The Pilgrim's Progress Robert Whitfield

MCA's 20th Century Masters – The Millennium Collection is a good, basic collection of Robert Palmer's biggest hits, including "Sneaking Sally (Through the Alley)," "Bad Case of Lovin' You," "Can We Still Be Friends," "Looking for Clues," "Some Guys Have All the Luck," "Addicted to Love," and "I Didn't Mean to Turn You On." Although there are a couple of hits and good album tracks missing, this has enough of the hits to make it worthwhile for casual listeners on a budget.

During the last quarter of the 20th century, and thanks largely to Eric Clapton's remarkable devotion to his memory, Robert Leroy Johnson posthumously became the most celebrated Delta blues musician of the pre-WWII era. Among numerous editions of his complete works and various anthologies that combine his recordings with those of his contemporaries and followers, J.S.P.'s The Road to Robert Johnson and Beyond combines many of his essential performances with those by dozens of other blues artists from Blind Lemon Jefferson and Henry Thomas to Muddy Waters and Elmore James. 105 tracks fill four CDs with several decades' worth of strongly steeped blues that trace the African American migration from the deep south on up into Chicago. This is a fine way to savor the recorded evidence, as primary examples from Blind Blake, Charley Patton, Son House, Charlie McCoy, Walter Vincson, Skip James, Ma Rainey, Tampa Red, Kokomo Arnold, Scrapper Blackwell, Leroy Carr, Lonnie Johnson, and Peetie Wheatstraw lead directly to early modern masters like Big Joe Williams, Sonny Boy Williamson, Big Bill Broonzy, Johnny Temple, Leroy Foster, Johnny Shines, Homesick James Williamson, Robert Jr. Lockwood, Snooky Pryor, Little Walter, and David Honeyboy Edwards, among many others.

The Florestan Trio now turns its attention to Schumann's Piano Trios. These two works, Opp 63 and 80, were composed in rapid succession in the summer and autumn of 1847, some five years after the prolific year when Schumann composed most of his large-scale chamber works.

… you get here is perhaps the best of all worlds: a major symphonic work idiomatically played by a first-rate virtuoso orchestra under the hands of a conductor whose contact with the work looks back to the symphony's very creation, captured in vivid, realistic sound none of the russian maestros mentioned above could ever aspire to.