The unconventional character that is Benjamin Grosvenor delivers us a very personal version of these two essential works of the piano repertoire. The first Brit to have signed an exclusive contract with Decca Classics in sixty years, he first made his name in 2004 when he won the Keyboard section of BBC Young Musician of the Year, thus throwing the doors open to an international career. Produced alongside the talented young conductor from Hong Kong Elim Chan, the musical director of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, this new album dedicated to Chopin revisits the young British prodigy’s first musical loves. It was following a very successful concert with Elim Chan that they decided to record the Piano concertos by Chopin together. In this fifth album (for Decca), it’s Grosvenor’s virtuosity and ability to make the instrument sing that allow him to fully express his favourite music. “Chopin was the first composer to whom I felt a strong connection to as a child. I have always been drawn to his music, and his piano concertos are among some of the finest in the repertoire”, he says. Other than his already legendary sound and the expert way he strikes a balance between the different acoustic levels, his vision underlines the dreamy romanticism that delicately envelops the two concertos by the then-20-year-old Polish composer. © François Hudry/QobuzThis album was named "Gramophone Recording of the Year 2020" in the"Concerto" category. 

The apex of the duo piano repertory was reached with Rachmaninov, who challenged pianists with the maximum in technical brilliance while also deploying the rich textures of the medium in ultra-Romantic moods. Performances may emphasize one or the other of these and may take various attitudes toward the knuckle-breaking materials of, say, the Tarantella from the Suite No. 2 for two pianos, Op. 17. Here, the order of the day is pure old-school Russian pianism, brilliant and, where necessary, thundering. These pieces are unforgiving of any hint of un-coordination, and there is none in these readings, perhaps because the players were aided by having been teacher (Sergei Babayan) and student (Daniil Trifonov). They do slow things down effectively in the programmatic and more Tchaikovskian Suite No. 1, Op. 5, based on poems by Byron, Lermontov, and others. However, the chief attraction here is hearing the pianos pushed to their limits. Rachmaninov and Vladimir Horowitz played two of these pieces, the Suite No. 2 and Rachmaninov's own arrangement of the Symphonic Dances, at a Los Angeles party shortly before the composer's death. One would like to have been a fly on the wall at that event, but this may be the next best thing. The album made classical best-seller lists in the spring of 2024.© James Manheim /TiVo

Pianist, thinker, and author Lucas Debargue explains having wanted to inflect “an experimental accent” onto this album which compiles the complete solo piano works of Gabriel Fauré. Indeed, his intentions encompass both the music itself as well as its highly polished sound production, featuring the use of the now infamous Opus 102 piano, conceived and fabricated by French manufacturer Stephen Paulello. This innovative instrument features 102 keys instead of the typical 88, along with highly reactive mechanics which give it an exceptional sound identity and incomparable variability. Lucas Debargue puts his fluid and inspired technique at the service of music that he first approached quite late, at the end of his music education, upon hearing another student play the “Barcarolle N° 1.” For him, this was a sort of paradigm shift, the discovery of a world that he previously wasn’t aware of. The first major confinement of the COVID 19 crisis ended up being beneficial for him, as it allowed him to return to the long practice sessions that the explosive international success of his career prevented him from enjoying. Casting aside the idea of grouping the tracks together by title, as Fauré himself had given them titles merely for his editors’ convenience, Lucas Debargue follows the thread of this pure music by carefully adhering to the opus numbers. This gives listeners a measure of the composer’s evolution as he slowly distanced himself from his mentors in order to find his own harmonic richness, which also happens to resonate with Lucas Debargue’s own artistic concerns as a composer evolving within a tonal perspective. © François Hudry/Qobuz

