Antonio Vivaldi's Le Quattro Stagioni is one of the most beloved works in Baroque music, and even the most casual listener can recognize certain passages of Spring or Winter from frequent use in television commercials and films. Yet if these concertos have grown a little too familiar to experienced classical fans, Max Richter has disassembled them and fashioned a new composition from the deconstructed pieces. Using post-minimalist procedures to extract fertile fragments and reshape the materials into new music, Richter has created an album that speaks to a generation familiar with remixes, sampling, and sound collages, though his method transcends the manipulation of prerecorded music. Richter has actually rescored the Four Seasons and given the movements of Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter thorough makeovers that vary substantially from the originals. The new material is suggestive of a dream state, where drifting phrases and recombined textures blur into walls of sound, only to re-emerge with stark clarity and poignant immediacy. Violinist Daniel Hope is the brilliant soloist in these freshly elaborated pieces, and the Konzerthaus Kammerorchester Berlin is conducted with control and assurance by André de Ridder, so Richter's carefully calculated effects are handled with precision and subtlety. Deutsche Grammophon's stellar reproduction captures the music with great depth, breadth, and spaciousness, so everything Richter and de Ridder intended to be heard comes across.© Blair Sanderson /TiVo

After Fish's departure, Marillion teetered on the brink of collapse: The frontman's distinct voice and poetic prose made him the defining member of the band. One can only imagine how record executives held their collective breath as Steve Hogarth was brought in to take the reins. His first outing with band, 1989's Season's End, removed all doubts about the band's future. Hogarth's unique, expressive voice fit Marillion perfectly; on the full-throttle rock assault of "The Uninvited Guest" or the emotional "After You," Hogarth's singularity is unmistakable. The heartfelt "Easter," with its imaginative electric-acoustic arrangement, is another showcase for Hogarth's talents. Marillion's ability to write music whose ideals live and breathe in the listener continues on Seasons End, particularly on the inspiring "Holloway Girl," which dissects the injustice of incarcerating mentally ill female inmates (at England's Holloway Prison) instead of placing them in appropriate psychiatric facilities. The beautiful "Easter" is the band's plea for peace in Ireland, while "The King of Sunset Town" has its lyrical roots in the massacre at Tiananmen Square. Hogarth's flexible range and beautiful phrasing shine on the entire album. In 1999 Marillion released a remastered version of Seasons End, including a bonus disc of outtakes and alternate versions as well as the previously unreleased "The Bell in the Sea" and "The Release." Both are strong tracks and are welcome additions to the Marillion catalog. While 1995's Afraid of Sunlight is the peak of Marillion's growing, impressive body of work, Season's End shouldn't be missed either.© Jeri Montesano /TiVo

Max Richter's 2012 Recomposed album was an enormous success, topping charts in many countries (not just the usual classical-oriented ones) and making its way onto numerous soundtracks, including that for the television series Bridgerton. For those rare souls who haven't encountered it, it was a sort of contemporary remake of Vivaldi's Four Seasons violin concertos, using the originals as thematic source material to a greater or lesser degree and subjecting them to electronic treatment. It has become almost as ubiquitous as the concertos on which it was based. Now, Richter has remade Recomposed, even recomposing it a bit; the new album is just under four minutes shorter than its predecessor. He also recruits London's ethnically diverse Chineke! Orchestra, gives them gut-stringed period instruments on which to play (the players were using these for the first time, and this works quite a bit better than you might expect), and collaborates with a new violinist, the wirier Elena Urioste in place of Daniel Hope, and also uses "period" electronics, playing a vintage Moog synthesizer himself. Deutsche Grammophon's notes reassure classical listeners that they may not recognize the difference between the Moog and the earlier contemporary electronics, and perhaps this is a problem as well for the many young electronic music fans who have come to Richter, but for anyone around in the 1970s, Richter's bass lines and sonic washes will be quite recognizable. Is Richter simply trying to milk his original concept? Maybe, but in a sense, this was and remains the point. Richter has written that he wanted to use period instruments on the original Recomposed recording but couldn't interest recording companies in the idea. They add a fresh wrinkle to the sound, and the whole new project is an intriguing attempt to see what remains of Vivaldi in an era when music evolves through remixes and through sampling of earlier material rather than being fixed and discrete. There is even a "Levitation Mix" of the "Spring 1" movement, as if to say that the process will continue beyond its latest iteration. It's safe to say that this release has something to offer even to those who know the original Recomposed album well, or for that matter, who know the original Four Seasons well.© James Manheim /TiVo

