Sphinctour is a live CD/DVD/VHS release by the industrial metal band Ministry released in 2002. It contains various tracks recorded on their 1996 world tour in support of the album Filth Pig. The original objective of Sphinctour was as a home video release, though a CD version was also made. There are no discernible differences audio-wise from the DVD, although, like their In Case You Didn't Feel Like Showing Up release, two tracks were omitted from the CD release.

The Violin Concerto in A minor, BWV 1041, was composed by Johann Sebastian Bach. It is unknown exactly when the work was composed, but copies dated 1730 suggest it may have been composed later than the other two concertos for violin, perhaps during Bach’s time as director of the Collegium Musicum in Leipzig.

The Musical Offering (German title Musikalisches Opfer or Das Musikalische Opfer), BWV 1079, is a collection of canons and fugues and other pieces of music by Johann Sebastian Bach, all based on a single musical theme given to him by Frederick the Great (Frederick II of Prussia), to whom they are dedicated.

The Ricercar a 6, a six-voice fugue which is the highpoint of the entire work, was put forward by the musicologist Charles Rosen as the most significant piano composition in history (partly because it is one of the first). This ricercar is also occasionally called the Prussian Fugue, a name used by Bach himself.

Though the cello and especially the violin were the beneficiaries of numerous solo works by the pen of J.S. Bach, the instrument we know today simply as the viola (but in Bach’s time would have been the viola da braccio) was not fortunate enough to receive original, solo compositions. Instead, violists were bestowed with the lead role in the great Sixth Brandenburg Concerto. This MDG album headlines the Bach sonatas for viola and piano, this is a bit misleading.

Volume 48 of Masaaki Suzuki’s and Bach Collegium Japan’s traversal of Johann Sebastian Bach’s cantatas opens with Cantata 34, O ewiges Feuer, o Ursprung der Liebe – a jubilant work intended for Whit Sunday 1727, but with its origins in an earlier, secular wedding cantata.

Gott, man lobet dich in der Stille (BWV 120) was composed for a festive church service marking the annual town council election in Leipzig. But the programme also also offers moments of introspection and quiet beauty, such as the celebrated alto aria Ich will dich all mein Leben lang from Cantata 117, here performed by the counter-tenor Robin Blaze, well-known to the followers of this series.

After the Requiem, these works, along with the “Great” Mass, constitute most of the rest of Mozart’s essential liturgical music. Mozart wrote the works on this disc in 1779–80, just before he escaped Salzburg to seek his fortune in Vienna. Interestingly, this sensual music feels closer to the intimate operatic world of Così fan tutte than to the cathedral, particularly in the performances at hand.

On we go to the 43rd release in this, probably the best series of Bach’s cantatas going, at least in Super Audio. (I still like Gardiner’s series a lot, though it will not be complete.) But Suzuki, far more than chief competitor Ton Koopman, has given us a set for the ages, not only performed with consummate style, historical considerations, and musical substance, but with a feeling for these seminal religious works that transcends the merely mechanical presentation that we so often—too often—hear. These three pieces are reached through the way-back machine in the year 1725, smack in the middle of Christmas season, enjoyed by Bach and congregants during his third year in Leipzig. The court poet Georg Christian Lehms supplied the texts for these pieces from a collection published in 1711.

Inspired by the earthy eroticism of Harriet Andersson, in the first of her many roles for him, Ingmar Bergman had a major international breakthrough with this sensual and ultimately ravaging tale of young love. A girl (Andersson) and boy (Lars Ekborg) from working-class families in Stockholm run away from home to spend a secluded, romantic summer at the beach, far from parents and responsibilities. Inevitably, it is not long before the pair are forced to return to reality. The version initially released in the U.S. was reedited by its distributor into something more salacious, but the original Summer with Monika (Sommaren med Monika), presented here, is a work of stunning maturity and one of Bergman’s most important films.

Condemned to six years in prison, Malik El Djebena, cannot read or write. Arriving at the jail entirely alone, he appears younger and more fragile than the other convicts. He is 19 years old. Cornered by the leader of the Corsican gang currently ruling the prison, he is given a number of missions to carry out, toughening him up and gaining the gang leader's confidence in the process. Malik is a fast learner and rises up the prison ranks, all the while secretly devising his own plans…

Ali, Kwita, Omar, and Boukber are a group of street urchins living on the hard streets of Casablanca. Their everyday lives are filled with violence, begging, and indifference. In order to survive they create a bond of friendship and family between then. The bond is cut short when Ali is senselessly killed at the beginning of the film by a blow to the head; his life taken by a single act of a rival gang. Ali's friends decide not to report his death to the police, who would have the boy buried in a potter's field. Instead they decide to give him a worthy burial, to bury Ali on the private island he so often dreamed of. Ali Zaoua captures the power of dreams and presence of hope in the harshest of circumstances.

On a cold night in a remote cabin, Professor John Oldman gathers his most trusted colleagues for an extraordinary announcement: He is an immortal who has migrated through 140 centuries of evolution and must now move on. Is Oldman truly Cro-Magnon or simply insane? Now one man will force these scientists and scholars to confront their own notions of history, religion and humanity, all leading to a final revelation that may shatter their world forever.

Disc No. 34 in Suzuki’s series of Bach cantatas brings him well over halfway through the list. Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern (BWV 1) is one of the more familiar works, first recorded by Karl Ristenpart for Archiv in mono, while the other two first appeared in the early stereo era under Wolfgang Gönnenwein and Karl Richter. All three were part of Bach’s 1725 cycle of chorale cantatas that were based on hymns, a cycle that ended incomplete with BWV 1. The opening and closing chorales in this work are Philipp Nicolai’s hymn (set to a medieval text) and make a splendid effect, a deliberate choice to lead off the published collected works.

Completing the cycle of Mozart’s violin concertos, begun on BIS-SACD-1754, Richard Tognetti and his Australian Chamber Orchestra offer us the first, second and fourth concerto, along with two shorter works for violin and orchestra: the Adagio in E major and the Rondo in C major. All Mozart’s works in this genre were written during a few years quite early in his career, and as Mozart specialist John Irving explains in his liner notes, the composer, who by all accounts was a fine violinist, may have been making a bid for a better position as Konzertmeister at the court in Salzburg where he already held a less distinguished post.

R.E.M. began to move toward mainstream record production on Lifes Rich Pageant, but they didn't have a commercial breakthrough until the following year's Document. Ironically, Document is a stranger, more varied album than its predecessor, but co-producer Scott Litt – who would go on to produce every R.E.M. album in the following decade – is a better conduit for the band than Don Gehman, giving the group a clean sound without sacrificing their enigmatic tendencies.