The Poisoner of Bengal

The violin concertos here are not the familiar pair in A minor and E. Bach composed a number of concertos for orchestral instruments and later transcribed them as keyboard concertos. Reversing Bach’s procedure, Wilfried Fischer has taken the harpsichord versions and from them has reconstructed the originals. BWV 1056 is a transposed transcription of the Keyboard Concerto in F minor (though New Grove identifies the outer movements as being from a lost oboe concerto). The D minor work is also usually heard in its keyboard adaptation. The concerto in C minor for two harpsichords appears in its original instrumentation for violin and oboe, the soloists here being perfectly balanced for clarity of line. It was Tovey who suggested that the A major concerto may have been intended for the oboe d’amore, an instrument pitched between the oboe proper and the cor anglais.

X: The Godless Void and Other Stories appeared at a timely point in …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead's career. It arrived six years after the release of 2014's IX, during which time Conrad Keely returned from Cambodia to the band's home base of Austin, Texas, and also coincided with their 25th anniversary. It makes sense, then, that their tenth album finds them taking stock. As …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead explore how people become more themselves over time while everything else changes, they deliver their most emotionally direct music in quite a while. Their need to follow their hearts – even if they get a little broken along the way – has dominated their music since Source Tags & Codes, and the tension between cathartic freedom and poignancy is as powerful on X: The Godless Void and Other Stories as it was on that landmark album.

Once, Portugal ruled the waves, sending explorers round the Cape of Good Hope to India and across the wide Atlantic to Brazil. After the death of King Sebastian and the end of the Age of Discovery, however, Spain ruled Portugal, and it is from this period that the works on the disc called Masterpieces of Portuguese Polyphony come. But although the sacred a cappella music here was clearly influenced by the Spanish sacred a cappella music of the same period, it is still clearly not Spanish music. In these beautifully sculpted and richly textured performances by the Choir of Westminster Cathedral under Master of Music James O'Donnell, there is a clarity, a lightness, an openness, and a spiritual optimism evident that Spanish music from the same period often lacks. Featuring five motets and a set of Lamentations by Manuel Cardoso, a Panis angelicus by João Lourenço Rebelo, five motets and a Magnificat by Pedro de Cristo, and an Alma rememptoris mater by Aires Fernandez, this 2007 reissue largely consists of works heretofore known only to listeners who heard the disc when it was first released in 1992, but anyone who enjoys sacred choral music of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century will surely enjoy this disc. Hyperion's sound is lush, round, and full.

This 2014 three-fer contains Loosen Up Naturally, The Sons, and Follow Your Heart, the albums the Sons of Champlin recorded between 1969 and 1971. These are also the Sons' first three albums and it's possible to hear them stretch out with each subsequent record, deepening their grooves, highlighting their jazz inflections, and eventually folding in a rather smooth, sun-kissed gloss. Unlike many of their San Franciscan brethren, they weren't particularly hard-edged or Dionysian: they had a stronger sense of soul and rhythm, they reveled in feel over texture. This can mean that all three of these records meander a bit – songwriting wasn't a Sons specialty – but there's an open-hearted attitude to the trinity that remains appealing.