In 2023, expressing an opinion about a new Metallica album, whatever it may be, would mean being scorned by 50% of metal fans. In 1986, when the whole planet fell on its knees before Master of Puppets, who would have believed that the San Francisco quartet would become so divisive almost forty years later? However, since Load (1996), and Reload (1997) even more so, all the combo’s productions contain so many pretexts for rhetorical disputes, it must be recognised that the Four Horsemen have moved forward without shying away from paths fraught with the potential danger of controversy. This is how they have become the band they are today: the four members of the biggest heavy metal band on the planet. It is only by writing this down that we can better imagine the pressure that they must have encountered.72 Seasons will not please those Metallica fans who have remained stuck on their pre-1990 productions. Either way, it doesn't matter: these fans had their opinions formed long before this album was even being written. On the other hand, these disappointed "moderates", those whose blinkers are removable, will certainly have a better understanding of the music the group has now been trying (somewhat clumsily) to convince us of for more than twenty years. Drummer, Lars Ulrich, himself admits: nowadays, rather than experimenting, Metallica prefers to focus on what it does best. And we’re obviously no longer talking about thrash à la Ride The Lightning (1984), nor about progressive inclinations à la …And Justice For All (1988). Of course, there are still some traces of the group’s original DNA: the rhythmic thrash of Lux Aeterna, the Inamorata drawer structure (the longest title ever written by the group, which lasts for more than 11 minutes), or even the succinct performance of Too Far Gone?. But a major part of the project is indeed based on heavy metal tinged with perfectly integrated rock influences, which, for the first time, even manages to make up for the recurring faults of the two previous albums: titles that are too long and bloated with repetitive riffs. It's still the case here, don't kid yourself, but Metallica seems to have worn us down and, on Death Magnetic, it's certainly meshing much better than it did fifteen years ago. It’s as if the band were telling us: "Guys, you'll have to get used to it", and triumphed. Thus, the famous extended Inamorata is varied enough to seem shorter than some other tracks on the album. The riffs are certainly quite simple (even predictable on Sleepwalk My Life Away, which is dangerously close to Enter Sandman), but work perfectly. Kirk Hammett is still hanging on tight to his wah-wah pedal, and James Hetfield is more and more comfortable in his role as a singer, despite having been a vocalist for years. Lars Ulrich is not making a big deal out of it either, and that's a good thing, since all this will have to be performed on stage pretty soon. The big winner on stage is bassist Robert Trujillo, underused for twenty years (already!), now getting some spotlight shine thanks to a benevolent mix that gives his instrument a little extra oomph. Textually, it seems obvious that 72 Seasons serves as Hetfield's morale diary. Almost the entire album revolves around the themes of doubt, depression, and the pain of living, but it fortunately ends on a somewhat optimistic note and an open gateway to resilience (Inamorata once more!). A real character from the novel – Le James: the famous hero with a secret wound.It is sometimes said that friendship is knowing someone's faults and loving them despite everything. In the 80s, we fell in love with Metallica at first sight. A few years later, we admittedly felt a little let down by them, and were on somewhat bad terms. Today, the band is 42 years’ old. Its scars are testament to everything it has endured, but it has always managed to get back on its feet. It has flaws and always will have but, let’s face it, who doesn't? One thing is sure; the band always gives its absolute best. Whether you’d always dreamed of becoming an astrophysical researcher but became a mechanic holds no relevance today. The band is the best mechanic on the planet. And ultimately..... it’s our friend. © Charlélie Arnaud/Qobuz

