30: Very Best of Deep Purple is a 1998 compilation album by English rock band Deep Purple, celebrating 30 years of the successful band. There are two CD versions of the album, a single CD and a double CD. The vinyl version was a double LP printed on purple vinyl, and the tracklisting was identical to the single CD version. The single CD version concentrates on the greatest hits of Deep Purple through the years, and contains mostly edited single versions of the songs, for example "Child in Time" which was over ten minutes long in its original form on the album Deep Purple in Rock.

The sole, eponymous album of this great progressive band was released in May 1970 by the Danish Sonet Records as a pressing of just 1000 copies. The music of Pan was an ambitious mixture of heavy rock sounds with folk, jazz and classical music and was characterized by great English (and some French) vocals from Robert Lelievre (who sadly committed suicide in 1973), fluid tasteful guitar parts, atmospheric Hammond phrases and loose, but solid rhythm section. This tightly arranged and beautifully produced LP is now regarded as one of the very best rock albums ever recorded in Denmark.

The place for Art of Noise neophytes to start, Daft collects (Who's Afraid Of?) The Art of Noise! and Into Battle with the Art of Noise, along with two reworkings of "Moments in Love" from the original U.K. release of that song, to make a fantastic hour's worth of music. If anything, a single or two aside, Daft beats out the official Best Of compilation by a mile. Having aged superbly with time, AON's early works sound all the more advanced and of the moment, a testament especially to Trevor Horn's excellent production and Anne Dudley's gripping arrangements. Further entertainment comes from the liner notes, which aren't merely state-of-the-art 1984 album design but an apparently barbed attack on the further incarnation of the band from one Otto Flake…

British group the Enid were formed in 1974. The founder of the band was Robert John Godfrey (Barclay James Harvest). In forming the group he was joined by Stephen Stewart and Francis Lickerish. They released their first album in 1976. Coming at the heart of the punk rock era, the jazz/progressive rock-ish release (In the Region of the Summer Stars) certainly did not fit into that genre. Two years later the group followed that release with Aerie Faerie Nonsense. In 1979 they released Touch Me and Six Pieces came out the following year.

Grammy-winning conductor Andris Nelsons and his "superb" (The Guardian) Gewandhausorchester Leipzig continue their acclaimed couplings of Bruckner symphonies and Wagner masterpieces with Symphony No. 6 and Symphony No. 9. The symphonies are accompanied by the Wagner's Prelude to his last complete opera, Parsifal, and the Siegfried Idyll.

These reflective character pieces are handled with finesse and poetic expression by Barenboim, who usually plays such subtle Romantic music with great restraint, thoughtfulness, and refinement, and seldom lets its passions get away from his control. To the extent that Barenboim plays with a delicate touch and Deutsche Grammophon's wide audio range allows for many nuances, there may be some concern whether the volume of the recording will need adjustment because a soft level makes the piano seem too faint, while a recommended middle setting yields a more credible presence.