From mysterious origins through the Victorian sleuths and the "Golden Age" of the genre (the 1920s through the 1940s) and to the present day, detective fiction, mysteries, and spy thrillers have consistently topped best-seller lists around the world. Professor M. Lee Alexander provides listeners with a lively discussion of groundbreaking authors from Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle to Agatha Christie, Ian Fleming, and modern writers such as Nevada Barr and Jonathan Kellerman.

For listeners who revere Shostakovich's despairing late song cycles and his death-haunted Fourteenth Symphony, this disc of three vocal symphonies by Soviet composer Alexander Lokshin will be like manna in the desert. A victim of Soviet repression – a native of Siberia, he was twice all but banished there for writing music that wasn't positive enough for Socialist Realism – Lokshin was not just another Shostakovich wanna-be; he was his own man with a distinctive compositional voice and strong views on art and aesthetics, and on life and death. In these three works ……

James Leonard @ AllMusic

A seminal figure of French Romantic music, Camille Saint-Saëns was also a great keyboard prodigy. The Études, Op 52 unite exuberant virtuosity with shimmering delicacy, while the Six Études, Op 111 pay homage to Chopin and Bach as well as anticipating Ravel’s impressionism. The neo-Baroque Op 135, for left hand alone, is modelled on Couperin and Rameau.