These disc were recorded in 1995 during Charles Dutoit's long spell as artistic director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. During that time they made many outstanding recordings with a particular reputation for French and Russian music and a glorious sound recorded in Saint-Eustache church. Dutoit is an ideal conductor for Bizet's music, sufficiently romantic to bring out its drama without letting it become self-indulgent.

The Hungarians of the Haydn Quartet have the D-Major Quarte will in hand, playing with consistent firm impulse, and realizing full color potential.

Born in Bohemia in 1656 Fischer’s early musical educative experiences seem to have been lost. He was at the Piarist College in Schlackenwerth and clearly travelled. But our next substantive detail is that by 1690 he was court conductor at Sachsen-Lauenburg. The complexities of the marriages, regencies and instabilities of late seventeenth century nobility are briefly alluded to in the notes but what matters, as far as Fischer is concerned, is that the bulk of his printed compositions date from the years 1690-1715.

Instrumental Works collects ten of The Alan Parsons Project's best musical pieces and acts as a wonderful journey through some of this group's most innovative material. Although famous for his concepts, Alan Parsons is equally renowned for his illustrious mood-invoking instrumentals that helped create atmosphere on all of his albums. These movements can easily be taken away from their master albums without losing their grandeur and charm, unlike his vocal works that act as pieces in a thematic puzzle and are better left within their conceptual domain. Both intricacy and subtlety are depicted here, with selections such as "I Robot," "Paseo de Gracia," and "Hawkeye."

Bark, Jefferson Airplane's seventh album, was an album of firsts: it was the first Airplane album in almost two years, the first made after the arrival of violinist Papa John Creach and the departure of band founder Marty Balin, and the first to be released on the group's own Grunt Records label. It was also the first Airplane album made after the onset of that familiar rock group disease, solo career-itis. Rhythm guitarist Paul Kantner had released his Blows Against the Empire, and Hot Tuna, the band formed by lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen and bassist Jack Casady, had released two albums since the last Airplane group release, Volunteers. Bark, perhaps as a result, was not so much a group record as a bunch of songs made by alternating solo artists with backup by the other group members…

Easily one of the most important heavy metal albums ever released, Stained Class marks the peak of Judas Priest's influence, setting the sonic template for the New Wave of British Heavy Metal more than any other single recording. This is the point where Priest put it all together, embracing their identity as the heaviest band on the planet and taking the genre to new heights of power, speed, musicality, and malevolence. Not until Painkiller would the band again be this single-minded in its focus on pure heavy metal. Their blues-rock roots have been virtually obliterated; largely gone, too, are the softer textures and gothic ballads of albums past. The lone exception is the morbid masterpiece "Beyond the Realms of Death," on which the band finally finds a way to integrate the depressive balladry of songs like "Epitaph" and "Last Rose of Summer" into their metal side…

World-renowned marimbist Mika Stoltzman and Navona Records present MARIMBA SOUL, an accurate reflection of Stoltzman’s remarkable ability to capture the very central being of every work she performs with naturally vivid emotion and visceral technical ability. Stoltzman’s abilities are highlighted especially so by a one-of-a-kind Demorrow Marimba, built with specially selected rosewood bars collected over the period of an entire decade.

Orchid Classics presents an album of encores for cello and piano performed by the outstanding South Korean cellist Hee-Young Lim and pianist Chuhui Liang. Praised by The Washington Post as ‘a deeply gifted musician’ with ‘an exceptional sense of lyricism’ and ‘near-flawless technique’, Hee-Young Lim has quickly established herself as one of the most charismatic, captivating and rapidly rising stars of the younger generation.