Einer der Höhepunkte des Bachfestes Leipzig 2014 im 300. Geburtsjahr Carl Philip Emanuel Bachs war die Aufführung und Einspielung seines Oratoriums "Die Israeliten in der Wüste" mit den Experten für historische Aufführungspraxis des Neuen Orchesters & Chorus Musicus Köln unter der Leitung von Christoph Spering.

There's no overestimating the importance of Screamadelica, the record that brought acid house, techno, and rave culture crashing into the British mainstream – an impact that rivaled that of Nirvana's Nevermind, the other 1991 release that changed rock. Prior to Screamadelica, Primal Scream were Stonesy classic rock revivalists with a penchant for Detroit rock. They retained those fascinations on Screamadelica – one listen to the Jimmy Miller-produced, Stephen Stills-rip "Movin' on Up" proves that – but they burst everything wide open here, turning rock inside out by marrying it to a gleeful rainbow of modern dance textures. This is such a brilliant, gutsy innovative record, so unlike anything the Scream did before, that it's little wonder that there's been much debate behind who is actually responsible for its grooves, especially since Andrew Weatherall is credited with production with eight of the tracks, and it's clearly in line with his work. Even if Primal Scream took credit for Weatherall's endeavors, that doesn't erase the fact that they shepherded this album, providing the ideas and impetus for this dubtastic, elastic, psychedelic exercise in deep house and neo-psychedelic. Like any dance music, this is tied to its era to a certain extent, but it transcends it due to its fierce imagination and how it doubles back on rock history, making the past present and vice versa.

Recent BIS issues of Kalevi Aho’s concertos for flute and clarinet – entrancingly beautiful and elementally energetic works, respectively – have confirmed him as one of the foremost composers of concertos in our day. The two concertos on this new disc for the bassi profundi of the orchestra strike me as less instantly rewarding, but that may be just that their rewards are more of the slow-release kind.

A stunning pairing of Mozart’s glorious ‘Gran Partita’ Serenade with a work written specifically to be performed alongside it, Geysir by the exceptional clarinettist-composer, Mark Simpson. Mark Simpson’s simmering, volcanic Geysir was inspired by the rich opening chord of Mozart’s ‘Gran Partita’, and by its bubbling clarinet writing, which develop into what Simpson describes as a “flurry of colour and harmonic shifts”.

Szell's performance is again of quite a different order, one of the very finest ever put on disc, white hot even beyond Bernstein's. The late John Culshaw, producer at the sessions in Walthamstow Assembly Hall in 1962, used to enjoy telling the story of winding up an already angry George Szell. That inspired tyrant of a conductor was furious at the start of the session to find that many players were not the same as those who had just given the concert performance with him. When he came back to listen to the first playback Culshaw deliberately kept the controls rather low, making the result seem dull. That prompted Szell, back on the podium, to unleash a force in the subsequent takes that has to be heard to be believed.

In October 2023, Vanessa Bernardi will obtain her two-year second-level diploma in classical guitar at the A. Buzzolla Conservatory in Adria under the guidance of Maestro Giulio Tampalini. This follows her achievement of a three-year first-level diploma with the highest grades and honours in October 2021. That same year, she also earned a bachelor's degree in History and Protection of Musical Artistic Heritage from the University of Padua (thesis title: "Music in the Time of Covid-19: Musical Initiatives and Distance Education").

From the dawn of time, across the four corners of the world, exile has left its mark on the landscape of men… and on the songs of women. Mediaeval songs by trouveres and nuns (The women who stayed), Iberian and Sephardic songs (The women who left) are woven around Exils, a set of four pieces composed by Thierry De Mey in homage to all those women (from ancient times to our modern and highly topical times) who never reached their place of exile…

Sofya Melikyan’s fascinating album has as its inspiration the great Ricardo Viñes, composer and pianist, champion of young progressive composers (he was Satie’s favourite performer of his music), whose friends included among others Picasso, Gide, Colette, Cocteau.