To the thousands of questions raised about themselves, the Arctic Monkeys answer Whatever People Say I Am, I Am Not. Their success story, born in bars and on the Internet, is as huge as it is dazzling. Smashing the British sales record – over 360,000 albums sold in a week −, they receive this memorable accolade from the Times: Bigger than the Beatles! In Great Britain, ever since the Libertines have burnt out, the horizon had turned dull grey. All until this fluorescent-adolescent quartet from Sheffield. Led by the timid Alex Turner, the Monkeys concocted for this perfect first album thirteen frantic tracks bordering on genius, that the NME ranked 19th in its 500 Greatest albums of all time list. It featured everything that had been missing from the rock landscape. Incisive guitar riffs for Turner’s scruffy compositions (The View From The Afternoon, I Bet You Look Better On The Dancefloor, Dancing Shoes) and Matt Helders’ cheeky drums. Andy Nicholson on the bass for the last time. They play, hard and fast. The whole thing is overflowing with extensive lyrics about the daily life of the English working class. Shiny but not polished, youthful but well formed. Recorded in the country side, in the Chapel Studios in Lincolnshire, this opus draws from the Strokes’ nonchalance (Riot Van), Franz Ferdinand’s dancing energy (Red Light Indicates Doors Are Secured) and the Libertines’ phlegm (Mardy Bum), while also drawing inspiration from their idols, the Jam, the Smiths, and Oasis, already putting down their very own trademarks for years to come. © Charlotte Saintoin/Qobuz

If Blood on the Tracks was an unapologetically intimate affair, Desire is unwieldy and messy, the deliberate work of a collective. And while Bob Dylan directly addresses his crumbling relationship with his wife, Sara, on the final track, Desire is hardly as personal as its predecessor, finding Dylan returning to topical songwriting and folk tales for the core of the record. It's all over the map, as far as songwriting goes, and so is it musically, capturing Dylan at the beginning of the Rolling Thunder Revue era, which was more notable for its chaos than its music. And, so it's only fitting that Desire fits that description as well, as it careens between surging folk-rock, Mideastern dirges, skipping pop, and epic narratives. It's little surprise that Desire doesn't quite gel, yet it retains its own character -- really, there's no other place where Dylan tried as many different styles, as many weird detours, as he does here. And, there's something to be said for its rambling, sprawling character, which has a charm of its own. Even so, the record would have been assisted by a more consistent set of songs; there are some masterpieces here, though: "Hurricane" is the best-known, but the effervescent "Mozambique" is Dylan at his breeziest, "Sara" at his most nakedly emotional, and "Isis" is one of his very best songs of the '70s, a hypnotic, contemporized spin on a classic fable. This may not add up to a masterpiece, but it does result in one of his most fascinating records of the '70s and '80s -- more intriguing, lyrically and musically, than most of his latter-day affairs.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Already a social media star by the time her widely acclaimed mixtape To Hell with It changed the game in 2021, PinkPantheress made her mainstream breakthrough in 2023, when the Ice Spice-featuring sequel to her single "Boy's a Liar" became a major worldwide hit. "Angel," an Irish folk-influenced tune recorded for Barbie: The Album, also gained the artist major exposure. The cover art for Heaven Knows, her debut full-length, suggests that PinkPantheress is undergoing a makeover as a singer of sultry R&B slow jams. In reality, the album is a fully developed refinement of the brisk, intricately arranged pop style she's become known for, with lyrics about romantic infatuations set to pulse-quickening liquid drum'n'bass, U.K. garage, and filter-house rhythms. Unlike her mixtape, all of the songs exceed two minutes this time around (though some of them just barely do), and most of them are packed with enough ideas to make them feel longer than they are. She co-produced the album's tracks along with previous collaborator Mura Masa, pop maven Greg Kurstin, Count Baldor, and others, with Danny L. Harle, Sam Gellaitry, and Oscar Scheller each making contributions. While the songs generally sound upbeat, the lyrics are much darker, describing obsessions taken to their extremes. The funereal organs and bursting storm clouds of "Another Life" provide the album's dramatic introduction, and the lyrics attempt to process the shock following the death of a partner. Several other songs mention thoughts of death -- on "Mosquito," PinkPantheress is only concerned about dying because it would separate her from her loved one, and "Ophelia" sonically illustrates a drowning scene with bubbling water effects, detached vocal glitches, and police sirens. The ominously titled "Bury Me," a drill-influenced duet with Kelela, is about the desire for more than a surface-level relationship, and "Internet Baby" also seems to search for something deeper, while feeling attracted by the pressure. On the boom-bap cut "Feel Complete," she's unsure if she ever really knew her partner, and she contemplates whether she'll ever be able to love again during the ambitious, dazzling "Capable of Love." "Boy's a Liar Pt. 2" is tucked away at the end as a bonus track, but it fits in perfectly with the album's themes of questioning trust in others as well as one's own self-worth. Crucially, the song is a joyous dance-pop delight with a bouncy, Jersey club-inspired beat. Even as PinkPantheress explores her deepest, darkest emotions, her songs are vibrant, hook-filled, and wildly inventive, making Heaven Knows just as worthy of repeated listens as To Hell with It, and confirming her status as a pop visionary.© Paul Simpson /TiVo

