Catedra Jorge Juan, Ciclo de Conferencias Curso 1998 1999, Ferrol, Febrero Diciembre 1999

The 17th-century Austrian composer Heinrich Biber is remembered today for his extraordinary solo violin music–collections such as the Mystery Sonatas. He wrote a number of large-scale instrumental works and choral pieces as well, but their reputation is not as high. They include a lot of grand gestures for brass, but they tend to be harmonically static and often seem long-winded. So Konrad Junghänel and his superb musicians have really achieved something by making the works on this disc sound so appealing.

When you listen to The Poem of Ecstasy', Scriabin advised, 'look straight into the eye of the Sun', and he made sure that Ecstasy was orchestrated in such a way as to burn itself onto the consciousness. Whether by design or not, and without leaving you with tinnitus, this new performance, in its moments of joyful - and finally tintinnabular - climactic clamour, does just that. There is a sensational resolve from (and resolution for) the horns as they eventually take over and expand the trumpets' assertions and reach for the heights. And, thankfully, Pletnev, his fearless players and his engineers have left room to maximize this moment of arrival.

Nightsessions (1998). Three tracks lasting over sixty six minutes in total, more vintage kit on the cover, analogue sounds, mellotron for fans of Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream. ‘Apocalypsis ll’ and most of this CD in fact is very much Tangerine Dream in ‘Encore’ and ‘Sorcerer’ mode. Spooky atmospherics and strange alien animal noises lurch from the speakers. Calm descends and electricity arcs across the atmosphere to be joined by sonic booms then a beefy sequence jerks into life. The lead lines could have been taken from ‘Encore’, ‘Force Majeure’ or even ‘Romance 76’ by Peter Baumann. After about ten minutes there is a welcome return to the spookyness so that we can get our breath back though the heart keeps pounding…

Singer/ songwriter Cindy Ryan wanted to release her first solo album in 1997 after sometime performing in her native Sydney, Australia. But after working with studio musicians Genevieve Maynard (guitar), Bowden Campbell (guitar) Raph Whittingham (drums) and Pat Hayes (bass), something clicked. Deciding to scrap the solo career, Ryan instead formed Stella One Eleven with the players she worked with; resulting in the release of "Mr. Big Car" the following year…

Waves Of Wheels (1998). This CD from 2003 offers music which was originally released as a rare CD-R in 1998, and is now available in remastered form with additional material, featuring a total of 78 minutes of energetic electronic music by this talented Turkish synthesist. Many electronic musicians find powerful inspiration in the music of Tangerine Dream, generally focusing those influences on TD's Seventies period style of lushly sequenced music. Atilla, though, deviates from that model with this release, seeking to pay homage to other styles explored by TD during their long and varied career, specifically from the late Eighties and early Nineties. Joining Atilla on these tracks are: Cenk Eroglu on guitar, and Meric Demirkol on saxophone…

Juan García de Salazar was a Spanish Baroque composer from the Basque country who spent most of his career working at Zamora Cathedral; he is so obscure the entry for him in the New Grove doesn't even include a list of his works. Musicologist Manuel Sagastume Arregi has pulled together a number of Salazar's extant movements related to the Vespers service with additional material to create Juan García de Salazar: Complete Vespers of Our Lady in Naxos' Spanish Classics series. It is performed by the Basque ensemble Capilla Peñaflorida and features the period wind group Ministriles de Marsias and the fine baritone of Josep Cabré. There are no stars here, though – everything on Juan García de Salazar: Complete Vespers of Our Lady is done to the service of the music, which is outstanding. Sagastume Arregi's realization of García de Salazar's Vespers service incorporates appropriate plainchant sections taken from a Basque hymnal dated 1692, organ music by García de Salazar's contemporaries José Ximenez and Martín Garcia de Olagüe, instrumental arrangements of García de Salazar's motets, and an arrangement of Tomás Luis de Victoria's Vidi speciosam probably made by García de Salazar himself.

For all intents and purposes, Whitney Houston retired from being a full-fledged recording artist after her third album, 1990s I'm Your Baby Tonight, choosing to be a Streisand-like celebrity who cultivated a career through movies, soundtrack contributions, and social appearances. She may have been content to continue in that direction for many years if Arista president Clive Davis didn't push her into recording My Love Is Your Love, her first album in eight years, which easily ranks among her best. Never before has Houston tried so many different sounds or tried so hard to be hip.

Former Asia front man John Wetton has released more than his share of live albums in recent years. The performance, recorded in Poland on the Arkangel tour, is strong and nearly perfect.

This disc of Iberian and Latin American Renaissance music is a reissue cleverly disguised as a new release. It compiles music from several recordings by Catalonian visionary Jordi Savall, his luminous-voiced collaborator Montserrat Figueras, and his Hesperion XXI and Capella Reial de Catalunya ensembles, dressing them up with a new set of rather philosophical booklet notes on themes of change, of intercultural tolerance, and of the evolving nature of Christianity in the Iberian realm and in New Spain. Some might call this a cynical ploy, but actually Savall has always been moving in a circle, so to speak, spiraling inward toward a deeper musical understanding of the historical themes touched on here: the lingering effects of the legacy of medieval Iberia and its "mestissage" or mixture of cultures, the reign of Holy Roman Emperor Charles (Carlos) V (did you know that he was both the first monarch to be called "His Majesty" and the first to be honored with the claim that the "sun never set" on his empire?), and the relationships between cultivated and popular styles, both in Iberia and the New World.