As well as being a virtuoso soloist and improviser on the piano, Beethoven was also a competent violinist – an experience he put to good use in his ten sonatas for violin and piano. Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov have long cherished the project of recording them all. The immense care they have taken over documentation and performance has enabled them to get as close as possible to the composer’s intentions.

With his unusually large output, Fayrfax bridges the gap between the Eton Choirbook and Tallis. No one before him had achieved the kind of expressive power he managed in these four antiphons, which every student of English music should study as being trailblazing and quite exceptional.

Rod Stewart's sixth album was called Atlantic Crossing because the singer was literally crossing the Atlantic, making America his new home for reasons of the heart (he was fully enamored with actress Britt Ekland at the time) and the wallet (he was eager to escape Britain's restrictive tax rates). As it happens, 1975 was a perfect time for a new beginning for Stewart: the Faces were falling apart, his last LP, Smiler, wasn't roundly loved, and he had wrapped up his contract with Mercury and signed with Warner, so he completely rebooted, hiring legendary producer Tom Dowd to steer him through a slick, streamlined revamping of his signature sound.

For his first CD with La Dolce Volta, Olivier Latry has chosen a programme devoted to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. This recording, made on the massive Cavaille-Coll organ of Notre-Dame de Paris, of which he is titular organist, raises a number of fascinating questions.

Cannonball Adderley gave up his own band in 1957 when he had the opportunity to become a sideman in Miles Davis' epic ensemble with John Coltrane, eventually resulting in some of the greatest jazz recordings of all time (including Milestones and Kind of Blue). Davis returned the favor in March of 1958, appearing as a sideman on Adderley's all-star quintet date for Blue Note, and the resulting session is indeed Somethin' Else. Both horn players are at their peak of lyrical invention, crafting gorgeous, flowing blues lines on the title tune and "One for Daddy-O," as the rhythm team (Hank Jones, Sam Jones, Art Blakey) creates a taut, focused groove (pianist Hank Jones' sly, intuitive orchestrations are studies of harmonic understatement).

Add 3121 to the mounting pile of evidence: Prince is the black Beck. He's a whole lot sexier, no doubt, but there's more to both musicians than image. All-out weirdness for one. Edginess for another. And a fine-tuned sense of how to combine the two to create some of the decade's most vital music for a third. Prince–looking ageless in videos for the first two singles, the controversy-courting "Black Sweat" and the sauna-steeped "Te Amo Corazon"–proves fearless as ever here, folding fat slabs of disco-funk into rock, heaping measured doses of hip-hop atop soul-tinted jazz supports, and slamming Latin rhythms against old-school R&B riffs. Nothing sounds as slinky-stylish-smart. And nobody delivers quite so deliciously, especially when what they're delivering is ultimately a madcap sonic mash. The usual hype surrounding a Prince release attended this one; over the long-term, expect a few standouts within a way worth-it set to emerge. They include the danceable "Love"; the gospel-lite falsetto feast "Satisfied"; and the summer-breezy "Beautiful, Loved & Blessed".

As we know, Ekseption was a band leadered by keyboardiste and great Dutch musician Rick van der Linden, and as we know, Ekseption was a band which made instrumental songs, all based in Classical Music, classical pieces converted into rock. After 5 sutdio albums, in 1973 they released their first "The Best of", compillation called "Ekseptional Classics", which has the most well known clasical pieces converted by them into rock, jazz, and symphonic.
There are few own compositions in some albums, but not here. This compilation is entirely instrumental and, of course, if you see the tracklisting, you'll know that chosen themes are masterpieces of classical music. The lower points are some simplicity and the weak percussion section, but -in the other hand- Rick van der Linden is the keyboardist: even if this kind of music isn't your favorite, you must hear mister Rick playing.

Hans Neuenfels, the luminary of modern director’s theatre, provides a compelling, multi-layered staging of Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame at Salzburg Festival. In the stark, mostly abstract sets by Christian Schmidt, Neuenfels ‘draws gripping performances from a strong cast’ (The New York Times) including Brandon Jovanovich and Evgenia Muraveva in the title roles of Herman and Lisa and legendary singer Hanna Schwarz as Countess. Mariss Jansons, ‘a compelling director in his element’ (The New York Times) makes his rare appearance as an opera conductor, at the helm of the Wiener Philharmoniker – ‘Another triumph in this hot festival summer!’ (Neue Zürcher Zeitung). Mariss Jansons, ‘maybe the best connoisseur of this unjustly neglected opera’ (Süddeutsche Zeitung), turns this Queen of Spades with as much verve as sensitivity into a ‘captivating musical drama’ (Die Zeit).

Rainmaker is the 1980 debut album by Kevin Moore, now more commonly known as Keb' Mo'. The album features the songs "Rainmaker" and "Anybody Seen My Girl" which were each re-released in Moore's later releases Slow Down and Keb' Mo' respectively.

In response to critical carping that his ambitious, evocative music somehow didn't swing enough, Charles Mingus returned to the earthiest and earliest sources of black musical expression, namely the blues, gospel, and old-time New Orleans jazz. The resulting LP, Blues and Roots, isn't quite as wildly eclectic as usual, but it ranks as arguably Mingus' most joyously swinging outing. Working with simple forms, Mingus boosts the complexity of the music by assembling a nine-piece outfit and arranging multiple lines to be played simultaneously - somewhat akin to the Dixieland ensembles of old, but with an acutely modern flavor. Anyone who had heard "Haitian Fight Song" shouldn't have been surprised that such an album was well within Mingus' range, but jazz's self-appointed guardians have long greeted innovation with reactionary distaste…