Lana Del Rey could have retired after the cinematic grandeur of her 2019 high-water mark Norman Fucking Rockwell! That album's imaginative songwriting, finely crafted performances, and exceptional production served as a realization of the magnificence promised by earlier efforts, and the deepest look yet at Del Rey's stormy inner world. Subsequent albums suggested a little bit of a comedown after such heights. Both released in 2021, Chemtrails Over the Country Club felt like an NFR! bonus reel, while Blue Banisters played like a mixtape of solid but random song ideas. Ninth album Did you know that there's a tunnel under Ocean Blvd finds Del Rey returning to the powerful level of song sculpting she reached on NFR!, and feels like a strong step forward as much as it does a worthy follow-up to her best record.

Berry Gordy, Jr. once said "Don't bore us – get to the chorus," which basically sums up most of pop music. It doesn't, however, do credit to Roxette, who has crafted some of the best tunes of the '80s and '90s. This compilation exhibits what pop masters Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson are. It sums up major hits ("It Must Have Been Love," "Joyride"), minor hits ("Church of Your Heart," "How Do You Do!"), hard-to-find cuts ("Almost Unreal" from the Super Mario Bros. soundtrack), and new material ("Stars," "Wish I Could Fly"). Every song is a gem. Whether it's aching ballads like "Crash! Boom! Bang!," A/C/pop like "Dressed For Success," or techno/dance like "Stars," the two never miss a beat in terms of production, vocals, or lyrics.

Annabel Mehran's black-and-white cover photo for Steve Gunn's The Unseen Inbetween is a portrait of the guitarist and songwriter seemingly on the move. It evokes those found on early- to mid-'60s recordings by Bob Dylan, Koerner, Ray & Glover, Jackson C. Frank, Bert Jansch, and others. Gunn has shifted his focus considerably. Rather than simply showcase his dazzling guitar playing, he delivers carefully crafted, uncharacteristically tight and well-written songs with guitars, keyboards, strings, reeds – and percussion – translating them without artifice or instrumental disguise. Gunn's also a more confident, capable singer than he was on 2016's Eyes on the Lines and it shows.

First staged in Naples in 1819, Rossini’s opera La donna del lago is based on Walter Scott’s romantic poem The Lady of the Lake, setting a precedent for later composers, who also drew on Scott for their plots. Set in exotic 16th-century Scotland, the opera deals with the conflict between the Highland clansmen under Douglas and King James V, who generously forgives his enemy and allows the betrothal of his beloved Ellen, Douglas’s daughter, to his former enemy, Malcolm.

"… he sat down in an armchair, pored over for the last time the score of the mourning music he himself had composed for his funeral, and - when lightly touched by the angel of death - bowed his head and passed away." C. F. Schubart's description of the death in 1789 of the eighty-year-old F. X. Richter, Kapellmeister of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame in Strasbourg, may be rather romantic (two years later an almost identical story related to the last moments of W. A. Mozart), yet when looking at the clean copy of the autograph score we cannot resist the idea that the Requiem encapsulates the quintessence of his legacy.

Two cycles that have consistently been receiving high praise from reviewers are Miklós Spányi’s survey of C.P.E. Bach’s Music for Solo Keyboard and of the same composer’s Keyboard Concertos.

Esoteric Recordings are pleased to announce the next release in the continuing series of reissues of the entire catalogue by the legendary classical rock band Sky. Formed in 1979, Sky brought together the worlds of rock and classical music in a highly successful and inspiring way. Featuring the gifted talents of guitarist John Williams, percussionist Tristan Fry, legendary bass player Herbie Flowers, former Curved Air keyboard player Francis Monkman and guitarist Kevin Peek, Sky recorded their debut album at Abbey Road studios in the early months of 1979. The band’s self-titled debut reached the UK top ten in May 1979 and went on to achieve Platinum status in the UK and was also a major hit in Europe and Australia.

Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton was Eric Clapton's first fully realized album as a blues guitarist – more than that, it was a seminal blues album of the 1960s, perhaps the best British blues album ever cut, and the best LP ever recorded by John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. Standing midway between Clapton's stint with the Yardbirds and the formation of Cream, this album featured the new guitar hero on a series of stripped-down blues standards, Mayall pieces, and one Mayall/Clapton composition, all of which had him stretching out in the idiom for the first time in the studio. This album was the culmination of a very successful year of playing with John Mayall, a fully realized blues creation, featuring sounds very close to the group's stage performances, and with no compromises.

The Superb New Studio Album By Grammy Award Winning Pink Floyd Engineer / Co-Producer Andy Jackson. This eagerly awaited follow up to Andy Jackson's acclaimed album 'Signal To Noise' (2014) and '73 Days At Sea' (2016) sees this original musician and producer explore new musical ground to great effect. 'Twelve Half Steps' is a purely instrumental album; a fascinating collection of compositions in modal scales. As one would expect of a musician, engineer and producer of the pedigree of Andy Jackson, this new album is once again nothing short of impressive, both sonically and musically.

In the third part of her highly acclaimed anthology of virtuoso Austrian violin music, the baroque violinist Veronika Skuplik once again devotes herself to works from a valuable baroque manuscript that today belongs to the rich holdings of the British Library in London, in addition to sonatas by Johann Heinrich Schmelzer. A remarkably high-quality Ciaccona from the pen of the composing Emperor Leopold I forms the framework for this once again immensely discoverable excursion into late 17th century Vienna.

The Six Wives of Henry VIII is the first studio album from the English keyboardist and composer Rick Wakeman as a solo artist, released in January 1973 on A&M Records. It is an instrumental progressive rock album with its concept based on his interpretations of the musical characteristics of the six wives of Henry VIII. Wakeman decided on the concept in 1972 while he toured the United States with the progressive rock band Yes. As he read a book about the wives on his travels, melodies he wrote the previous year came to him and were noted down. Musicians from Yes and Strawbs, who he performed with prior to Yes, also play on the album.

Sean Shibe's second PENTATONE album Lost & Found is an ecstatic journey containing music by outsiders, mystics, visionaries, who often have more than one identity and lay claim to various artistic traditions, genres, or audiences. The repertoire ranges from Hildegard von Bingen to Olivier Messiaen, Moondog, Julius Eastman, Bill Evans, Chick Corea, Meredith Monk, Shiva Feshareki, Oliver Leith and Daniel Kidane. Stretching ten centuries, these pieces are bound together by Shibe's unique electric guitar sound and aesthetic. Multi-award-winning guitarist Sean Shibe brings a fresh and innovative approach to the traditional classical guitar, while also exploring contemporary music and repertoire for electric guitar. He continues his exclusive collaboration with PENTATONE after his well-received label debut Camino (2021).

By the time Santana arrived on the San Francisco scene in 1968, the Grateful Dead's freeform antics were already legendary. But Santana was a jam band of another order–fueled by Latin rhythms, blues, bebop, and straight-ahead rock. Having set the audience at the 1969 Woodstock festival on its collective ear, the band did the same for the nation with its self-titled debut, released later that summer. Songs such as "Evil Ways," "Jingo," and "Soul Sacrifice" contain extraordinary ensemble playing, powered by percolating congas and timbales and topped by the grippingly human cry of Carlos Santana's guitar. The 1998 reissue of the album contains three bonus tracks recorded live at Woodstock: "Savor," "Soul Sacrifice," and "Fried Neckbones."

"Music is everything to me. I’ve been through two divorces and a whole world of shit because of music but still it is the most important thing in the world to me. I’d rather have music than anything else." So speaks 36-year-old Peter Tägtgren, musician, producer and creative brain behind Pain, Sweden's finest industrial metal export. His has been a life immersed in music, in pushing boundaries, and taking ideas to both their logical and illogical extremes. It’s been a career that has involved fronting bands - notably iconic death metal veterans Hypocrisy, and now Pain - or shaping their sounds - as he has done with Celtic Frost, Children of Bodom, Dimmu Borgir and Immortal amongst others. It’s a calling that has made him one of Europe's most respected musicians and producers…