Jan Kruger Hotel Paradijs (2007)

The Doors returned to crunching, straightforward hard rock on Morrison Hotel, an album that, despite yielding no major hit singles, returned them to critical favor with hip listeners. An increasingly bluesy flavor began to color the songwriting and arrangements, especially on the party'n'booze anthem "Roadhouse Blues." Airy mysticism was still present on "Waiting for the Sun," "Queen of the Highway," and "Indian Summer"; "Ship of Fools" and "Land Ho!" struck effective balances between the hard rock arrangements and the narrative reach of the lyrics. "Peace Frog" was the most political and controversial track, documenting the domestic unrest of late-'60s America before unexpectedly segueing into the restful ballad "Blue Sunday." "The Spy," by contrast, was a slow blues that pointed to the direction that would fully blossom on L.A. Woman.

The giant Sony Classical label was an odd home for this 2007 recording of cello concertos of the 18th century, but that in no way diminishes its quality. Cellist Jan Vogler plays four concertos that span the second half of the century, and three of them are world premieres; even the sole item existing on recordings, the Cello Concerto in A major, Wq 172, of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, is by no means a common item.

Mare Nostrum's biggest surprise isn't its instrumentation – a trio of accordion, trumpet and piano – but how natural the combination sounds in its execution. Of course, Italian trumpeter Paolo Fresu, French accordion player Richard Galliano (who is of Italian offspring), and Swedish pianist Jan Lundgren are well-known, critically praised jazz musicians who have all been known to eschew musical boundaries and defy genre limitations, so the music on Mare Nostrum – an album co-led by all three – shouldn't come as a surprise, nor should its quality, and yet not everybody would have expected such marvelous results. The 15 compositions on the album include originals by all three musicians and several covers, touching upon jazz, tango, classical music, and folk.

If you're someone who enjoys eating dessert first – or for that matter just eating dessert and skipping the rest of the meal – then this album is likely to satisfy you. Jan Vogler's admittedly highly personal selection of short works for cello and chamber orchestra is filled with many of the syrupy, sometimes saccharin standards of the cello repertoire.

Defining Polish composer Ignacy Jan Paderewski’s musical personality inevitably sends commentators rushing for comparisons with influential predecessors and contemporaries: Chopin is usually in the lead, followed in short order by Liszt, Wagner and Rachmaninov. But at his best, and that is very much the case with the works recorded here, there is much more to Paderewski. Chopin may be clearly evident in the Piano Sonata of 1903, but a distinctive and distinguished melodic voice shines through in the slow movement and everywhere there is always a strong sense of forward momentum. The A minor Variations from the mid-1880s inhabit a very different world. A soulful, almost neo-Baroque theme sets the tone for wide-ranging figuration over which the spirit of Brahms hovers perceptibly. Although the E flat minor Variations were originally composed at much the same time, a major rewrite in 1903 gave them far greater scope and seriousness with much richer textures and a questing musical accent sometimes of quite modernist cut. In Jonathan Plowright these works have a near-ideal interpreter. Not only does he negotiate Paderewski’s dizzying virtuoso demands with evident ease, but also his ability to bring an almost string-like tone to the more lyrical passages constantly fascinates in this excellent recording.