There are some very pleasant surprises here. Not all of this music is top-drawer Tchaikovsky, but the composer also wrote what can only be called very good "bad music." In other words, if something's lacking in melodic charm or formal sophistication, he usually hides it behind a higher-than-average orchestral excitement and hysteria quotient. Fatum is a perfect example: it's slow to get going, but before you know it it's slamming you through the roof on its way to a rousing conclusion, and your overwhelming impression is that you've had a very good time. This may be the weakest work on the disc–all of the others are very good, and a bunch are masterpieces, so if you want all of the Tchaikovsky tone poems in one bargain set, this is a good pick.

Barcelona is a collaborative studio album recorded by Freddie Mercury, frontman of popular British rock band Queen, and operatic soprano Montserrat Caballé. It was released in 1988. After Barcelona was selected to host the 1992 Summer Olympics, Mercury was approached to write a song as a theme for the forthcoming games. The idea was to create a duet with Caballé, as she was from the city. He had been a long-standing admirer of her and she in turn grew to respect his talents very highly. They decided to work on an album together, with Mercury and Mike Moran taking the creative lead as songwriters. Mercury and Moran made and sent her tapes of the music with Mercury singing in falsetto as a guide vocal for Montserrat's parts. As they rarely had an opening in their schedule to meet, her parts were recorded at another location.

On Mighty Rearranger, the core of the band Robert Plant showcased on 2002's Dreamland - and named the Strange Sensation - is a full-blown expanded lineup that shares the bill with him. Guitarists Justin Adams and Skin Tyson, drummer Clive Deamer, keyboardist John Baggot, and bassist Billy Fuller help Plant give listeners his most musically satisfying and diverse recording since, well, Led Zeppelin's Physical Grafitti. The reference is not a mere platitude to Plant's pedigree. The songs, production, and sequencing of the album overtly incorporates those sounds as well as those of Eastern modalism, Malian folk, guitar rock, R&B, and others, for inspiration - and why shouldn't they? Mighty Rearranger opens with "Another Tribe," a sociopolitical ballad that touches upon the textural string backdrops from Zep's "Kashmir" and is fueled by Moroccan bendir drums…

An Anthology - The Elektra Years is a double-disc, 33-song set that offers a comprehensive overview of Paul Butterfield's eight years with the label. His first two albums, Paul Butterfield Blues Band and East-West, were seminal, groundbreaking records that blurred the boundaries between blues, jazz and rock, suggesting everything from blues-rock to psychedelia. They were stunning achievements which proved difficult to match, but Butterfield's remaining albums for the label all had a few good cuts. An Anthology does a nice job of rounding up those highlights, picking the best moments from uneven records; consequently, it's quite a valuable package for listeners who simply want a sampling from those later albums instead of purchasing them individually. Butterfield's first two albums remain necessary listens in their own right, but this set offers an excellent summary of his entire stint with Elektra.

The big news for Selena Gomez before the release of her sixth album, Rare, is that she finally had a number one single after years of getting close. The introspective and emotionally raw ballad "Lose You to Love Me" surrounded Gomez's aching vocals with sparse piano, swirling strings, and lush background vocals, and connected instantly with her fans and anyone who ever had to ditch someone in order to save themselves. That song, and the record it appears on, mark something of a turning point in her career.

Out to Lunch stands as Eric Dolphy's magnum opus, an absolute pinnacle of avant-garde jazz in any form or era. Its rhythmic complexity was perhaps unrivaled since Dave Brubeck's Time Out, and its five Dolphy originals - the jarring Monk tribute "Hat and Beard," the aptly titled "Something Sweet, Something Tender," the weirdly jaunty flute showcase "Gazzelloni," the militaristic title track, the drunken lurch of "Straight Up and Down" - were a perfect balance of structured frameworks, carefully calibrated timbres, and generous individual freedom. Much has been written about Dolphy's odd time signatures, wide-interval leaps, and flirtations with atonality. And those preoccupations reach their peak on Out to Lunch, which is less rooted in bop tradition than anything Dolphy had ever done. But that sort of analytical description simply doesn't do justice to the utterly alien effect of the album's jagged soundscapes…

Recorded live in the "Amphitheatre" at Pompei during 1972 "Dark Side Of The Moon session".

"Clearlight Symphony" is one of the finest progressive instrumental albums to emerge from the '70's. The genius of Clearlight's music rests in the hands of Cyrille Verdeaux who plays Grand Piano, Mellotron, organ and synths galore. "Clearlight Symphony" is one of the richest sounding space patrols you will ever encounter. Verdeaux's cleverly injects classical structures and instrumentation (piano) with fusion-like inspired parts (aka Gong) and occasional psychedelic guitar flare-ups. The sound is rich and full of color and texture with some superb melodies and atmospheres. Verdeaux is helped by well known guests such as Steve Hillage (guitars), Didier Malherbe (sax) and Tim Blake (synths) who add some great depth to the music. "Clearlight Symphony" is essentially 2 long (over mins) movements which both are killer and would make the perfect dinner music piece.

David Arkenstone's career has been a long and unusual one. On one hand, he makes new age music that takes influence from composers like John Williams, Brian Eno, and Tangerine Dream. On the other hand, most of his songs are highly based in fantasy and science fiction, taking their inspiration from the works of Mercedes Lackey and J.R.R. Tolkien. It is this bizarre mishmash of influences that produces some of the most recognized and respected instrumentals of the '80s and '90s. The album is programmed quite nicely, taking the listener on a sonic journey through Arkenstone's career by attempting to capture certain moods and styles from song to song. The transitions are flawless, leaving the listener without any tracks to skip through or slow moments…

Recorded live at Paradiso, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 24 August 1969 and live in Stockholm, 12 November 1970.

CPO’s rediscovery of Church Music from Hamburg (1600-1800) continues with a concert, broadcast live on Deutschlandradio Kultur, featuring rediscovered works by Reinhard Keiser. Only three oratorios by Reinhard Keiser exist in full. Many shorter pieces, fragments, and works of uncertain authorship still lie unpublished in archives and libraries.

Willi Apel, one of the great twentieth-century experts on harpsichord music, declared: ‘With d’Anglebert, French keyboard music reaches its highest point of Baroque magnificence and fulness. His skill in continuing a melody, contrapuntally interweaving voices, concatenating harmonies by way of suspensions, and always using meaningful figures as ornaments brings to a final culmination and maturity what his teacher, Chambonnières, began . . .’

Nur wenige Werke der Musikgeschichte erfreuen sich so großer Beliebtheit wie die 1850 wiederentdeckten Sechs Brandenburgischen Konzerte von Johann Sebastian Bach. Diese dem Markgrafen Christian Ludwig von Brandenburg gewidmeten Konzerte wurden von der Hofkapelle München unter der musikalischen Leitung von Rüdiger Lotter in einer erfrischenden Interpretation neu eingespielt und bestechen durch ihre straffen Tempi. Zahlreiche bekannte Solisten wie Dorothee Oberlinger, Hille Perl, Rüdiger Lotter u. a. brillieren in den von Bach untereinander sehr unterschiedlich instrumentierten Konzerten.