Of the various young cellists contending for the crown these days, Bruno Philippe is among the strongest, with a highly varied palette of tone production. He applies the full power of the instrument sparingly, keeping a light touch in lyrical sections and making details clear even at the growling bottom of the instrument's range. The large pieces here are perhaps of varying quality, but they serve Philippe well. The Violin Sonata in A major of César Franck was transcribed for cello with the composer's approval, but it is a different work lower down, losing the soaring quality of the finale's melodies. Still, it fits Philippe's way with a tune nicely, and he applies a good deal of tempo rubato in a way that holds the interest. Philippe keeps the cello lines clear in Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 33 (the mix of cello-and-piano works with a cello concerto is entirely characteristic of what might have been offered in these composers' own era), featuring the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra. Francis Poulenc's Cello Sonata was sketched out by the composer in 1940, laid aside, and completed only reluctantly in 1948. The composer disparaged it, and no one would pick it as top-grade Poulenc, but for all that, it has a remarkable Cavatine slow movement that displays Philippe's lyrical gifts to the hilt. Serving as intermezzi among these works are short pieces by Fauré, and these, too, show Philippe as the possessor of a remarkable cantabile. Philippe is ably accompanied by the veteran pianist Tanguy de Williencourt; they make an effective pair, with the pianist's restrained style seeming to keep the young Philippe within bounds. Harmonia Mundi contributes idiomatic chamber music sound from the Hessische Rundfunk studios in Frankfurt on an album that will appeal to any lover of French chamber music.© James Manheim /TiVo

Ozzy Osbourne's 1981 solo debut Blizzard of Ozz was a masterpiece of neo-classical metal that, along with Van Halen's first album, became a cornerstone of '80s metal guitar. Upon its release, there was considerable doubt that Ozzy could become a viable solo attraction. Blizzard of Ozz demonstrated not only his ear for melody, but also an unfailing instinct for assembling top-notch backing bands. Onetime Quiet Riot guitarist Randy Rhoads was a startling discovery, arriving here as a unique, fully formed talent. Rhoads was just as responsible as Osbourne -- perhaps even more so -- for the album's musical direction, and his application of classical guitar techniques and scales rewrote the rulebook just as radically as Eddie Van Halen had. Rhoads could hold his own as a flashy soloist, but his detailed, ambitious compositions and arrangements revealed his true depth, as well as creating a sense of doomy, sinister elegance built on Ritchie Blackmore's minor-key innovations. All of this may seem to downplay the importance of Ozzy himself, which shouldn't be the case at all. The music is a thoroughly convincing match for his lyrical obsession with the dark side (which was never an embrace, as many conservative watchdogs assumed); so, despite its collaborative nature, it's unequivocally stamped with Ozzy's personality. What's more, the band is far more versatile and subtle than Sabbath, freeing Ozzy from his habit of singing in unison with the guitar (and proving that he had an excellent grasp of how to frame his limited voice). Nothing short of revelatory, Blizzard of Ozz deservedly made Ozzy a star, and it set new standards for musical virtuosity in the realm of heavy metal.© Steve Huey /TiVo

