For anyone who likes to dip back into the old world of modern instrument and larger ensemble baroque performance, this is a good opportunity to hear Zelenka performed that way. There is some outstanding singing from the two female soloists, especially in the first duet of the Gloria, and the choir, in terms of old style large groups, is actually one of the best focused I have heard, comparable to the best recordings from St.Hedwig's, for example.

Christophe Rousset and the Talens Lyriques bring us to the stage of the Royal Academy of Music where Pygmalion, an act of ballet by Jean-Philippe Rameau inspired by an episode of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, was created in 1748. Love, showing empathy for Pygmalion's despair of loving a statue, invigorates the sculpted woman who immediately falls in love with her creator. Very suggestive, the music of this tender and mischievous ballet deploys the grace of 18th century dances. Like Ovid's Love, Christophe Rousset instils life in this score, one of Rameau's greatest successes in his day, and offers us, thanks to his sense of drama and his impeccable leadership, a new and essential reading of this ballet.

The Gathering is the first-ever complete cross-career celebration of the U.K.’s much adored melodic rockers musical canon. From the very first demo’s recorded in 1974 right up to the last album, Into The Valley Of The Moonking released in 2009, The Gathering captures every era of Magnum’s life and work over 5 classic discs. Included in the chronology are previously unreleased live tracks; rare demos; hard-to-find single B-Sides featuring extended and alternative versions. Disc 5 of the set is a complete vintage live performance previously unreleased on CD and taken from the Wings Of Heaven tour recorded at the Hammersmith Odeon, London in March 1988. Accompanying the set is a sumptuous 60-page booklet which includes a ‘no stone left un-turned’ ten thousand word story of Magnum written by the Classic Rock magazine news editor, Dave Ling.

After a period of inactivity since 2007's The Blue, which involved the departure of longstanding member Giuseppe Orlando, Novembre returns with URSA, a new set of potent and poignant tracks. The album effortlessly blends soothing, epic, melancholy and intense moods and represents a high point from one of the originators of the atmospheric Death/Doom Metal scene.
Headed by founding member and writer Carmelo Orlando (with a reinvigorated musical alliance with Massimiliano Pagliuso), the line-up is completed by Fabio Fraschini (previously bassist on the Materia album), and David Folchitto on drums. Anders Nystrom from Katatonia makes a special guest appearance, adding his own unique 'cold' touch to the album's single track Annoluce…

Inspired by a time of war, protest, and a nation on the brink, Shostakovich's Symphony No 11 reflects upon the tumult and tragedy of the 1905 Russian Revolution.

Pierrot lunaire, premiered in Berlin in 1912, is a series of twenty-one short melodramas for voice and five instruments on German translations of poems by Albert Giraud. Here the composer first introduces Sprechgesang (speech-song), a technique that revolutionised declamation. Schoenberg wanted the piece to be ironic, at once tender and grotesque, in the manner of cabaret songs. Patricia Kopatchinskaja, the violinist who is also an occasional actress, had long dreamt of playing and reciting this unique work. It was a pain in her arm preventing her from playing the violin that one day propelled her into the role of narrator: ‘All my life I have felt that I was Pierrot.

"I Will Not Go Quietly" and "The Wind Cries Mary" are just two of the highlights from this stormin' album which includes Don Airey, Bernie Marsden and Mario Parga in the line-up with Graham, Cozy and Ray. Formed in 1987, Forcefield’s ever-changing line-up brought together the mainstays of some of the biggest 80s rock bands. The original members were Pete Prescott, Ray Fenwick and Cozy Powell. Amongst guitarist Fenwick’s credits were The Spencer Davis Group, Fancy and The Ian Gillan Band, while drummer Powell had been a key figure in bands of the calibre of Black Sabbath, Rainbow and Whitesnake and is widely regarded as an all-time rock great.

Michael Chapman's The Man Who Hated Mornings might be seen as comparable to Eric Clapton's Slowhand release of the same year, and the presence of guitarist Mick Ronson (reunited with Chapman after six years spent elsewhere) does ensure that the frets get a fair workout as the album goes on. The comparison, however, has more in common with the mood of the record than any virtuoso concerns – it is Chapman at his most laid-back, and only occasionally stirring himself into first gear. A cover of Dylan's "Ballad in Plain D" is a triumphant highlight, seguing into Chapmans own "Steel Bonnets" instrumental to emerge a shoo-in for any "best-of" Chapman anthology.

By the release of Amigos, the Santana band's seventh album, only Carlos Santana and David Brown remained from the band that conquered Woodstock, and only Carlos had been in the band continuously since. Meanwhile, the group had made some effort to arrest its commercial slide, hiring an outside producer, David Rubinson, and taking a tighter, more up-tempo, and more vocal approach to its music. The overt jazz influences were replaced by strains of R&B/funk and Mexican folk music. The result was an album more dynamic than any since Santana III in 1971. "Let It Shine" (number 77), an R&B-tinged tune, became the group's first chart single in four years, and the album returned Santana to Top Ten status.