The legendary prog band's greatest artistic achievement, as well as one of their biggest commercial successes.© TiVo

Eschewing its usual heavy orchestral sound in favor of a more stripped-down instrumentation, Dutch violinist Janine Jansen's second album offers a fresh interpretation of one of the most performed classical works, Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. The 2005 follow-up to her Barry Wordsworth-conducted debut, the subtle but passionate renditions of the "La Primavera," "L'estate," "L'autunno," and "L'inverno" concertos are performed with a sparse, eight-piece ensemble including Lithuanian violinist Julian Rachlin, her cellist brother Maarten, and harpsichordist father Jan.© TiVo

The sixth full-length effort from the veteran alt-rockers, It's the End of the World, But It's a Beautiful Day sees the Jared and Shannon Leto-led ensemble deliver an assured set of prog-, pop-, and electronic-leaning songs that play to all the band's strengths. Inspired by the sounds of '70s and '80s electronic music, the album is the group's first effort, apart from their debut, to not feature guitarist Tomo Miličević, who left the fold in 2018. The 11-song set includes the streaming hits "Stuck," "Life Is Beautiful," and "Get Up Kid."© TiVo

The Three Seasons of Antonio Vivaldi, proposed here by violinist Giuliano Carmignola, have nothing to do with the Four Seasons but rather are "seasons" of the composer's life, from his youth to his final years, when he sought an improvement of his fortunes beyond Italy. These don't correspond to sharp stylistic divisions like those in Beethoven's career, but his style did shift according to the ways in which he made a living (which could overlap during these phases of his life). He was variously a priest (later defrocked), a teacher (writing elegant, not terrifically difficult concertos for an orchestra of girls), one of the creators of the Italian virtuoso tradition, an opera composer and director, and a freelance composer of light galant works in Vienna. All these styles could appear at any time, but the emphasis shifts as his career proceeds, and all are amply illustrated by this three-volume compendium. Carmignola is one of the top Vivaldi exponents of our time, and he shifts gears quite effectively among these styles, handling the virtuoso piece like the Violin Concerto in A major, RV 353, with a good deal of flair but producing equally fluent essays in the well-balanced type of Vivaldi concerto that is generally familiar, like the Violin Concerto in E minor, RV 265, from the collection L'estro armonico. The Accademia dell'Annunciata orchestra under Riccardo Doni keeps up with the stylistic twists and turns here, and the only real complaint is the noisy church sound from Arcana's engineers, lending a harsh tinge. This recording will bring hours of interesting listening for Vivaldi lovers.© James Manheim /TiVo

The Coral weren't really looking to make another album so soon after completing the epic Coral Island concept album, but when one of their favorite haunts, Parr Studios, was about to close down, they took advantage of the friendly surroundings to cut another record. Two, in fact. The more substantial of the pair, Sea of Mirrors, is a sepia-toned, string-filled, and melancholy imagined soundtrack for a vintage spaghetti Western starring Lee Hazlewood as the busted-up and bitter troubadour. Calling in the arrangement expertise of Sean O'Hagan of High Llamas fame, the band chose to outfit the songs in orchestral flourishes, vocal choruses, and Western-friendly banjos and acoustic guitars. It ends up being their most adult-sounding album yet; stately and nostalgically sad, it sheds all traces of psychedelia in favor of an almost-middle-of-the-road approach where the road is old and covered in sand, barely used, and caked in nostalgia. The elaborate ballads and misty melodies are tailor-made for James Skelly's voice, he's got pipes big enough to inhabit the songs like an aging gunfighter while at the same time hinting at the pain lurking beneath the hard-worn surface. The band proves just as adept at creating the perfect atmosphere, filling the sonic spectrum with galloping basslines, rippling percussion, jangling and twanging guitars, and the occasional dusty piano. When paired with the widescreen efforts of O'Hagan, they come up with a sound old Lee would have been proud to call his own. Certainly one that some wily filmmaker might have stuck in their movie to conjure up a dramatically melancholy mood. The title track or "Wild Bird" could have fit into Midnight Cowboy with their aching vocals, shimmering strings, and downcast feel. Other songs might have been good for moments where lovers pine for one another ("That's Where She Belongs"), the lead ponders where it all went wrong ("North Wind") or wanders the night in a trance-like state ("Dream River"). The combination of O'Hagan and the Coral is so perfect it's hard to believe it actually happened. Each of them brings out something intrinsically good in the other; the Coral are so resolutely earthbound that O'Hagan's additions could never veer too far toward the precious, and his fluttering arrangements give the group space to nimbly explore lighter, less earthbound territory. It's definitely not like anything else in their catalog, and it's pretty clear by now that the Coral could take on just about any kind of guitar-based music and make it fully their own. Deeply bruised, cinematic, and graceful Western music is no match for their skills, and Sea of Mirrors is another triumph for the band.© Tim Sendra /TiVo

