Fritz Reiner was one of the foremost conductors of his time. Crowning his long career in Europe and America was the decade from 1954 to 1963 as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra an illustrious partnership that ranks along such other historical tenures as Karajan's in Berlin, Szell's in Cleveland and Bernstein's in New York.
Luckily for posterity, Reiner's legendary interpretations at the helm of the Chicago Symphony which no less than Igor Stravinsky called "the most precise and flexible orchestra in the world" were captured on record by RCA Victor. Now for the first time ever, they are being issued together in a single Sony Classical box set of 63 re-mastered CDs.

While growing up under the background training of classical and folk guitar, Jens Paulsen took a slightly different musical direction when he took the alias of "Patchwork." Consisting of the trio "me, myself and I", Paulsen combined an ambient flow of electronic/psychedelic overtones that could fit into the category of "new age", even though that term is considered taboo by Paulsen. This sound is characterized on Patchwork's self-titled debut in 1997, followed by Odeon a year later and 1999's Marsmellow. Diorama appeared in mid-2000.

Emilia Amper, one of Swedens most exciting young folk musicians, is also one of the finest nyckelharpa players in the world today. (Winner of the nyckelharpa World Championships in 2010.) In Trollfågeln, Emilia has devised a programme which demonstrates the numerous facets of her own musical personality, and of her instrument. The nyckelharpa almost died out in the middle of the twentieth century, but has made a remarkable comeback and is attracting an increasing number of performers in Sweden and around the world.

Stephen Hough’s latest solo album takes us on a colourful tour of Spain and all things Spanish: a kaleidoscope of slants and angles on the soul and character of a once exotic and remote country. Antonio Soler (whose innumerable sonatas were considered sufficiently outlandish to earn him the sobriquet ‘the devil dressed as a monk’) sets the scene for a sequence of impressionist wonders by Granados, Albéniz and Mompou (a disc of whose pianistic micro-masterpieces—CDA66963—won for Stephen Hough the 1998 Gramophone Instrumental Award), and Federico Longas’s insinuatingly virtuosic charmer Aragón.

Linda Thompson's solo debut following her breakup with husband Richard is a slightly more polished effort than one might expect from the former folk-rock diva. With help from keyboardist, vocalist, and songwriting collaborator Betsy Cook and Cook's husband, producer Hugh Murphy, Thompson creates a slick-sounding pop record replete with big drums and electronic keyboards…

Out of the ashes of Tomorrow’s Gift, came Release Music Orchestra (RMO for short), who consisted of Tomorrow’s Gift’s remaining nucleus plus wind-instruments player Jacobsen. … Their Jazz Rock resembles much what was then done in Germany, such as Passport, Thirsty Moon, Kraan, Aera, etc. RMO was never a stable group and many line-up changes occurred with keyboardist Rürup remaining the sole original member throughout their 5-album career … Their sound grew, as was often the case in those days, more commercial and streamlined with each new album, sounding more and more like US Fusion Jazz of the late '70s.