Adrenalize is the fifth studio album by English rock band Def Leppard, released on 31 March 1992 through Mercury Records. It is the first album by the band recorded without guitarist Steve Clark, who died in 1991, and the only one recorded as a four-member band. Spawning seven singles, four of them – "Let's Get Rocked", "Make Love Like a Man", "Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad", and "Stand Up (Kick Love into Motion)" – were major hits. "Tear It Down" is a re-recording of a song written during a recording session following the completion of the Hysteria album, and released as B-side for the Hysteria single Women in 1987. The song received radio airplay and was performed by the band live at the 1989 MTV Video Music Awards. "White Lightning" is dedicated to the memory of Clark, who has writing credits on six of the album's 10 tracks.

West Coast vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter Robert Lucas forged a path for himself in the blues world after the release of his much-hailed 1990 self-produced debut cassette, Across the River. Based in Long Beach, CA, as a solo artist Lucas recorded for the Audioquest label out of San Clemente. He was also a member of the legendary boogie blues band Canned Heat, singing and playing bottleneck guitar and harmonica with the group off and on starting in 1994. Lucas paid homage to traditional blues but also carefully crafted his own singing and slide guitar style. These talents are on ample display on his Audioquest albums, including Luke and the Locomotives, Usin' Man Blues, Built for Comfort, Layaway, and Completely Blue, all released during the '90s, as well as latter-day Canned Heat albums on the Ruf and Fuel 2000 labels.

English composer Thomas Tallis witnessed dramatic changes of religion under four monarchs, and his career accordingly represents the development of polyphonic church music in Renaissance England. Along with his student and fellow Roman Catholic, William Byrd, Tallis was one of the earliest composers to publish music under royal patent in England, and his works demonstrated the shifting doctrines and styles of liturgy in the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. This 2017 Obsidian release features one piece with a text by Henry VIII's sixth and last wife, Katherine Parr, which gives the album its title, though the mix of Roman Catholic and Anglican pieces on the program suggests that "songs of Reformation" may be seen as one-sided. In any case, the performances by the vocal ensemble Alamire and the viol consort Fretwork put the emphasis on Tallis and his varied output, rather than on the theological preferences of royalty. The result is a well-balanced portrait of Tallis, and his choral music is given transparent textures and clear diction by the 14-voice choir, which maintains independence of parts while offering an evenly blended tone.

Blondie is an American rock band founded by singer Debbie Harry and guitarist Chris Stein. The band was a pioneer in the early American new wave and punk scenes of the mid-late 1970s. Its first two albums contained strong elements of these genres, and although successful in the United Kingdom and Australia, Blondie was regarded as an underground band in the United States until the release of Parallel Lines in 1978. Over the next three years, the band achieved several hit singles including "Heart of Glass", "Call Me", "Rapture" and "The Tide Is High" and became noted for its eclectic mix of musical styles incorporating elements of disco, pop, reggae, and early rap music.

Eddi Reader has proven her worth as a sublime singer of pop and folk material (and beyond), but this returns her full-bore to her Scottish roots. Born from the concerts she did at the 2002 Celtic Connections festival, it's a decidedly lush performance that hauls in several well-known Celtic names like Phil Cunningham, John McCusker, and Ian Carr to help her along. But it's Reader's rendition of Robert Burns' classics that's the key here. She picked familiar material, songs that have become part of the folk continuum that can be both a blessing and a curse. But she reinvents something like "My Love Is Like a Red Red Rose," investing it with rich emotion. She positively flies on the more romantic songs, such as "Ae Fond Kiss," but she brings a surprising depth to "Charlie Is My Darling" and the chestnut "Auld Lang Syne," and "Ye Jacobites" sizzles with tension. The arrangements go for the cinematic rather than the intimate, putting them on the dangerous edge of new age. But such is the quality of everyone involved that there's no danger of teetering over and it becomes a tour de force. It is one of the highlights of Reader's splendid career, and even "Wild Mountainside," decidedly not a Burns song, fits in perfectly.

Repeating the formula of Low's half-vocal/half-instrumental structure, Heroes develops and strengthens the sonic innovations David Bowie and Brian Eno explored on their first collaboration. The vocal songs are fuller, boasting harder rhythms and deeper layers of sound. Much of the harder-edged sound of Heroes is due to Robert Fripp's guitar, which provides a muscular foundation for the electronics, especially on the relatively conventional rock songs. Similarly, the instrumentals on Heroes are more detailed, this time showing a more explicit debt to German synth pop and European experimental rock. Essentially, the difference between Low and Heroes lies in the details, but the record is equally challenging and groundbreaking.

By the evidence of My Secret Passion, Michael Bolton's secret passion is opera. For several years, he had included arias in his concerts, but he had never recorded them until My Secret Passion. Bolton's bombastic style is relatively well-suited to arias, since he certainly can project his voice quite powerfully. He doesn't have the subtlety to deliver this repertoire completely convincingly, but the Philharmonia Orchestra, under the direction of Steven Mercurio, helps camouflage his weaknesses, as does the guest appearance of soprano Renee Fleming. In other words, My Secret Passion isn't the disaster that Bolton's detractors were expecting, but it isn't a triumph, either. Instead, it's a welcome change of pace from a singer who has become a touch too predictable.

Giovanni Giornovich was one of the most colourful and popular violin virtuosos of his day. Apparently of Croatian descent, he was seemingly known by a different name in every country he toured (Ivan Jarnović and Giovanni Giornovichi, among some thirty variants), deliberately making the most of his mysterious origins.

Mordkovitch and Wallfisch play with a good deal of spirit and poetry in the Double Concerto and the recording captures their attractive quality of tone very effectively, since they are placed at a reasonable distance from their microphones. The LSO is set a little too far back in the sound picture, and in a slightly cavernous acoustic which may exaggerate the impression of a slightly lacklustre routine orchestral contribution under Järvi.

During the years before and after 1600, Portugal produced a small crop of masterful Requiem Masses. All of them seem to have taken Victoria's famous six-voice Requiem as a model, setting the traditional chant melodies in long notes in one of the soprano parts, accompanied by harmonious chords rather than imitative counterpoint. The Requiem by Duarte Lôbo presented here is a particularly good example. Like his compatriots, Lôbo composed his Requiem in a major tonality; Victoria's captivating gloom is replaced by an equally captivating sweetness–this funeral music is anything but morose. The Missa vox clamantis is altogether more extroverted, with a striking octave leap that begins every movement. Peter Phillips and the Tallis Scholars give the skillful, sonorous performances we've come to expect from them.

While Pollini's Schumann is not to everyone's taste – some find his virtuoso playing too cool and his bracing interpretations too intellectual – for those who revere Pollini, his Schumann is a tonic after nearly two centuries of sloppy and sentimental performance practice. Pollini's Davidsbündlertänze may not be as poetic as Arrau's and his Kreisleriana may not be as fantastic as Argerich's, but he finds meanings and significances in the works that no one ever has before. Pollini's Concert sans orchestre and Allegro in B minor are second to none in technical panache and interpretive aplomb. DG's piano sound is as real as playing the piano.