On her third solo effort, pop singer/songwriter Bebe Rexha looks to the past for inspiration, turning her attention to the dancefloor with the good vibes of Bebe. Self-titling the effort suggests that this is the most authentic representation of self that Rexha has presented thus far, resulting in a noticeable improvement in quality and her most sonically cohesive and focused statement to date. Joining the pack of nostalgic, pandemic-era dance escapism attempted by contemporaries like Miley Cyrus, Rexha pulls off throwback fare -- '70s touches such as elastic funk, shimmering disco, and groovy rock -- quite well, creating an ideal setting for her soulful rasp and playfully defiant attitude. The auras of Stevie Nicks and Dolly Parton loom large over much of the set: both the familiar riff from the former's "Edge of Seventeen" and her work with Fleetwood Mac inform a handful of highlights ("Blue Moon," "I Am," "Heart Wants What It Wants," "Call On Me"), while the latter country icon actually appears on the acoustic closer "Seasons." Additional guests include Snoop Dogg on the irresistible disco jam "Satellite," an effervescent ode to pot that's packed with a popping bassline and sparkling ABBA-esque strings, and David Guetta on the multi-platinum, chart-topping EDM anthem "I'm Good (Blue)," the Eiffel 65-interpolating smash that marks the pair's sixth collaboration together. Although the album is a change from the tougher, more hardened fare that fans might expect, Bebe makes a stronger impression than its predecessors and has enough high points to further support Rexha's position as a masterful pop songwriter capable of churning out the hits. With Bebe, she comes another step closer to a fully realized vision that could pull her into her own true spotlight moment.© Neil Z. Yeung /TiVo

Stevie Wonder broke a three-year silence, one that followed a series of six classic albums released within six years, with this double album, the score/soundtrack to a little-seen environmental documentary directed by Wild Bunch co-screenwriter Walon Green. From the release of Songs in the Key of Life through the release of Plants, Wonder had been active, actually, but only as a collaborator, working with Ramsey Lewis, the Pointer Sisters, Minnie Riperton, Syreeta, Ronnie Foster, and Michael Jackson. Even so, three years was a considerable lag between albums. Anticipation was so high that this release peaked at number four on the Billboard 200 and R&B album charts. It quickly slipped to footnote status; when Wonder’s 1972-1980 albums were reissued in 2000, it was left out of the program. Plants is a sprawling, fascinating album. Though it is dominated by synthesizer-heavy instrumental pieces with evocative titles, there is a handful of full-blown songs. The gorgeous, mostly acoustic ballad “Send One Your Love” was a Top Ten R&B single, while the joyous “Outside My Window” registered in the Top 60. Beyond that, there’s the deep classic “Come Back as a Flower,” a gently lapping, piano-led ballad featuring Syreeta on vocals. Otherwise, there are playfully oddball tracks like “Venus’ Flytrap and the Bug,” where Wonder chirps “Please don’t eat me!” through robotizing effects, and “A Seed’s a Star,” which incorporates crowd noise, a robotized monologue, and a shrieking Tata Vega over a funkier and faster version of Yellow Magic Orchestra. The album is not for everyone, but it suited its purpose and allowed its maker an amount of creative wiggle room that few major-label artists experience. © Andy Kellman /TiVo

