and Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin (1917), a memorial to both Couperin “le Grand” (in particular, the French Baroque keyboard suite) and friends of the composer who died in the Great War.

Lita is the third solo studio album by the American rock singer and guitarist Lita Ford. It was originally released in February 1988 and it was her first for RCA Records and her first published with the supervision of new manager Sharon Osbourne. The album features the song "Close My Eyes Forever", a duet with Ozzy Osbourne, and the hit "Kiss Me Deadly", which was named the 76th best hard rock song of all time by VH1. Musicians Don Nossov and Myron Grombacher, who were best known for being the rhythm section of the successful American singer Pat Benatar, joined Ford for the recording sessions and for the promotional tour. The album peaked at No. 29 on the US Billboard 200 chart and the singles "Close My Eyes Forever" and "Kiss Me Deadly" peaked at numbers eight and twelve respectively on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

What’s this? Today’s holiday gift? One final transmission from the core of the planet! Cresting slabs of concrete and powdered bone, rich soil—improvisation freak flag flitters atop a gutted highrise: Gong Splat. Featuring Ryan Sawyer on drums, Greg Coates on upright bass, Wilder Zoby on synth and mellotron, Andres Renteria on conga, bongos and hand percussion, and John Dwyer on guitar, synths, pan flute, cuíca, hand percussion, space drum and effects. This one is spitting fat and neon night-light city drives, white in the corner of the pilot’s mouth. Furry, fuzzy and frenetic, motorik and full of blood-rich ticks… maggots unite! There’s a show tonight! Welcome back humans.

Despite his close associations with the likes of Brahms, Casals, and Grieg (and in some respects, because of them), the works of Julius Röntgen have had some difficulty gaining popularity outside of his adoptive homeland of the Netherlands. Like Brahms, Röntgen was a conservative composer and though his output was vast, he never truly succeeded in creating his own unique, identifiable musical sound. He was also often criticized for failing to polish or refine his completed compositions. Nevertheless, his compositions – and in particular his three cello concertos heard here – are replete with the best and most enjoyable qualities of German Romanticism.

It might be surprising that the Oscar and Grammy nominated gentleman behind massive inescapable hits for Miley Cyrus, The Weeknd, and Celine Dion is a classically trained impresario. However, for producer, songwriter, composer and musician STEPHAN MOCCIO, bringing a timeless aesthetic into the modern musical landscape comes naturally.

This is a stupendously good recording of a notoriously troublesome instrument to realistically and authentically capture and project. It positions the listener's perspective in front of the keyboard, with the higher treble strings emanating from the right speaker, the lower bass strings from the left, and the mid range right down the middle. And if you play it loud enough, you can feel the vibrations from the lowest bass strings rumble through the floorboards. The instrument used in this recording is a 1981 two-manual harpsichord based on 18th century French models, built by Tilman Skowroneck's father, Martin Skowroneck. If it's anything like his other instruments, it's built using bird quill and beryllium copper strings instead of brass. It's blessed with a full-bodied and resonant sound, far removed from the sonic characteristics of "plinky" and metallic sounding harpsichords.