Forty years after they officially broke up, ABBA are back. Although sometimes it felt like they never really went away, thanks to the Mamma Mia! musical and movie, as well as the band's prominent placement in films like Muriel's Wedding and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and in the arsenal of every wedding DJ.

Although only some of Springsteen's works indicate the name of the E Street Band on the envelopes, his most important albums - Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town, The River, Born in the U.S.A., The Rising - all relied on the musical accompaniment of the group.

The two concertos performed here by Michael Collins and the Philharmonia Orchestra were both intended for a specific player – Mozart composed his for Anton Stadler and Richard Birchall for Michael Collins himself. Both works – as well as Mozart's Clarinet Quintet – were also written for a particular instrument: the basset clarinet, a slightly larger and deeper clarinet than the one in A which soon after Mozart had written his concerto became the standard. At the very core of the clarinet repertoire, the two works by Mozart have until recently been played on the A clarinet, with necessary adjustments being made to the solo part. Nowadays, however, they are more and more often performed on the instrument they were intended for.

Gunter Herbig's meditative e-guitar albums have become cult objects far beyond the classical music scene. After 'ex oriente' with arrangements of piano music by Gurdjieff/de Hartmann (BIS Records) and the Villa-Lobos album 'Tristorosa' (Aldilà Records), he has now taken on the iconic music of Arvo Pärt on his Gretsch White Falcon.

The music of Samuel Adler – born in Mannheim in 1928 but long since one of the leading figures of American music – has its roots in the Neo-Classical clarity of composers like Copland and Hindemith, who were among his teachers. The works on this album arose from a range of impulses: a Neo-Baroque concerto grosso and a tribute to Bach encase a series of tributes to lost individuals and traditions; and two jeux d’esprit – Ives’ tongue-in-cheek Variations on America and Holst’s ‘Jupiter’ from The Planets – both bring jollity in Adler’s idiomatic arrangements for string orchestra.

From 1950 and onwards, Allan Pettersson was mainly occupied with working on the monolithic symphonies for which he is best known. But before that, while still a student at the Conservatory in Stockholm and later a viola player in the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, he composed two sets of songs: Six Songs and Barfotasånger (Barefoot Songs). Of these two, the second would become especially important for the composer, who returned to it throughout his life, quoting various songs from it in his symphonies.

Christian Lee Hutson starts his new album Quitters with a laugh. In this follow up to his ANTI records debut, Beginners, Hutson moves away from the focus on growing up to the dread and complications of growing older.

Arnold Schoenberg’s second string quartet – included on a previous release by the Gringolts Quartet – is often used as a reference point when the emergence of atonality is discussed. That work, where Schoenberg in the fourth movement suddenly does away with a time signature, was composed in 1907, three years after his first work in the genre: the String Quartet in D minor, Op. 7, a work which still has much in common with the Late Romantic idiom of Richard Strauss.

Chopin is touted to be the ‘poet’ of the piano. One must wonder what that means. A poem is an art form of taking written words and arranging them so that language is elevated up to an artistic realm. I feel Chopin, then, was indeed a poet of the piano. He took the extant musical language of his time, expanded the musical vocabulary, and arranged them to make the expanded scope of expression possible. Chopin’s music requires a specialised kind of pianism: supple yet strong fingers, an almost infinite range of tone colours, a sense of timing that is well-proportioned but not exaggerated, etc. Nina Svetlanova was my teacher during my doctoral studies at the Manhattan School of Music.

In 2019, Alexandre and Jean-Jacques Kantorow’s recording of the last three piano concertos by Camille Saint-Saëns earned the highest praise around the world, including a Diapason d’or de l’année, Editor’s Choice in Gramophone and top marks and recommendations from the leading German web sites Klassik Heute and Klassik.com. The Kantorows’ orchestra of choice was the Finnish ensemble Tapiola Sinfonietta, and they have now returned to Helsinki to record not only Saint-Saëns’ first two concertos, but all of the remaining works for piano and orchestra.

On her second PENTATONE album FLOW, Annelien Van Wauwe presents a programme inspired by her love for yoga, combining Mozart’s famous Clarinet Concerto with the world premiere recording of Wim Henderickx’s concerto SUTRA. Van Wauwe performs both works on the characteristic basset clarinet, together with the renowned NDR Radiophilharmonie under the baton of Andrew Manze.

Five Minutes for Earth is a project that both celebrates our planet and illuminates our challenge to preserve it. In 2020, I asked each of the composers featured in this collection if they would consider contributing a work for solo harp of approximately five minutes in length that expresses a powerful experience inspired by Earth in one of its many conditions or atmospheres. I was overwhelmed by the generosity of their immediate responses and set about assembling this labor-of-love project.

Flutist Don Bailey and harpist Laura Logan Brandenburg offer a charming program of music for flute and harp that includes works from the standard repertoire as well as newer works by British and American composers. Don Bailey has enjoyed a diverse career as a performer, professor, festival planner, and board member of several arts organizations.

The paths of the soloist can often be lonely, especially for one of the most outstanding instrumental soloists like Felix Klieser. All the greater is the joy when closer artistic and human connections are formed through many years of playing together. Felix Klieser's concerts with the Prague based Zemlinsky Quartet are therefore his favourite of the year, because after countless performances together, the five have long since bonded more than a purely musical community.

A violinist, pianist and composer of contemporary music from small ensembles to symphonic orchestras, Grammy nominated Gregor Huebner makes music that is accessibly sophisticated and interesting, breaking down borders in between contemporary music, jazz and world music.