Pourquoi Rachmaninoff est-il devenu une légende? Comment a-t-il pu symboliser la perfection technique pour des générations entières de pianistes? Façade roucoulante d'une carrière médiatique au cours de sa vie américaine ? Intime personnalité développée de sa Russie natale?

Live set by former Velvet Underground member and the ringmaster of the avant-garde, Mr. John Cale. The album is virtually a career retrospective, recorded live on John's 2006 European tour. Cale felt like he'd finally found the personnel to interpret his songs with new twists, new dimensions and new emotions. None more so evident than the track 'Gun', originally appearing on 1974's Eno & Manzanera produced Fear but now sounding akin to a heavy arsenal of crunching weaponry. Inspired, Cale recorded the dates and the band began to tear up a 40 year musical history book, challenging and breathing new life into Cale's work.

Helloween followed up their very popular self-titled mini-LP with 1986's even more accomplished Walls of Jericho, a disc that saw the quartet from Hamburg, Germany, outperforming expectations and quickly defining their sonic identity. The instrumental title track soon gives way to amazingly mature and complex compositions like "Ride the Sky," "Phantoms of Death," and the awesome "How Many Tears" (even more ambitious 13-minute epics would soon follow). And although these were heavily reliant on Iron Maiden for inspiration, it was Helloween's speed metal innovations that clearly helped make the songs so special and influential for future bands. Even the album's lyrically challenged, somewhat one-dimensional moments ("Warrior," "Metal Invaders") usually succeed, thanks to the group's uncontainable energy. On the downside, the album continued to expose Kai Hansen's limitations as a singer, but the band would soon remedy this disadvantage by bringing on teenage phenom Michael Kiske as lead vocalist.[The CD reissue of Walls of Jericho offers a complete recap of Helloween's first incarnation by combining it with their eponymous mini-LP and the Judas EP in chronological order.]

Poco is an American country rock band originally formed by Richie Furay, Jim Messina and Rusty Young. Formed following the demise of Buffalo Springfield in 1968, Poco was part of the first wave of the West Coast country rock genre. Throughout the years Poco has performed in various groupings, and is still active.

Idaho-bred singer/songwriter Josh Ritter's V2 Records debut follows in the footsteps of 2003's Hello Starling only in instrumentation. While he retains his literate tongue and expressive voice, there is far less humor on Animal Years than on his previous two outings. Producer Brian Deck (Iron & Wine, Modest Mouse) keeps Animal Years intimate but transient, like a circus train crawling through a small town on a busy Saturday afternoon. Essentially built around two startlingly affecting diatribes on the war in Iraq, Ritter utilizes the voices of Peter and Paul, as well as Laurel & Hardy, to eke some kind of explanation from both the Administration and the Creator.

Three CDs, plus a fourth stuffed with rarities, sum up a career that both deserves far greater critical acclaim than it has ever been granted, and which has gone out of its way to discourage that from ever happening. An admittedly well-loved cult throughout his first decade of recording, Chris De Burgh exploded worldwide following the success of "The Lady in Red" and that, unfortunately, remains most peoples' sole perception of him; "unfortunately" because, at his best (which is more often than not), De Burgh both writes and performs with an extraordinary passion, and a musical ambition that travels way beyond that one song's parameters.

The rap on Sonny Stitt is that he was little more than an imitator of Charlie Parker, without a firm identity of his own. However, from the evidence of these early Stitt recordings - gathered together into a three-CD box - the first part of the rap doesn't quite ring true, though the second remains an open question. Stitt may have shared an occasional rhetorical turn or blindingly fast run with Bird - most tellingly on "S`Wonderful" - but definitely not his entire style. You can hear plenty of Lester Young influences on the tracks where he plays tenor sax, and many of the ballads preview the soulful inflections that would flourish when he joined the soul-jazz movement in the '60s. Moreover, aware of the Bird backlash, Stitt recorded the majority of these tracks on the tenor, with occasional sessions on the baritone and finally, about two-thirds of the way through the set, on alto…

It's hardly as if R.E.M.'s glory days of the '80s haven't been compiled before – just after they left I.R.S. for Warner, the Eponymous collection appeared in 1988, and over the years more collections have appeared in both domestic and foreign markets – but 2006's And I Feel Fine…: The Best of the I.R.S. Years 1982-1987 is the first collection since Eponymous to be assembled with a purpose.