My Chemical Romance's 2002 debut was a particularly strident entry in that shifty genre of bands tortuously slamming together elements of emo, hardcore, and even metal. Rightly signed to a larger label (in this case, Reprise Records), MCR has returned in 2004 with Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. With the aid of production major-leaguer Howard Benson, they've edited the slight rookie excesses of I Brought You My Bullets You Brought Me Your Love, resulting in a rewarding, pretty damn relentless product. Ghosts wander through this Sweet Revenge, and the blood-stained lovers of its cover are no joke. "Would I die for you? Well here's your answer in spades...Got you in my sights," Gerard Way wails in "Hang 'Em High." There's also cinematic concepting here -- "The story of a man. A woman. And the corpses of a thousand evil men..." the liners intone. "You Know What They Do to Guys Like Us in Prison" begins "In the middle of a gunfight/In the center of a restaurant." Musically the cut's claustrophobic, messy, and juiced with adrenaline, just like the Tokyo crime caper shootout it was probably inspired by. Picture antiheroes leaping sideways with twin pistols blaring -- in slow motion, you know -- and you're close. Put an old At the Drive-In record on in the background, and suddenly you're shot in the arm and down to your last clip. Economic, treble-kicking production, consistently hyper, "Let's get to the next note NOW!" instrumentation, and great thematic songwriting -- Three Cheers teems with the influences MCR shares with its peers, but recent efforts from fellow travelers Thursday and A.F.I. don't have this furious immediacy, this coarseness that's so appealing. My Chemical Romance seems to have built-in restrictive bindings that prevent it from flying off the handle into quiet-loud screamo stereotyping or odd-bird stopovers into choral parts or maudlin piano. Something like "Ghost of You" might slow the pace, but it doesn't touch the railing guitars or inventively explosive drumming. Album highlights include the propulsive chain shots "Give 'Em Hell Kid" and "To the End," where layers of vocals increase urgency over modernist post-punk, or the raucous "Thank You for the Venom." There's no question of Reprise's high hopes for My Chemical Romance and Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. But its accessibility pays tribute to anger and bullet holes in black leather.© Johnny Loftus /TiVo

When Natalie Merchant left 10,000 Maniacs in 1994, she had given the band two years notice and was ready to embark on a solo career. Given her high profile, she could have done anything she wanted -- and she did. She bucked conventional music biz wisdom, hired her own band, and self-produced the multi-platinum-selling Tigerlily. Some of its songs are still part of her live set and the classic album endures with fans and continues to find new ones. Twenty years later, Merchant presents Paradise Is There: The New Tigerlily Recordings. It's completely re-recorded, re-arranged, and revisioned. The obvious question -- why mess with a classic? -- is answered convincingly. She's learned a lot about these songs in the interim. Her approach remains holistic; her optimism has not been tempered by time as much as deepened with it. The running order is very different. "Wonder," for instance, is now the album's closer. It has been stripped of electric instruments and adorned by acoustic piano, guitars, and a brushed trap kit. "River," an elegy for the late actor River Phoenix, remains a lament. The electric guitars are still there, but a string quartet bears up Merchant's voice. It continues to reflect her anger at the sensationalistic coverage of his death, but it's balanced now by an enduring sense of loss imbued with the weight of the heart's memory. A backing chorus featuring Gail Ann Dorsey and Elizabeth Mitchell adds spiritual resonance to her delivery. This version of "The Letter" is nearly twice as long. Merchant's vocal is accompanied only by an upright bass and the string quartet. "Cowboy Romance" offers a taut, upright bassline, a lonesome violin, a wafting accordion, and brushed snare. Merchant's voice is much deeper now, but also richer; it carries the authority of a personal truth that's been lived in. The wide-eyed innocent who delivered the line "...There's no man born that can rule me…" is gone. There is a nearly militant emphasis on those words here, offering the poignancy of experience as a testament. The rock & roll core of "Jealousy" has been replaced by a vintage R&B feel. Simi Stone's Motown-esque duet vocals and Sharel Cassity's tenor saxophone provide organic counterweights to Merchant's in-the-rear-view delivery and finally free of frustrated desire; the evidence of a lesson learned the hard way. On Paradise Is There, her songs thrive in new presentations. Their meanings have shifted and grown. This is not just a nostalgic look back at a classic album, but Merchant fully inhabiting the material in the present tense. The depth in these recordings makes it a welcome companion to Tigerlily.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Coasting on the success of Some Girls, the Stones offered more of the same on Emotional Rescue. Comprised of leftovers from the previous album's sessions and hastily written new numbers, Emotional Rescue may consist mainly of filler, but it's expertly written and performed filler. The Stones toss off throwaways like the reggae-fueled, mail-order bride anthem "Send It to Me" or rockers like "Summer Romance" and "Where the Boys Go" with an authority that makes the record a guilty pleasure, even if it's clear that only two songs -- the icy but sexy disco-rock of "Emotional Rescue" and the revamped Chuck Berry rocker "She's So Cold" -- come close to being classic Stones.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Alphaville's 1984 debut, Forever Young, deserves to be viewed as a classic synth pop album. There's no doubting that Germans are behind the crystalline Teutonic textures and massive beats that permeate the album, but vocalist Marian Gold's impressive ability to handle a Bryan Ferry croon and many impassioned high passages meant the album would have worldwide appeal. Indeed both "Big in Japan" and the touching, sad change-of-pace "Forever Young" raced up the charts in multiple continents. Borrowing inspiration from Roxy Music's detached theatricality and Kraftwerk's beats and rhythms, Gold and company hit upon a magic formula that produced here an album's worth of impossibly catchy tunes that could almost serve as pure definitions for the synth pop genre. The hits race straight for one's cranium and embed themselves upon impact. "Big in Japan" feels like a more serious cousin to Murray Head's "One Night in Bangkok," as a slow-pounding beat spars with Gold's desperate voice. "Forever Young," a stark, epic song that would become essential for every post-1984 high school graduation, drips sadness and never fails to cause a listener to nostalgically reflect on life and loss. Outside of these hits, the remainder of the songs rarely falter, mixing emotion, theater, and of course electronics into a potent, addictive wave of synth euphoria. It's likely every fan could pick his own favorite of the other should-have-been-hits, but "Fallen Angel" deserves special mention. It begins with spooky, funny warbling and icy keyboards, and then explodes and transforms into a startling, romantic epiphany at the chorus. If its lyrics are a bit goofy or juvenile, it only adds to the heartfelt love the song expresses. Alphaville stick firmly to their synths and sequencers on Forever Young, but they keep things interesting by incorporating motifs from funk, Broadway, Brazilian jazz, and even hip-hop. Even when the band takes itself too seriously, the songs' catchy drive and consistently smart production cover any thematic holes. Forever Young is a technically perfect and emotionally compelling slice of 1980s electronic pop/rock music. It's also a wonderfully fun ride from start to finish.© Tim DiGravina /TiVo

