This is a most encouraging issue. In the wake of BIS’s continuing series of Mozart Camargo Guarnieri’s symphonies, Naxos – knowing a good thing when they hear it – have collected his three piano concertos onto a single disc, the First being a premiere recording with neither of the others otherwise available. Indeed, there is little enough of Guarnieri’s bright and attractive music in the catalogue at all. Recording the appealing First Concerto highlighted some major textual issues with the score, as James Melo succinctly summarizes in the booklet.

18 tracks live at the Panama Club 2004. Tracks include 'Angel', 'Turn The World' & 'Sleepwalking'.

This amazing ex-Robert Plant axeman at last on a UK label and playing the Blues. He appeared on a sell-out stage at the 2006 Great British R&B Festival where he amazed the audience with his wonderful and emotive playing. A superb album full of Innes exciting and innovative guitar playing at its best with the songs recorded "live" without much overdubbing. His playing is really varied from some head up blistering solos as in So Tired of Living, to the jazzy Desert Rain, there's a funky Natural High, even an acoustic track on Midlife Crisis.

While he left an extensive and significant output of stage-works, the contribution of Kurt Weill to orchestral and instrumental genres was largely restricted to his formative years. The angular Symphony No. 1, completed in 1921, reflects something of the turmoil of post-World War I. In 1933, with Hitler in power, Weill escaped to Paris where he wrote Symphony No. 2, “one of the 20th century’s forgotten masterpieces”. The Symphonic Nocturne, adapted from the Broadway musical, Lady in the Dark, a 1940 collaboration between Weill, Moss Hart and Ira Gershwin, exhibits all the hallmarks of bitter-sweet lyricism of Weill’s theatrical works from his American years.

Thuille, a Savoyard, created a name for himself in Munich’s academic life. Now, if his name is known at all, it is because of his famous pupils who included Hermann Abendroth, Ernest Bloch and Walter Braunfels. His writing as a composer has been overshadowed by his reputation as a teacher. Perhaps all that will be changed by this CD. It deserves to. In fact he wrote plentifully with almost one hundred songs and six operas although I can find only three listed in my old edition of Grove.

In his position as the king’s composer, Jean Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) created the opera Persée for Louis XIV. The opera was considered the crowning achievement of 17th century French music theatre and was widely recognized as Lully’s greatest work. Filled with dancing, fight scenes, monsters and special effects, this truly spectacular music drama recounts the thrilling story of Perseus, son of Zeus and heroic vanquisher of the snake-haired Gorgon Medusa. More than half a century after its premiere, Louis XV chose “Persée” to open the new Royal Opera House at the Chateau de Versailles, an event that formed part of the celebrations for the future Louis XVI’s marriage to Marie Antoinette.

Loreena McKennitt recorded her 1985 debut on a farm in southern Ontario, a pastoral setting that infuses every note on Elemental with atmosphere and rustic simplicity. What's immediately striking is the Canadian harpist's fully realized voice. Most artists take years to hone their pipes, and that McKennitt brings a nearly finished version to the table on her first outing is not only notable, it's revelatory. McKennitt presents an evenly distributed mix of new age and contemporary Celtic that evokes the work of Enya, Clannad, and Capercaille, adapting the words of Yeats ("Stolen Child") and Blake ("Lullaby") as effortlessly as she rearranges traditional folk songs like "The Blacksmith" or "Banks of Claudy." Elemental may not have the worldbeat scope or acrobatic arrangements inherent in her later works, but its epic balladry and relative sparseness offers an intriguing look at the artist at her most subtle.

Recorded in various halls and abbeys in Ireland, and completed in the Church of Our Lady in Guelph, Ontario, harpist/arranger/vocalist Loreena McKennitt's first foray into the crowded field of holiday music – she would go on to release an EP called Winter Garden in 1995 – is steeped in old-world atmosphere. To Drive the Cold Winter Away celebrates the winter solstice through eight traditional English, Scottish, and Irish carols and ballads and two Mckennitt originals. The artist's reverence for her source material is moving, and her meticulous yet simple arrangements help tracks such as "The Wexford Carol," "The Kings," and "Let Us the Infant Greet" resonate with all of the grace and piousness that the lyrics and poems strive for. McKennitt has succeeded in making a beautiful, haunting, and ambitious yuletide song cycle that despite taking itself a little too seriously, ranks among her finest.

Georgia-born (as in the country, not the state) singer/songwriter Katie Melua found herself atop the British charts in 2003 with her breezy debut, Call Off the Search, which sold over three million copies in Europe alone. Her laid-back blend of blues, jazz, and pop with a kiss of worldbeat drew comparisons to Norah Jones, and rightfully so. She sticks to the formula on her lush, ultimately safe follow-up, Piece by Piece. This is Coldplay for the Diana Krall crowd, a perfectly rendered slice of adult contemporary pie for a lazy summer day delivered by an artist whose beautiful voice is almost striking in how unremarkable it is.

Their first album, not available outside Australia until the 1990s. The Vanda/Young songwriting partnership had yet to dominate the band in their early days, and most of the (entirely original) material here comes from the pens of George Young and singer Stevie Wright. It's more Merseybeatish and less oriented toward power-pop and staccato guitar attacks than their subsequent releases, which isn't really detrimental; it doesn't scale the peaks the band would shortly climb, but neither does it have the overdone good-time mania that made some of their efforts hard to take in more than limited doses.

Jeanette Lindstrom has a haunting voice and a style that at times crosses over into folk music, although she retains her connections with jazz phrasing. For In the Middle of This Riddle, she wrote all of the music (other than the lyrics of "When Things Get Real") and, although there are occasional solos from her sidemen (with trumpeter Staffan Svensson making the biggest impression during his spots), the focus is mostly on her singing. This is an atmospheric set that grows in interest with repeated listenings. The lyrics are worth listening to closely.