As an Australian, guitar virtuoso Tommy Emmanuel doesn't seem to be much bothered about musical categories. Is his music jazz, folk, bluegrass, new age? Depending on the track, it can be any one. Like his mentor, Chet Atkins, Emmanuel is simply a guitar player, and on Little by Little, a two-CD set, he sticks mostly to acoustic guitar, playing mostly originals, tunes that he has used in concert but not recorded before. He is also mostly solo, although the double-disc length allows him room to share space with guests including singers Pam Rose (on her co-composition "Haba Na Hava") and Anthony Snape (on the folk-rock "Willie's Shades"). Among the covers are two versions of "Moon River," one with a bass countermelody, the other with an Emmanuel vocal, Carole King's "Tapestry," Atkins' "Mountains of Illinois," and "The Tennessee Waltz." Emmanuel plays fast runs, slows down for delicate passages, and adds harmonics on tunes that evoke players including Will Ackerman and John Fahey. He also likes folk-pop; "Papa George" needs only a James Taylor vocal to fit into that category. But Little by Little is a tour de force by a musician who usually leaves categories behind.

Epic/Legacy expanded Stevie Ray Vaughan’s second album Couldn’t Stand the Weather in 1999, adding four outtakes and an interview excerpt to the eight-track original, but the 2010 Legacy Edition expands it further still, retaining those four cuts, adding four songs from the posthumous compilation The Sky Is Crying (“Empty Arms,” “Wham!,” “Close to You,” “Little Wing”) along with three previously unreleased alternate takes (“The Sky Is Crying,” “Stang’s Swang,” “Boot Hill”), and a full, unreleased concert SRV & Double Trouble gave at the Spectrum in Montreal on August 17, 1984. Apart from “Empty Arms” and “Stang’s Swang,” every studio outtake is a cover, underscoring how Vaughan spent much of Couldn’t Stand the Weather drawing from his influences and synthesizing them into his own voice, and their addition actually strengthens the album considerably. With that in mind, the lively concert on the second disc is a bonus treat, evidence that SRV & Double Trouble were flying very high during 1984 and one of the better complete live sets in Vaughan’s discography.

French oboist Francois Leleux presents a stunning recording of works by Richard Strauss, including his oboe concerto, one of the finest written for the instrument, and two chamber works, which he performs with his own ensemble, the Paris Bastille Ensemble. Joining Leleux on the concerto recording is the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra with Daniel Harding, one of our greatest young conductors.

An obscure jazz-rock band that existed from the mid-'70s through the early '80s, Cos was led by singer/oboe player Pascale Son, and also featured members Daniel Schell (flute, guitar), Bob Darsch (drums), Alain Goutier (bass), and Charles Loos (keyboards). Self described as a "mixture of jazz and Canterbury," the quintet released such albums as Postaeolian Train Robbery, Viva Bomma, Babel, Swiss Chalet, and Passions, before fading away.

A pupil of his uncle Don Angelo Durante, head of the S Onofrio Conservatory in Naples, Francesco Durante established himself as a leading composer of church music, after a period of further study in Rome. He served as primo maestro at the Neapolitan Conservatori Poveri di Gesù Cristo, where his pupils included Pergolesi, later moving to the same position at the S Maria di Loreto Conservatory and finally at S Onofrio. His later pupils included Piccinni.
Durante’s fame as a composer rested on his achievements in the field of church music. His works include Masses, motets, antiphons, canticles, psalms and litanies.

All Helmchen’s recordings for the PentaTone label have been award winners. The romantic and virtuoso piano concertos by Mendelssohn never became as popular as his violin concertos but are of just as high a calibre. Helmchen regularly works with Philippe Herreweghe and this collaboration has resulted in a very special album.

Angela Hewitt’s acclaimed recordings of Bach on the piano have received the highest critical acclaim and found their way into thousands of homes, selling nearly 400,000 copies since her recording of the Inventions burst onto the scene in 1994. Now for the first time Angela’s complete solo Bach is available as a boxed set of 15 CDs at a special price. A perfect gift for the few music-lovers left in the world who have not experienced these matchless performances; and for those who have, a chance to fall in love all over again.

This three-disc box set from Sony gathers up the first three long-players from Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac. Released in 1968, Fleetwood Mac (often referred to as Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac) was a blues-rock juggernaut that stayed on the U.K. charts for nearly 40 weeks, while that same year's Mr. Wonderful beefed up the band's already meaty sound with a full horn section. Appearing in 1969, Pious Bird of Good Omen offered up a collection of B-sides and singles that were recorded between 1967 and 1968.