Camille Saint-Saëns was only fifteen years old when he composed his first symphony in 1850, which is known as his Symphony No. 0 — his official Symphony No. 1 would not arrive for another three years. Gounod was thirty-seven years old when his La nonne sanglante was removed from the repertoire of the Paris Opera by a new director; he swiftly restored his spirits by composing a symphony for the Société des Jeunes Artistes in March 1855. Bizet, aged seventeen, began work on his Symphony in C major that same year. Gounod’s symphony clearly influenced Bizet’s work, as Bizet had just completed a transcription of it for piano four hands. This recording marks the beginning of a collaboration between the Alpha Classics label, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo and its music director Kazuki Yamada, a great lover of the French symphonic repertoire and also music director of the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and principal guest conductor of the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra and the Seiji Ozawa International Academy.

A visionary composer, Domenico Scarlatti pushed back the frontiers of keyboard writing, fusing radiant melodies with spirited rhythms and daring technical feats. In this compendium of his most attractive sonatas, Javier Perianes employs his consummate virtuosity with audible enjoyment, revealing all the richness and inventiveness of his adoptive compatriot’s musical language.

2CD compilation of live performances by Deep Purple at Paris Theatre, London, February 22th 1972 and at Concerthouse - Stockholm, November 12th 1970, released in 1993 by Italian label Nota Blu Musica.

David Foster is a Canadian musician, record producer, composer, songwriter, and arranger. He has been a producer for notable musical artists including Christina Aguilera, Andrea Bocelli, Toni Braxton, Michael Bublé, Chicago, Natalie Cole, The Corrs, Céline Dion, Jackie Evancho, Kenny G, Josh Groban, Whitney Houston, Jennifer Lopez, Seal, Rod Stewart, Madonna, Barbra Streisand, and Westlife. During the '80s, '90s, and early 2000s, David Foster was among the most commercially successful producers and composers in all of popular music. Foster has won 16 Grammy Awards from 47 nominations.

AC/DC, for most intents and purposes, fell apart after the release of Rock or Bust in 2014, so it's a relief to hear Power Up and discover that AC/DC still sound like AC/DC: thick, powerhouse chords and rhythms battle and groove with Brian Johnson, who shrieks for pleasure, not attention. That sense of relief never dissipates as Power Up offers song after song that firmly hit their target, adding up to an album that delivers reliable thrills. Considering how AC/DC have rarely strayed from the blueprints they scribbled back in the days of Bon Scott, this may not seem to be a newsworthy event, but considering how the group got mired in a spell of bad fortune in the mid-2010s, this amounts to a minor miracle.

Whitesnake brings together some of the most-passionate music of its multi-platinum career on 'Love Songs', a collection that contains remixed and remastered versions of the group's best love songs. It's the second release in the band's 'Red, White and Blues Trilogy,' a series of compilations organised by musical themes. The new collection includes a mix of hits and deep tracks that were originally released between 1987 and 2011 on five Whitesnake studio albums and David Coverdale’s third solo album, Into the Light.

International sensation Federico Colli continues his personal exploration of the music of Mozart with this second volume of works for solo piano. Colli opens his programme with the Adagio in B minor, K. 540, from 1788, toward the end of Mozart’s short life. The only piece on the album not to involve variation form, this Adagio instead adopts sonata form, and is an extremely rare case in Mozart’s output of its chosen key. The two sets of variations that follow (from the seventeen sets that Mozart composed) use a similar approach in their method of constructing variations on the theme – ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ in the first instance, and Gluck’s smash hit ‘Les Hommes pieusement’ (or ‘Unser dummer Pöbel meint’) in the second. Colli concludes his programme with the rather extraordinary Sonata in A major, K. 311. Instead of the expected sonata form, the first movement is a theme with (six) variations. Following the second movement (a minuet and trio), Mozart finishes with a rondo – arguably one of his most famous pieces, the ‘Alla turca’.

Reference Recordings proudly presents the debut release of Ukrainian piano duo Anastasiia Larchikova and Mykhailo Diordiiev in Four Hands. Two Hearts. One Hope: Ukrainian and American Music for Piano Duo. Producer Sergei Kvitko says, “this is a labor­-of-­love album with a young and very talented Ukrainian piano duo presenting a contemporary, but VERY accessible program of Ukrainian and American music — Americans are John Corigliano‘s Gazebo Dances, Ricky Ian Gordon‘s Ring-­A­-Ding­-Ding, and a world premiere recording of Lowell Liebermann‘s Romance, Etude and Chorale, Op. 134, which is the centerpiece of the album — a stunning and deeply moving work that was commissioned by Steinway as a wedding present to Lang Lang. The Ukrainian music is also splendid.

Even after the completion of the highly praised Bach cantata series, which was released between 2004 and 2014, and in which La Petite Bande recorded cantatas for every Sunday of the liturgical year, Sigiswald Kuijken still does not let go of his great passion for Johann Sebastian Bach. He turns once again to the cantatas and presents on his new recording three works that Bach wrote for the end of January and the beginning of February, and that he performed in Leipzig at St Thomas' Church between 1725 and 1729.