In the wake of the establishment of the first public opera house in Venice in 1637, emulators sprang up throughout Europe. Public (as opposed to court) opera?s furthest-flung 17th-century outpost was the free city of Hamburg, where, despite opposition from church authorities, opera was established at the Gänsemarkt in 1678. As I mentioned when recently reviewing a disc of his songs, the house opened with a performance of Johann Thiele?s Adam und Eva , but the loss of this sacred drama, along with a number of other early Hamburg operas, leaves Conradi?s Ariadne of 1691 with the distinction of being the earliest extant opera composed for the Gänsemarkt.

Love is a 3CD compilation released in 2003, where each disc has a title and theme featuring some of the prized pop music of the world nations. This was released by Universal Music Europe.

Ever since Led Zeppelin parted ways after the death of drummer John Bonham, fans were clamoring for the mighty band to reunite. This willfully ignored both the vital contribution Bonham gave to the group's mystique and Zeppelin's woeful one-off reunion at the 1985 Live Aid charity concert, but the legend of the band was so strong, reunion rumors reached a fever pitch whenever vocalist Robert Plant or guitarist Jimmy Page had a new album in the stores. In 1994, following Plant's moody, misunderstood 1993 album Fate of Nations and Page's widely lambasted collaboration with Whitesnake singer David Coverdale, the two quietly reunited to record a concert for MTV's then-popular acoustic concert series Unplugged…

OVO is the soundtrack to the Millennium Dome Show in London that was composed by the English rock musician Peter Gabriel. It was his eleventh album overall. It was released on 12 June 2000 and features guest vocals by Neneh Cherry, Rasco, Richie Havens, Elizabeth Fraser, and Paul Buchanan (of The Blue Nile). Two versions of the album were released, a standard version which was sold in stores and a limited edition deluxe version, which was sold only at the Millennium Dome and petergabriel.com. The deluxe version which was discontinued after 2000, includes a comic book telling the OVO story and a bonus disc with the track, "The Story of OVO".

2002 compilation for German electronica act best-known for their hit 2001 album, 'Death By Chocolate'. Featuring 15 rare, extended, remixed & non-LP tracks. The prolific and long-running De-Phazz (also known as DePhazz) is a contemporary lounge project led by Peter "Pit" Baumgartner, a German-Austrian producer who has surrounded himself with a shifting cast of collaborators that includes vocalists Barbara Lahr, Karl Frierson, and Pat Appleton. Beginning with Detunized Gravity (1997), Baumgartner and company have explored various forms of lounge music, much of it balancing samples with live instrumentation, with innumerable cross-sections of vintage jazz and soul, easy listening, and Latin music.

An unusual and fascinating insight into the world of one of Richard Wagner's sons, this disc acts as a fascinating taster of an obviously highly talented composer who, like his father, had a penchant for acting as his own librettist. This is the Siegfried of Siegfried Idyll, by the way. He conducted part of the 1896 Ring, and his first production was Holländer in 1906.

The Very Best Of George Benson: The Greatest Hits Of All is a 2003 compilation CD by American jazz guitarist and singer George Benson. This was released by Warner Strategic Marketing/Warner Bros. Europe.

A wonderfully warm and soulful session from bassist Dave Holland – thanks to contributions from a younger batch of players that includes Chris Potter on saxes and Steve Nelson on vibes! Both Potter and Nelson really make the record something special – Potter for his angular, well-crafted lines on tenor and soprano sax – and Nelson for his dark-edged vibes, which always add a new dimension to any group he works with! Other players are pretty great too – and include Robin Eubanks on trombone and Nate Smith on drums – and titles are all originals by group members, very fresh numbers from the hipper side of the soulful jazz spectrum!

The final volume in this very worthy series is a comparatively relaxed affair, a quartet set with tenor saxophonist Ben Webster. Webster lets Tatum fill the background with an infinite number of notes while emphasizing his warm tenor in the forefront on a variety of melodic ballads and standards. The combination works very well.

Everybody knows that Black Sabbath's legacy rests on their first four albums – after that, they lost their luster, or more precisely their mythic power. At their peak, which is how they are remembered, Sabbath were all about myth and power. Their very name had an ominous resonance, capturing their murky, foreboding sound perfectly…

North, Elvis Costello's 20th album of new material, follows the deliberately classicist When I Was Cruel by a mere year, but it feels more the sequel to 1998's Burt Bacharach collaboration, Painted From Memory, or even 1993's roundly ignored classical pop experiment, The Juliet Letters. Costello has abandoned clanging guitars and drums of Cruel – abandoned rock & roll, really – to return to a set of classically influenced songs, all "composed, arranged and conducted" by the man himself (on The Juliet Letters, he was merely the composer and voice). The songs on North are pitched halfway between traditional torch ballads and arty contemporary Broadway writers such as Stephen Sondheim.

It's the Best of BTO. If you were alive in the 1970's and love rock music, and don't have any other BTO albums, you need this album!

Since January 2007 the Stockhausen-Verlag is releasing Text-CDs of a new series: lectures which Stockhausen has given since 1952. The edition is limited to 300 copies per release. He wrote and spoke these lectures in German. Most of them are supplemented with musical examples.

This is an important document, not least because what is actually captured on these discs is the first performance of this work since 1772. The score is presently housed in the archive of the Berlin Sing-Akademie after its discovery in the Ukraine. C.P.E.’s version of the Christ story is a dynamic one, with plenty of drama and much interaction between the various soloists and the chorus - a chorus that represents the Jews as well as performing the chorales.