Gautier Capuçon releases a sublime album of Edward Elgar’s cello concerto in E minor, Op.85, coupled with William Walton’s cello concerto, recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Antonio Pappano.

This disc is full of beautiful, fine-drawn, sensitive playing, very much alert to the mercurial moods of Boccherini’s music, and with Chiara Banchini as delicate as can be imagined with his filigree lines – but also full-blooded when the music so demands. Period instruments and restrained use of vibrato give a welcome airiness to the textures. I can’t imagine performances that catch more truly the special nature of Boccherini’s muse.

Following a 1989 20th anniversary reunion tour to promote Viva Santana!, Carlos Santana reorganized the band as a sextet consisting of himself, singer/guitarist Alex Ligertwood, singer/keyboardist Chester Thompson, bass player Benny Rietveld, drummer Walfredo Reyes and percussionist Armando Peraza. This unit, with such guest stars as Vernon Reid (of Living Colour), Wayne Shorter, and Bobby Womack, recorded Spirits Dancing In The Flesh, Santana's 15th and final studio album for Columbia Records. It was an unusually eclectic collection, featuring songs by Curtis Mayfield ("Gypsy Woman"), The Isley Brothers ("Who's That Lady"), and Olatunji ("Jin-Go-Lo-Ba"), as well as interpolations of John Coltrane's "Peace On Earth" and Jimi Hendrix's "Third Stone From The Sun" into Santana's "Mother Earth." (The Olatunji song is the original version of the tune adapted as "Jingo" that became Santana's first hit in 1969)…

The 1972 self-titled album from Chicago-based quintet Styx could be considered an ambitious outing for any band's debut. Clearly influenced by the primarily U.K-centered progressive rock scene, Dennis DeYoung (keyboard/vocals) hooked up with twin siblings Chuck Panozzo (bass/vocals) and John Panozzo (drums/percussion/vocals) in a combo named the Tradewinds during the late '60s. The first lineup of Styx began to emerge once John Curulewski (guitar/synthesizer/vocals) and James "J.Y." Young (guitar/vocals) joined up, initially surfacing under the moniker TW4.

While In Live Concert at the Royal Albert Hall may not be Opeth’s only live album, it’s certainly their classiest. Recorded at the famous London venue, the live album features the Swedish progressive death metal masters masterfully executing a nearly three-hour set. Most notable about the live set is that Opeth chose to kick it off by performing Blackwater Park, their artistic breakthrough, in its entirety. With an amazingly tight performance and a sparklingly clear recording, In Live Concert at the Royal Albert Hall is an easy addition for metal fans. If you’ve ever wanted to hear the quintessential death metal band at work live, it won’t get any more convenient than this.

Organist Shirley Scott and her then-husband, tenor great Stanley Turrentine always made potent music together. This CD, which combines together the former Prestige LPs The Soul Is Willing and Soul Shoutin', finds "Mr. T." at his early peak, playing some intense yet always soulful solos on such pieces as Sy Oliver's "Yes Indeed," "Secret Love," and his memorable originals "The Soul Is Willing" and "Deep Down Soul." Scott, who found her own niche within the dominant Jimmy Smith style, swings hard throughout the set and (together with drummer Grassella Oliphant and either Major Holley or Earl May on bass) the lead voices play with such consistent enthusiasm that one would think these were club performances.

The Later Years 1987-2019 is an explicit sequel to The Early Years 1965-1972, the 2016 box set that rounded up nearly all the loose ends and detours from the first era of Pink Floyd, the fearless period when they were figuring out what the band could do. The Later Years covers a different time, when their most pressing challenge was demonstrating that they could thrive artistically and commercially without the presence of Roger Waters, the bassist/songwriter who charted Floyd's direction between 1973's Dark Side of the Moon and 1983's The Final Cut. In the parlance of these deluxe box sets, that decade amounts to "The Middle Years," a period far more prolific than 1987-2019, when the group released just two studio albums along with two live albums and a posthumous project that didn't arrive until 2014, by which time the group had largely been inactive for 20 years…