The great tenor saxophonist Gene Ammons was of the generation of swing-era players that easily adapted to bop. But though he was a modernist, Ammons maintained that breathy, old-school romantic approach to the tenor. Boss Tenor, a quintet session from 1960, is one of Ammons' very best albums. Ray Barretto's congas subtly add a bit of Latin spice, but otherwise this is a collection of standards rendered with a gorgeous late-night bluesy feel. Accompaniment by Tommy Flanagan, one of the best mainstream pianists ever, certainly doesn't hurt, either. A gem.© Mark Keresman /TiVo

Singer Bettye LaVette has made a career of overcoming adversity, bad timing and cruel music business vagaries. And so who better, at a time when America is reckoning with privilege and inequality, to bring fresh pathos and pique to the ever-powerful anti-lynching call, "Strange Fruit." On Blackbirds, she slowly climbs the mountain that is Billie Holiday's most famous number in a spare rendition—just piano chords, electric guitar notes and brushes on the snare—that allows her to linger on every word. The socially relevant timing of her latest collection is sustained by the title track, LaVette's very personalized interpretation of Paul McCartney's folk hymn to America's racial infamy that she first unveiled in 2010 at the Hollywood Bowl. Once advised that learning to sing standards would make her eternally employable—and unaware that her song selection on Blackbirds would meet the current moment with such force—LaVette, whose career was relaunched in the aughts with a series of albums on the Anti label, decided with this album to tackle tunes from the Great American Songbook most closely associated with great African-American female singers like Ruth Brown, Nancy Wilson and the aforementioned Billie Holiday. She wastes no time laying out her guiding principles in the opener, "I Hold No Grudge," a number first heard on Nina Simone's High Priestess of Soul album: "I hold no grudge/ Deep inside me there's no regrets/ But a gal who's been forgotten may forgive/ But never once forget." With a vocal instrument that's grown creakier but also wiser with age, LaVette adds layers of stylized reflection—as well as bursts of rascally spirit—to this cabaret-like set of mostly downbeat ballads. Produced by drummer Steve Jordan (who helmed her previous album Things Have Changed), and working with a quintet that features multi-talented guitarist Smokey Hormel (Beck, Johnny Cash, Tom Waits), Blackbirds was recorded at Brooklyn Recording by engineer Dave O'Donnell who unerringly captures the timbre and subtle inflections of LaVette's emphatic singing. The mood lightens for a moment in a keyboard-led version of Lil' Green's sexy "Romance in the Dark," before easing into the unavoidably heart-wrenching "Drinking Again," one of Dinah Washington's signature numbers where the sharp rasp of LaVette's voice accentuates the song's poignance. A shrewd stylist climbing inside songs to discover, decry and universalize. © Robert Baird/Qobuz