For her first collaboration with the period ensemble Il Giardino Armonico, violinist Isabelle Faust performs the five Violin Concertos of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, along with three shorter concertante works. This is an extraordinary set, for the historically informed performances, the polished sound of the group, the almost palpable presence of the players, which Harmonia Mundi has captured with superior engineering, and for the unrepressed joy in the music. Faust is the center of attention, naturally, and her refined and expressive playing immediately pulls the listener in. These are far from the most demanding concertos in the repertoire, so Faust is less concerned with technical execution than with conveying the pure feeling of the music, which is delightfully buoyant and uplifting. Under the direction of Giovanni Antonini, the group provides warm and sparkling accompaniment that gives Faust all the support she needs, but there's no doubt that she sets the emotional tone for these exquisite recordings. Highly recommended, especially for devotees of Classical style at its finest.

Baldassare Galuppi was extremely popular during his lifetime, and according to more than one contemporary source he died the wealthiest Italian composer of the 18th century. Though primarily remembered for his contribution to the development of opera (he wrote more than 100), Galuppi also composed an abundance (148 works as of last count) of oratorios, cantatas, motets, and masses. Utilizing a score that Galuppi composed earlier, conductor Filippo Maria Bressan and the Academia de li Musici and the Athestis Chorus offer a reconstruction of a service that may have taken place in 1766 during Advent at St. Marks in Venice, where Galuppi held his long-standing position of musical director.

When it comes to old Italian vocal music, the Italian choir "La Stagione Armonica" from Padua under the direction of Sergio Balestracci has proven its high musical level several times. After the recording with responsories, which Alessandro Scarlatti composed for Good Saturday, the follow-up album with Scarlatti's responsories for Good Friday is now released.

It is not always easy to avoid writing a shade smugly about the arrangements Mozart made of choral works by Handel. Nowadays, increasingly, we try to listen to such works as Acis and Galatea and the Cecilian Ode in the form in which Handel composed them; to hear them through the prism of the classical musical consciousness is disconcerting. For once we feel that we know better than Mozart. Well, so we do, about Handel and the way he makes the best effect (at least on us); but a different kind of historical awareness is needed here, one that puts us into the frame of mind of late eighteenth-century Vienna and its perception of Handel.

Now That's What I Call Power Ballads is a series, containing power ballad rock songs mostly from the 1980s. It debuted at number thirty on the Billboard 200 albums chart. This collection contains definitive Rock ballads from the finest Classic Rock bands in history including Journey, Whitesnake, Aerosmith, Poison, Def Leppard, Cheap Trick, Scorpions, Heart, Night Ranger, Warrant and others.

Most modern-day female pop singers start their careers doing their sexy, stylish dance-oriented material then settle into a career as an adult contemporary crooner. Toni Braxton didn't follow that route. She started the '90s singing elegant, refined quiet storm ballads and ended it singing sleek dance-pop tunes as she slinked around in skimpy outfits. She wasn't the only one of her peers to follow this trajectory – Mariah Carey pretty much did the same thing, only to the extreme – but it's a little odd to listen to Braxton evolve from the sophisticated urban contemporary crooner to oversexed R&B thrush, even if it's not a bad thing at all. One thing that elevated Braxton above her peers is that she was a controlled, powerful singer who rarely oversang, and she had a good selection of material, much of it written or co-written by Babyface. That's why her 18-track hits collection Ultimate Toni Braxton works well even through her shifts in style – she is a confident enough performer to sell both the slow romantic ballads and material that swings harder.

In 1956, Bernard Haitink conducted the Concertgebouworkest for the first time and together they would play more than 1,500 concerts across the globe. Besides his modesty, his humanity, his musical taste, and his honesty to the music, three words come to mind when one thinks of Haitink and his orchestra: Sound, Trust and Magic. Jörgen van Rijen, Principal trombone of the Concertgebouworkest, said at a memorial concert in February this year, “Every time with him [Haitink] the orchestra sounded warmer, deeper and richer, from the first moment he started to rehearse. How he did that is difficult to tell … he always gave us musicians the feeling he trusted you, that he was there to help, not to interfere.”

The pianist Zlata Chochieva is well known for creating unexpected associations. In "Chiaroscuro", her first album for naive (V7542, 2022), she had combined the worlds of Scriabin and Mozart, in whom she hears not only the same desire for clarity and weightlessness but also a similar poetic sense of rhetoric. Her next album ("i'm Freien", V7959, 2023), a homage to nature, revealed alongside Ravel's Miroirs and Schumann's Waldszenen a short cycle, so little known and graceful (Petite Histoire), by Felix Draeseke! No wonder she is now offering us, for her first album with orchestra, one of the most obscure works of Russian Romanticism, the Piano Concerto by Rimsky-Korsakov.

The composer Barbara Strozzi’s “Ariette a voce sola opus 6” was published in 1657, and in it she explores the subject of pastoral love. This recording of the work features the extraordinary and beautiful countertenor voice of the young Japanese soloist Miroku Tadashi. The harpsichord is played by Silvia Rambaldi. Barbara Strozzi was the daughter of the Venetian poet Giulio Strozzi, and one of the most talented composers of the 17th century. Initially famed for her fantastic soprano voice, she developed into an accomplished composer, publishing eight collections of vocal works mainly based on verses by her father.

A superb introduction to the amazing Alannah Myles catalog on this CD of hits and rarities. That's why it's called " MYLES & MORE ". Alannah has a tremendous gifted voice that can belt out anything from a blues song to full-tilt heavy rock, as well as sing an awesome ballad . This CD has of course the enormous hit " BLACK VELVET " that resonates as a classic today, and won many awards & achieved world-wide hit status. Plus her other hits like " LOVER OF MINE ", " STILL GOT THIS THING ", " SONG INSTEAD OF A KISS ", and great album tracks.