This complete edition of the symphonic works of Edvard Grieg is especially convincing thanks to the authentic approach of the Norwegian Eivind Aadland, who strongly influences the interpretations of the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne under his direction. The first LP of this series presents two of Grieg's principal collections on 180g vinyl: his first Peer Gynt suite from the incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's drama Peer Gynt, the story of the "Nordic Faust" which inspired Grieg to compose a sonic panorama of the Norwegian character - from the melancholy song Death of Åses to the furious chase in the Hall of the Mountain King - as well as his four Symphonic Dances Op. 64 of 1898, where the composer draws on his experiences as a conductor of the leading European orchestras. The second LP of this Grieg series includes the second Peer Gynt suite, the Funeral March in Memory of Rikard Nordraak as well as the famous suite From Holberg's Time - a homage to Ludvig Holberg, the caustic "Molière of the North" - and Klokkeklang - an almost impressionist study documenting a surprisingly visionary trait of the otherwise rather conservative composer. © audite

Nestled up cosily with Sergei Babayan, gazing into the distance, rather like Juliet next to Romeo, Martha Argerich seems to have had an eye on marketing when she produced the "Prokofiev for Two" album cover for her longstanding publisher, Deutsche Grammophon. Although well-known, these works haven't yet been released in this format: each of the 19 pieces is an accomplished transcription by Sergei Babayan. More than half of this album is given over to extracts from the ballet Romeo and Juliet, originally a symphonic work, but one that sounds devilishly good when brought to life by these two exceptional pianists. The remainder of the album is made up of various pieces of stage music, from Hamlet, Eugene Onegin and the opera War and Peace. This is a reinvigorating album, with an eighty-year-old Martha Argerich who has lost none of her extraordinary technique. As for the Armenian pianist Sergei Babayan, a student of Mikhail Pletnev and a teacher of Daniil Trifonov, he seems to be having great fun with his own transcriptions alongside his long-time partner and friend. © François Hudry/Qobuz

Drummer Nicko McBrain kicks off Iron Maiden's 13th studio record with an uncharacteristic one-two-three-four before launching into the rousing opener, "Wildest Dreams." This bar-band sensibility permeates Dance of Death's first three refreshing yet unremarkable tracks before shifting into the more familiar fantasy rock of previous releases. That shift begins with the remarkable "Montsegur," a brutal, melodic assault that recalls the group's glory days and showcases lead singer Bruce Dickinson at his venom-spitting best. The anthemic "New Frontier" is a musical sibling to the band's 1982 classic "Number of the Beast" and eclipses any doubt about the band's ability to keep up with the phantom specter of age. Despite the dark imagery and the ferocity of the performances, there's a looseness to the record that conveys a surreal sense of fun. They enjoy playing together, and that more than anything shines through on old-fashioned rockers like "No More Lies" and "Gates of Tomorrow." No Iron Maiden album would be complete without a Dungeons and Dragons-style epic, and they deliver on the hammy title track and the lush closer, "Journeyman." The group's innate ability to consistently cater to its fans' stubborn tastes, while maintaining a level of integrity that other veteran bands displace with unintentional Spinal Tap zeal, is a testament to its talent and experience. While the keyboard-heavy sound of their previous release, the excellent Brave New World, creeps into some of the more indulgent tracks, Dance of Death is a triumphant return to form for these heavy metal legends.© James Christopher Monger /TiVo

