Ludwig van Beethoven wrote his 32+4 Piano Sonatas - including 4 Sonatinas (doubtfull) - between 1782 and 1822. Although originally not intended to be a meaningful whole, as a set they comprise one of the most important collections of works in the history of music. Hans von Bulow called them "The New Testament" of the piano literature (Johann Sebastian Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier being "The Old Testament").

Originally released in 1958, Johnny Cash's second album was a smash success, with singles such as "Walk The Line" and "Ballad of a Teenage Queen" shooting to the top of the charts and earning Cash a reputation as one of country's greatest songwriters and performers.

Jonathan E. Blake shows on his album "Rêverie" a dazzling wealth of facets. He was also inspired by the young genre lo-fi while working on his album: "Lo-fi chill captivates with a certain simplicity, acoustic imperfection, minimalism. Because unlike other genres, it's not about captivating the listener with driving beats, deep bass or complex vocals. Lo-fi chill is all about slowing down the listener, getting them to dream, to relax, to switch off," Jonathan E. Blake says. And that's exactly the mission he has accomplished with a total of 14 tracks.

Defender is the thirteenth album and the tenth studio album by Irish musician Rory Gallagher. It was originally released on 1st July 1987 and was recorded at The Point, Olympic, West Three, Music Works and Redan Studios. Rory said of the album “The tone and mood of the new album is blues and angry, but there's a couple of rockers, and a couple that don't fit any category; but it is really a modern blues album.”

For her most recent concept album, The Messenger, Hélène Grimaud created a fascinating pianistic dialogue between Mozart and the Ukrainian-born contemporary composer Valentin Silvestrov. T

From his teenage debut as a full fledged member of the legendary Soul Stirrers in 1951 through his career as a rhythm and blues phenomenon, Sam Cooke is acknowledged as the progenitor of soul music. His hit songs, most of which he wrote, went on to become pop standards, enduring to this day. Sam Cooke's amazing body of work is now encapsulated in Sam Cooke: Portrait of A Legend: 1951-1964. It includes 30 tracks and is part of ABKCO's Sam Cooke Remastered Collection, an initiative to offer state of the art editions of restored and remastered. The songs included into Portrait Of A Legend collectively logged 273 weeks or five years and three months on Billboard's Pop Chart and a mind boggling 508 weeks (nine years and nine months) on the Pop and R&B charts, combined.

Paul Simon's 12th solo album finds the iconic songwriter (and Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award recipient) in top form. With touches of world music, folk and pop, "So Beautiful or So What" offers a perfect summation of the best parts of Simon's songwriting and delivery.

The landmark 1973 release from one of the most iconic figures in music history, "Innervisions" is a testament to Wonder’s musicality and brilliance. The soulful concept album encompasses themes of social and urban issues performed, produced, written and arranged by Wonder. Wonder’s expressive and charming funk is showcased on the chart-topping hits “Higher Ground”, “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing” and Living for the City”. The album swings between fanciful and spacious ballads, Latin-tinged hits and full-blown Gospel numbers. The songs themselves are in such contrast that it's hard to believe they all occur on the same album.

Joseph Haydn once remarked: ‘I was not a magician on any instrument, but I knew the power and effect of all of them.’ This knowledge he used to good effect in his cello concertos, composed some twenty years apart for two different cellists in ‘his’ orchestra at the court of Prince Esterhazy. Both works are firmly established in the concert repertoire, but this has not always been the case.

It was only after his death that Franz Schubert’s symphonic works made an impact in music history. In fact, the first public performance of any of Schubert’s symphonies took place at a memorial concert held a few weeks after the composer had passed away, on 19th November 1828. The work that was heard at that occasion was Symphony No.6, D589, the ‘Little C major’, while the two undisputed master works of the series – the ‘Great C major’ and the ‘Unfinished’ – had to wait until 1838 and 1865, respectively, before being performed.

The pieces recorded here have a common characteristic: they are all inspired by lines of poets who were born in Romagna or attracted by this enchanted land. On the one hand Pascoli and Moretti, on the other Panzini, who was practically a citizen of Rimini, and Carducci, who was an enthusiastic visitor in the countryside of Cesena. Romagna is the place where their respective memorial buildings stand, ranging from those in San Mauro Pascoli and Cesenatico to the Casa Rossa in Bellaria and Villa Silvia in Lizzano, above Renato Serra’s Cesena.

Sir Donald Tovey (1875–1940), long hailed as one of the finest writers on music in English, saw himself primarily as a composer. His occasionally turbulent friendship with Pau Casals was the spur for a monumental concerto and one of his three cello sonatas: for solo cello, two cellos and cello with piano. The cello was the ideal instrument for Tovey’s Brahmsian musical language, with its long, singing lines unfolding in effortless counterpoint – though the huge passacaglia that ends the solo sonata also demands a virtuoso technique. The brief Bach arrangement recorded here for the first time arose when the twelve-year-old Tovey added a cello line to one of Bach’s best-known preludes, originally for lute.

Finally, a compendium featuring the complete impromptus for harp. Sarah O’Brien has brought together the well-known works and surprising rarities, enriched with twentieth-century compositions and seasoned with French and Italian jewels from the eighteenth century. Originals and arrangements, ideally suited to the harp.

Celebrated Chicago composer James M. Stephenson’s Symphony No. 3 is classical in nature. The work’s opening E-minor 7th chord is central to the piece, both harmonically and structurally, as is the opening flute duet. These materials are constantly in the pages of the work, whether hidden or most obvious. The four movements are laid out in B minor, E major, G major, and D major, spelling out the notes in the opening chord (although not in order). The ideas in the symphony, always reworked and revisited, appear in many guises, ranging from soaring and heroic, to quirky and fugal, to lush and sentimental, to intimate and lonely, to grand and triumphant.

This third instalment of the recent symphonic output of Fridrich Bruk (born in Ukraine in 1937 but a Finnish resident since 1974) brings two works of astonishing vitality for a composer in his eighties. Both of them have social undercurrents: Symphony No. 22 is driven by ecological concerns about the pollution of the world’s oceans, and No. 23 takes its material from folk-melodies of the Ingrians, a vanishing ethnic group on the Finnish- Russian border. The orchestral writing in both pieces is passionate and wildly inventive, a kaleidoscope of colour and counterpoint, sitting somewhere between Villa-Lobos and Pettersson in its profligate abundance.