Teresa Stratas has been called the world's greatest living singing actress, and she is seen and heard at the peak of her powers in the title role of director Götz Friedrich's spine-chilling version of Salome. on of the most highly acclaimed opera films ever made - with Strauss's score in the expert hands of his protégé Karl Böhm, conducting the Vienna Philharmonic.

Die Werke von Koželuh, Schiedemayr und Fiala wurden auf einer von Robert Vanryne gebauten, auf Instrumenten aus Sammlungen in Berlin, Wien und London basierenden Rekonstruktion einer Klappentrompete eingespielt. Für die Werke von Verdi und Kreutzer wurde eine Trompete mit drei Wiener Ventilen und verschiedenen Bögen, mit denen das Instrument von As nach Bedarf tiefer gestimmt werden kann, verwendet. Das Instrument stammt von einem unbekannten Instrumentenbauer (möglicherweise aus Prag oder Kraslice um 1850).

Johann Nepomuk Hummel was one of the finest composers bridging the gap between the Classical and Romantic eras. His teachers included Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, and Hummel learned his lessons very well. His music is notable for its harmonious treatments, expert architecture and never-ending string of attractive melodies.

Maxim Vengerov's splendiferous Strad pours reedy-rich tones from its lower register and sings the sweetest high notes this side of Jascha Heifetz, without the least hint of an undesirable sound or mistuned note. Vengerov's impeccable technique and mature musicianship consistently place him at the top of today's young generation of violinists. Here he plumbs Prokofiev's emotionally charged concerto and finds its unadorned essence–especially memorable in the sensuous slow movement and the exuberant finale.

While pianist-arranger-composer Toshiko Akiyoshi headed a fine big band in New York after moving cross-country in 1982, the orchestra that she led in Los Angeles in the 1970s was arguably her greatest accomplishment. The three-CD Mosaic Select set Toshiko Akiyoshi-Lew Tabackin Big Band collects all of the music originally released on the RCA albums Kogun, Long Yellow Road, Tales of a Courtesan, Insights, and March of the Tadpoles. With such major players as Akiyoshi’s husband Lew Tabackin on tenor and flute, trumpeters Bobby Shew and Don Rader, trombonist Britt Woodman and altoist Gary Foster among the many soloists in the all-star band, the orchestra could swing as hard as any of its competitors. In addition to the more boppish pieces, Akiyoshi often wrote works that displayed her Japanese heritage, utilizing Eastern harmonies and instruments along with her husband’s flute. Many of the highpoints of her career are on this perfectly conceived Mosaic release.

Pianist Seong-Jin Cho shares his love for Handel’s often neglected keyboard suites on his latest album, The Handel Project. Each of the suites is brilliantly full of character and life, and Cho has chosen his three favourites for his new album, saying, “For me, Handel’s music comes directly from the heart.” Brahms loved the suites too, and Cho has also recorded the latter’s spectacular Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, based on one movement from Suite No. 3.

Only John Mellencamp, whose career began with a series of wrong turns, raw determination, and the audaciousness to demand he be taken seriously could create a box set as strange, representative, and labyrinthine as On the Rural Route 7609. In the era of the “track,” Mellencamp has issued a massive, beautifully packaged, and exhaustively annotated four-disc career retrospective that doesn’t lean on his hits (many aren’t here), but rather on more obscure album cuts, outtakes, rarities (17 selections make their debuts here), and more recent material – numerous selections come from 2007’s Freedom’s Road and 2008’s Life Love Death and Freedom. In Anthony DeCurtis' excellent liner essay/interview, Mellencamp claims he isn’t “trying to prove anything. . . it was a way for them to discover songs of mine that perhaps were overlooked because of the songs that were so popular on the radio.” Given his choice of material, he may not feel that his career-long demand has been met yet.

To most people, David Bedford is best known for his work with Kevin Ayers and Roy Harper, but Bedford was already a composer with avant-garde credentials before teaming up with them. The title track, for example, is a piece for ten acoustic guitars, with elephants represented by a moistened thumb dragged across the back of the soundbox; the "Nurse's Song" is actually a setting of the Blake poem, with a bass guitar accompaniment by Mike Oldfield (with whom Bedford had worked in the Whole World). Every track here is scored for unusual ensembles, such as "Sad and Lonely Faces," which has six pianos and four woodwinds, behind Ayers intoning a poem, or "Some Bright Stars for Queen's College," with 80 voices and 27 plastic twirlers. In some ways, it's a product of its time, when boundary-pushing in modern classical music was the norm, not the exception…