Racha Arodaky was trained in the Russian school of Malinin and Bashkirov then in the subtle interpretative style of Murray Perahia. After the poetic worlds of Mendelssohn (2001) and Scriabin (2003), she now tackles the universe of Domenico Scarlatti: always with the same taste for the miniature, for grasping the musical instant, presenting the full diversity of human feelings, and always with the same 'quivering sensibility' which made her Scriabin such a success.

Heartbeat City is the fifth studio album by American rock band the Cars. It was released on March 13, 1984, by Elektra Records. The band produced the album along with Robert John "Mutt" Lange. Picking up a positive commercial response, the Cars had many tracks getting airplay, and singles "Drive" and "You Might Think" in particular both reached the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100. The album also received favorable reviews from several critics; for example, Robert Christgau stated that "the glossy approach the Cars invented has made this the best year for pure pop in damn near twenty, and it's only fair that they should return so confidently to form."

This is Zemlinsky before Richard Strauss' rich chromaticism and nascent Expressionism inflamed his imagination. Yet there's nothing wanting in the language here. Within the compass of Brahms' models, Zemlinsky's orchestral mastery is comprehensive and his expression and imagination have widest range. His orchestral palette is flavorful and incandescent within the parameters of traditional orchestration. There are some lovely colors here.

Loretta Lynn Few performers in country music have proved as influential and iconic as Loretta Lynn. At a time when women usually took a back seat to men in Nashville, Lynn was a voice of strength, independence, and sometimes defiance, writing and singing songs that spoke to the concerns of working-class women with unapologetic honesty. She could sing of her hardscrabble childhood ("Coal Miner's Daughter"), deal with the realities of relationships ("Fist City," "You Ain't Woman Enough"), deliver proto-feminist anthems ("The Pill"), and explore mature romance (her series of duets with Conway Twitty) and sound perfectly authentic at every turn. Lynn's voice, strong but naturalistic and matched to tough, lively honky tonk arrangements, reinforced the home truths of her songs, and her success blazed trails for other female country artists.

Bonnie Tyler Recognized for her distinctly raspy voice and soulful pop repertoire, Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler had her first worldwide hit in 1978 with "It's a Heartache" from her second album, Natural Force. Characteristic of her work in the '70s, it blended elements of country, rock, and pop. Leaving signs of country behind, she struck recording-industry gold a second time with 1983's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" from fifth LP Faster Than the Speed of Night. A U.K. number one that reached a career-high number four in the States, its unforgettably formidable climax assured the song's place among the iconic songs of '80s soft rock.

After a strong showing in the early '70s, Skin Alley drastically changed their lineup (and shifted their musical gears a bit) for their final two albums, 1972's Two Quid Deal and 1973's Skintight. There was still a strong prog rock base to their songwriting, but their folk and rock tendencies came to the fore on these two records more than ever before. Their deft instrumental technique screamed "prog," but never overshadowed the songs with unnecessary noodling or overt showings of musical dexterity. And that's the thing - there are "songs" here. With most of the tunes clocking in under the four-minute mark, there's no room for overindulgence. The arrangements are concise and even the instrumental numbers show a deliberately sophisticated restraint…

For the second time in two years, Chick Corea has assembled a band to give aural illustration to the fantasy writings of L. Ron Hubbard. For those who have trouble with Hubbard and his teachings, this may be a red flag to avoid the record altogether. The Ultimate Adventure is a tale that draws on characters from the Arabian Nights - there is an ad for the book in the back of the CD booklet. With that out of the way, one has to deal with the music entirely on its own terms. Corea has spent decades playing both electric and acoustic jazz. This is the first time since 1976's My Spanish Heart that he has woven his love of both so completely into a single album. There are more than a few echoes here that call upon the ghosts of the earliest Return to Forever band - primarily in the gorgeous flute playing of Hubert Laws and Jorge Pardo, in the saxophone artistry of Tim Garland, the drumming of Steve Gadd…