The spirit of adventure, braggadocio and tall stories … for her second album on the Berlin Classics label, the Norwegian violinist and Hardanger fiddler Ragnhild Hemsing has chosen to focus on one of Norway’s best known and most legendary characters: Peer Gynt. Although her solo instruments are not part of the original orchestra formation, she chose various sections of the incidental music to the stage play of Peer Gynt, Op. 23 and had them arranged for her Hardanger fiddle and the violin with string orchestra accompaniment – thereby creating a link to the traditional story of Peer Gynt in the context of Norwegian folk music. Ragnhild Hemsing had long wished to arrange the music to Peer Gynt for the Hardanger fiddle: “I thought that sections of the music were perfectly suited to the Hardanger fiddle in combination with a solo violin and string orchestra. That said, I wanted to delve deeper into the material, to make it fully clear that folk music and the Hardanger fiddle were the source of inspiration for it”. The fact that Grieg was indeed influenced by both Norwegian folk music and the traditional Hardanger fiddle when composing this music comes out especially clearly in the title "Morgenstemning" (morning mood): The first notes of the work mirror exactly the Hardanger fiddle’s sympathetic strings: A F-sharp E D E F-sharp. Peer Gynt was not originally conceived for the stage, but as a dramatic poem by Norway’s national poet Henrik Ibsen. It tells the tale of the eponymous protagonist, who leaves his homeland in search of love and adventure. After many years of living in the wild and travelling the world, he returns to Norway, a broken old man – where his beloved Solveig greets him with open arms and forgives him his misdemeanours. Written in 1867, Ibsen was addressing the romantic nationalism in Norway at the time. He wrote a stage version of the story some years later at the behest of the director of the theatre in Christiania (now Oslo). Edvard Grieg was commissioned to write the incidental music for it, a task which he struggled with. In 1876, when the stage music was finally premiered, it was a huge success in Norway; however, Grieg doubted that it would enjoy the same success outside his homeland and he therefore published two shorter Peer Gynt - Suites in 1888 and 1893. They went on to become his most popular works worldwide. On her new album, Ragnhild Hemsing has brought together the Peer Gynt story with her Hardanger fiddle and has also integrated a further aspect of folk music into the mix: improvisation. “Folk music is part of my roots and so it belongs quite naturally to my music. We did not notate it. When improvising I reflect the freedom that I feel when making music, and the tradition that I wish to integrate into the classical genre". As a result, Ragnhild Hemsing’s music and her re-interpretation of Grieg’s work depicts Peer Gynt’s life: in his longing for freedom and new horizons he discovers his bond with his homeland and its traditions. Ultimately he reflects on his origins and returns to his home – and yet he has been influenced by the impression he has gathered along the course of his journey through the world. Ragnhild Hemsing is accompanied on her second album by the Trondheim Soloists, an ensemble with which she has already enjoyed a long and fruitful collaboration. The arrangements were written – like those on Hemsing’s first album Røta – by Tormod Tvete Vik. “The Peer Gynt Suites can now be heard in a new guise and with a new sound. A collective, exciting and rewarding exploratory process” as the musician underlines. © Berlin Classics

John Barry's fifth Oscar-winning score is a profoundly moving body of music, generally (though not entirely) elegiac in tone, very much like the movie for which it was written. It's also a bit of a mixed bag, occasionally falling back on material that will be familiar to fans of the James Bond movies that Barry scored during the early- to mid-'60s. The main title theme uses some of those devices -- dense, heavy string passages adjacent to trumpet calls -- but it is hardly representative of the full score. The real heart of Dances With Wolves is the pensive, tragic "John Dunbar Theme," which is far closer in spirit to Barry's music for Somewhere in Time or They Might Be Giants -- films (and scores) far removed from the Bond movies. It seems as though, when Barry is asked to write music for characters who are complex and troubled (Bond is neither), he delivers the goods in the guise of musical material that reflects those elements. Some elements familiar from the Bond films can be found scattered throughout this soundtrack, particularly in the violin-driven "stings" that open "The Death of Timmons" and the horn calls that herald its closing; in the string parts underneath the hyperactive percussion of "Pawnee Attack" that might've been lifted right out of From Russia With Love; and also in "Stands With a Fist Remembers," with its secondary violin part in the upper register of the strings. Much of Dances With Wolves, however, shows a broadening of Barry's sound -- he uses the vast canvas of Kevin Costner's movie and Dean Semler's cinematography as the basis for one of the most richly scored soundtracks of his career, working with one of the largest orchestras ever heard in one of his films; "Journey to Fort Sedgewick," "Kicking Bird's Gift," "Two Socks at Play," "The Death of Cisco," and "Journey to the Buffalo Killing Ground" have an almost Copland-like majesty about them, and "The Buffalo Hunt" is one of the finest pieces of music the man ever wrote. At times, it sounds as though Barry had every string and horn player in Los Angeles present, and topped it all out with an oversized percussion section, but none of the music or the scoring here sound excessive. Dances With Wolves was reissued with two bonus tracks in 1995. The 2004 reissue expanded some tracks and added still more material to present the soundtrack "in its entirety."© TiVo

Stephen Warbeck's soundtrack to the acclaimed Shakespeare in Love successfully captures the spirit of the film in question, its take on the melodies and themes of the Elizabethan era sparkling with wit and imagination.© Raymond McKinney /TiVo