This is the album where Jeff Lynne finally found the sound he'd wanted since co-founding Electric Light Orchestra three years earlier. Up to this point, most of the group's music had been self-contained – Lynne, Richard Tandy, et al., providing whatever was needed, vocally or instrumentally, even if it meant overdubbing their work layer upon layer. Lynne saw the limitations of this process, however, and opted for the presence of an orchestra – it was only 30 pieces, but the result was a much richer musical palette than the group had ever had to work with, and their most ambitious and successful record up to that time.

The Best of Me is the third greatest hits album by Canadian singer Bryan Adams. It was released worldwide in 1999, and in the U.S. in 2001. It was his last release on A&M Records. It is Adams' second compilation album, after So Far So Good; except for Japan, where Hits on Fire was released in 1988. This album sees Adams reuniting with Robert John "Mutt" Lange – on the title track – after being absent from 1998's On a Day Like Today. The collection sells well over 3 million copies.

A transitional album on which the band moved from Syd Barrett's relatively concise and vivid songs to spacy, ethereal material with lengthy instrumental passages. Barrett's influence is still felt (he actually did manage to contribute one track, the jovial "Jugband Blues"), and much of the material retains a gentle, fairy-tale ambience. "Remember a Day" and "See Saw" are highlights; on "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun," "Let There Be More Light," and the lengthy instrumental title track, the band begin to map out the dark and repetitive pulses that would characterize their next few records.

Stevie Ray Vaughan became the biggest new star in the blues and an overnight guitar hero after the release of his 1983 debut album Texas Flood. But Vaughan played on an even bigger hit album that same year; he was the lead guitarist on the sessions for David Bowie's commercial comeback Let's Dance, and was originally slated to tour as part of Bowie's backing band. Last minute disputes led to Vaughan dropping out of Bowie's group, with Earl Slick taking his place for the Serious Moonlight Tour, which became one of the year's biggest concert draws. Space Oddity was recorded during rehearsals for the tour, shortly before Vaughan dropped out, and gives fans an opportunity to hear how these tunes from Bowie's catalog would have sounded on-stage with Vaughan lending his skills to the performances. In addition to Let's Dance selections such as "China People," "Cat People," and the title track, the set list includes a number of Bowie classics, including "Heroes," "Golden Years," "Life on Mars," "Scary Monsters," "Look Back in Anger," and many more.

Harnoncourt offers us two wonderful religious works of the great Mozart: Missa K. 257 and Litaniae de venerabili altaris sacramento K. 243. Works of great musical beauty where the Arnold Schoenber Choir gives us an excellent interpretation. The soloists, especially the soprano Angela Maria Blasi, magnificent.

Some composers have a strong influence on later generations. Sometimes this influence persists a long time after their death. Beethoven is just one example. It took a while before Brahms dared to write a symphony; he wasn't sure he could live up to the standard Beethoven had set. Another is George Frideric Handel. He was a man of the theatre and preferred to compose operas but it was mainly because of his oratorios that he was admired - and feared. Mozart was so impressed by Handel's oratorios that he arranged several of them and Haydn's oratorio 'Die Schöpfung' is unthinkable without the model of Handel's Messiah. The oratorio 'Die Könige in Israel' by Ferdinand Ries shows how long Handel's influence lasted. It shows the traces of Handel's style and yet for all this Ries feared the standard Handel had set. This explains the story behind the oratorio.

Volume Two of the Complete String Concertos of Ignace Pleyel (1757-1831) includes some charming, if undistinguished. music that sounds like Haydn with bits of Mozart mixed in. At one time among the most celebrated of Europe’s composers, Pleyel’s work has fallen into obscurity; so, we can be grateful that some talented instrumentalists are taking up his mantle again. A competent kapellmeister and more than competent master of diverse forms, Pleyel seems to employs the three-movement format for his Viotti-like concertos; the recording gives us the alternative ending, a 4/4 Rondo, to his violin concerto.

In the 32 years that elapsed between Syd Barrett’s last unproductive visit to a recording studio in 1974 and his death on July 7, 2006, much was written about Pink Floyd’s former creative leader, most of it based on pure conjecture. Barrett’s retreat away from his former life méant that, as his myth grew through his absence, he was effectively viewed through the fragments he presented of himself in his recordings. This bespoke Mojo collection seeks to present that elusive sense of what can only therefore be described as “Sydness”.
Included are tracks by artists that influenced Barrett-era Floyd (fellow sonic adventurers AMM alongside Pink Anderson and Floyd Council, the two bluesmen who gave the band its name), as well as Syd’s contemporaries (Soft Machine, Gong, Hawkwind, Frank Zappa, the Bonzos, Kevin Ayers)…

On "Saga" David & Clay have further refined what has become their very own style, a totally unique combination of Viking and Doom Metal with progessive elements, which they developed and improved with every release. In this respect, the new album is a consequent continuation of "Essence Of Nine", with its focus on acoustic parts, melodic guitar leads and clean vocals on the one hand, and raw Viking/Black Metal outbursts on the other, everything merged into a seamless whole. In short, an exciting and never boring or repetitive journey through a rough northern landscape, interspersed with relaxed nights around the campfire.

The Dwarfs of East Agouza is a trio from Cairo, Egypt, featuring Maurice Louca (Alif, Bikya), Sam Shalabi (Land of Kush, Shalabi Effect) and Alan Bishop (Sun City Girls, The Invisible Hands, Alvarius B.).

While studying the composer's archives, Darina Maleeva discovered Melancolie, a late work by Cesar Franck. She gave the first performance in Europe, Japan and the United States. Lemoine Editions published the work in her own revision in 2002.This CD also presents two other little-known and fascinating pieces by the young Cesar Franck, as well as a deeply sensitive interpretation of the famous Sonata. Darina Maleeva and Xavier Lecomte de la Bretonnerie present here a unique program of rare and unpublished works by Cesar Franck.

Christopher Wood began his musical career as a chorister at St. George's Chapel, Windsor. He studied music at Magdalene College, University of Cambridge, where Boris Ord was one of his teachers, and then at the RCM, under Herbert Howells, Gordon Jacobs and Arthur Benjamin. In the summer vacations he studied conducting at the Salzburg Mozarteum with Clemens Krauss, Bruno Walter and Herbert von Karajan. His principal piano teacher was Adelina de Lara, a pupil of Clara Schumann and Brahms. He studied the harpsichord with Rudolphe Dolmetsch and Dorothy Swainson.

The Doobies team up with the Memphis Horns for an even more Southern-flavored album than usual, although also a more uneven one. By this time, Tom Johnston, Patrick Simmons, and company had pretty well inherited the mantle and the core (and then some) of the audience left behind by Creedence Clearwater Revival and John Fogerty, with Johnston songs like "Pursuit on 53rd Street," "Down in the Track," and "Road Angel" recalling pieces like "Travelin' Band," while Simmons' "Black Water" (their first number one hit) evoked the softer side of the "swamp rock" popularized by CCR. Actually, in some respects, given the range of instruments employed here, including an autoharp (courtesy of Arlo Guthrie) and viola, the songs on the original LP's first side suffer somewhat from a sameness that makes What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits a little less interesting than the albums that preceded it.