Leonard Gardner

Deutsche Grammophon proudly presents 42 of its greatest ever recordings for violin, from its matchless catalogue of the finest violinists of the last 75 years. Fritz Kreisler began it all for the company by recording a series of his own compositions and arrangements. 31 violinists grace 111 The Violin, with recordings from the early 1900s to 2012.

With its third album, Big Fun, Shalamar unveiled its best-known and most successful lineup. Jody Watley and Jeffrey Daniels were still on board, but Gerald Brown had been replaced by the charismatic Howard Hewett. Both creatively and commercially, this album would take Shalamar to new heights and establish the trio as one of the best soul-pop units of 1979-1983. The single that made Hewett famous and really sent Shalamar into orbit was "Second Time Around," but the classic Hewett/Watley/Daniels lineup also excels on everything from the insistent "Right in the Socket" to the playfully funky "Take Me to the River" (not the 1974 Al Green classic) and the smooth, Philadelphia soul-type ballad "Let's Find the Time for Love." Definitely one of Shalamar's essential releases.

What the world needs more of is intelligently planned, stupendously played, and brilliantly recorded collections like this one. These two discs contain all the piano works of Michael Tippett, works that come from every period of the composer's very long life except his very last. It includes the youthful, tuneful Piano Sonata No. 1 written between 1936 and 1938 and revised in 1941, the massive Fantasia on a Theme of Handel from 1941, the exuberant Piano Concerto from 1955, the experimental Piano Sonata No. 2, the gnomic almost Beethovenian Piano Sonata No. 3 from 1973, and the gnarly post-Beethovenian Piano Sonata No. 4. It features a bravura performance by pianist Steven Osborne that makes the best case for all the music, no matter how outré or recherché its harmonic proclivities or rhythmic audacities.