Suite for Modigliani is a homage to a passion that clarinetist Matteo Pastorino has felt since childhood, his passion for Amedeo Modigliani.

The music of C P E Bach makes complex stylistic demands of the performer like little else of its time, the extraordinary drama and intensity tempered by Enlightenment elegance and the influence of the Baroque. Marc-André Hamelin’s performances set new standards in this endlessly absorbing repertoire.

Maurice André rightly earned the reputation of being one of the finest trumpet virtuosos from the 20th and 21st centuries. He made numerous concert appearances and recordings and inspired composers like Blacher, Jolivet, and Tomasi to write major works for his instrument. André was born in the Cévennes district of southern France. Young Maurice began taking vocal instruction (solfeggio) at age ten, but two years later, influenced by his father – a miner, but also an excellent amateur trumpeter – began playing the cornet and eventually the trumpet.

MUSHROOM RECORDS was founded in London’s Chalk Farm district in 1970 by producer Vic Keary, an experienced industry veteran who’d spent most of the 1960s working as Maximum Sound Productions.
Over the course of three years, Mushroom issued a dizzying variety of records, embracing a broad range of music styles from Prog Rock (Second Hand, Chillum) to Singer-Songwriters (Simon Finn, Andreas Thomopoulos), Traditional Folk (Callinan-Flynn, The Liverpool Fishermen), Indian music (Pandit Kanwar Sain Trikha, Nitai Dasgupta), avant garde jazz (Lol Coxhill) and world music (Les Flambeaux). And in Magic Carpet, Mushroom hosted a group who reflected most of the above genres on one album.

Following the label's previous release of Fesca’s Septets opp. 26 and 28 (9996172) CPO are now releasing two of his six Piano Trios. The Piano Trio No. 5 composed in Braunschweig in 1845 merits special mention here: a truly appealing work, winning audiences with its wealth of beautiful melodies.

In this majestic production of Verdi's Don Carlo, Riccardo Chailly's qualities as a Verdi conductor are brilliantly displayed in the dramatic precision and transparent instrumental detail he draws from both orchestra and cast. Willy Decker directs a wonderful piece of stagecraft, letting the tragedy unwind with minimal, yet telling, interventions. The drama takes place in the mausoleum of Filippo II's Escorial, where the tombs of countless generations of Spanish royalty line the walls. Filippo's confrontation with Il grande inquisitore - which takes place over his own coffin, its resting place in the wall ready and waiting - is chillingly symbolic, as are the feet of the giant crucifix that hangs over Don Carlo as he sees his life sacrificed by his father.

Subtitled "A Voluptuous Journey Through '70s French Erotic Cinema", this compilation sounds precisely as you would imagine, and for some that'll be a very good thing, but those of you looking for something beyond the vintage euro-funk fromage-athon might be a tad disappointed. So many European B-movies and exploitation flicks from the 1970s have yielded unfeasibly brilliant soundtracks, and while there's nothing at all wrong with any of the material compiled here, there's seldom anything beyond the usual easy listening sample-baiting silliness to arouse your excitement. Having said that, when this compilation scores, it scores big: Piierre Bachelat's soundtrack for Histoires d'O is a psychedelic synth standout, while his visionary 'Motel Show' from Le Dernier Amant Romantique' is as good an Italo disco find as has surfaced in recent times. A special mention should be granted to one of the pieces lifted from the Emmanuelle 4 OST: the rather distressing 'Bach Anal', which has to be one of the most outstandingly insidious puns in the history of word play. In its own Moog-fuelled, breathy chanteuse-fronted way it does sound a bit like J. S. Bach though, which is to its credit I suppose.

Featuring seven original studio albums and two discs of rarities, ‘Sensational Sweet (Chapter One: The Wild Bunch)’ is set to be the most thorough account of glam icons Sweet yet. Fully documenting the classic line up (Andy Scott, Steve Priest, Mick Tucker and Brian Connolly) the nine disc set includes 1971 debut studio album ‘Funny, How Sweet Co Co Can Be’ and the five following album…

Let's start with "Radar Love", the musical milestone of Golden Earring. Deep Purple fans can look forward to the most famous guitar riff in rock history on "Smoke On The Water". Status Quo spread a good mood with "Rockin' All Over The World" and everyone can jump with Liquido's "Narcotic". Fine "rarities" can also be found among the 100 rock hits, such as "Barracuda" (Heart) or "American Woman" (The Guess Who). Simply the best rock hits of all time - from the Sixties (The Byrds) to Velvet Revolver, Gossip and Pink … And with the last song of the 5 CD box set, the rockers also show their soft side - "Love Hurts" of Nazareth.

On the album "Bach Mirror" the French pianist Thomas Enhco and marimba player Vassilena Serafimova give well-known and less well-known works by Johann Sebastian Bach an innovative sound. Pieces such as the Prelude No. 2 from the Well-Tempered Clavier or the Air from the orchestral suite No. 3 sound new and fresh in the unusual instrumentation of piano and marimba. With their sound painting arrangements, Thomas Enhco and Vassilena Serafimova expose Bach's harmonic-melodic work structures and enable the audience to gain new perspectives on the architecture of his unique compositions.

Ten years after the formation of his supergroup Supersonic, orbiting in Sun Ra's orbit, saxophonist-singer Thomas de Pourquery takes over the controls of the flagship, of which Back to the Moon marks the third take-off. Where we meet Mingus, a love story, E.T., Caetano Veloso in Kikongo, a robot and epic songs. Aim for the moon.

Producer, song writer - for the likes of Robert Plant & Glenn Hughes, no less! - vocalist, guitarist and all round innovator. Robin George is a man who has grown accustomed to playing many roles over the course of his illustrious career. This, though, is perhaps what he does best… Bluesongs is business as usual for the man who almost single handedly ushered in the age of techno AOR with 1985's seminal Dangerous Music. It's a wickedly fine set of mature pop-rock songs, well crafted, superbly played and extremely well produced. In 2004, melodic rock doesn't get a whole lot better than this! Times may change, but Robin George is still a force to be reckoned with and Bluesongs is the proof of that!

When he set foot on the stage of Club Doelen on Oct. 28, 1967 in Rotterdam, Thelonious Monk had just turned 50. 15 years later, he disappeared from the music scene and spent his 6 final years in New York, at Pannonica de Koenigswater's, and never touched a piano again.

In their very first recording together, pianist Charles Richard-Hamelin and the Violons du Roy present Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s piano concertos No. 22 and No. 24 that are replete with passionate outbursts, startling contrasts, rich orchestration and overt emotional fervor. Charles Richard-Hamelin, Silver medalist and winner of the Krystian Zimerman award at the International Chopin Piano Competition in 2015, impresses with his extremely refined playing and the Violons du Roy, under the direction of Jonathan Cohen, offer grandiose performances imbued with dignity and grace.

The Doors were an American rock band formed in 1965 in Los Angeles, with vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger, and John Densmore on drums. The band got its name, at Morrison's suggestion from the title of Aldous Huxley's book The Doors of Perception, which itself was a reference to a quote made by William Blake, "If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite." They were unique and among the most controversial and influential rock acts of the 1960s, mostly because of Morrison's lyrics and charismatic but unpredictable stage persona…