Falling somewhere between the pop sensibilities of Ten Summoner's Tales and the searching ambition of The Soul Cages, Mercury Falling is one of Sting's tighter records, even if it fails to compel as much as his previous solo albums. Though he doesn't flaunt his jazz aspirations as he did in the mid-'80s, Mercury Falling feels more serious than The Dream of the Blue Turtles, primarily because of its reserved, high-class production and execution. Building from surprisingly simple, memorable melodies, Sting creates multi-layered, vaguely soul-influenced arrangements that carry all of the hallmarks of someone who has studied music, not lived it. Of course, there are many pleasures in the record -- for all of his pretensions, Sting remains an engaging melodicist, as well as a clever lyricist. There just happens to be a distinct lack of energy, stemming from the suffocating layers of synthesizers. Mercury Falling is a record of modest pleasures; it's just not an infectious, compulsive listen. © Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

After staking out new territory with the underrated South of Heaven, Slayer brought back some of the pounding speed of Reign in Blood for their third major-label album, Seasons in the Abyss. Essentially, Seasons fuses its two predecessors, periodically kicking up the mid-tempo grooves of South of Heaven with manic bursts of aggression. "War Ensemble" and the title track each represented opposite sides of the coin, and they both earned Slayer their heaviest MTV airplay to date. In fact, Seasons in the Abyss is probably their most accessible album, displaying the full range of their abilities all in one place, with sharp, clean production. Since the band is refining rather than progressing or experimenting, Seasons doesn't have quite the freshness of its predecessors, but aside from that drawback, it's strong almost all the way from top to bottom (with perhaps one or two exceptions). Lyrically, the band rarely turns to demonic visions of the afterlife anymore, preferring instead to find tangible horror in real life -- war, murder, human weakness. There's even full-fledged social criticism, which should convince any doubters that Slayer aren't trying to promote the subjects they sing about. Like Metallica's Master of Puppets or Megadeth's Peace Sells...but Who's Buying, Seasons in the Abyss paints Reagan-era America as a cesspool of corruption and cruelty, and the music is as devilishly effective as ever.© Steve Huey /TiVo

Often overshadowed by the subsequent twin highlights of Toys in the Attic and Rocks, Aerosmith's 1974 second album, Get Your Wings, is where Aerosmith became Aerosmith -- it's where they teamed up with producer Jack Douglas, it's where they shed much of their influences and developed their own trademark sound, it's where they turned into songwriters, it's where Steven Tyler unveiled his signature obsessions with sex and sleaze. Chief among these attributes may be Douglas, who either helped the band ease into the studio or captured their sound in a way their debut never did. This is a leaner, harder album, bathed in grease and layered in grit, but it's not just down to Douglas. The band itself sounds more distinctive. There are blues in Joe Perry and Joey Kramer's interplay, but this leapfrogs over blues-rock; it turns into slippery hard rock. To be sure, it's still easy to hear the Stones here, but they never really sound Stonesy; there's almost more of the Yardbirds to the way the group works the riffs, particularly evident on the cover of the early 'Birds classic "The Train Kept a Rollin'." But if the Yardbirds were tight and nervy, Aerosmith is blown out and loose, the sound of excess incarnate -- that is, in every way but the writing itself, which is confident and strong, fueled by Tyler's gonzo sex drive. He is the "Lord of the Thighs," playing that "Same Old Song and Dance," but he also slows down enough for the eerie "Seasons of Wither," a powerful slow-churning ballad whose mastery of atmosphere is a good indication of how far the band has grown. They never attempted anything quite so creepy on their debut, but it isn't just that Aerosmith is trying newer things on Get Your Wings, it's that they're doing their bloozy bluster better and bolder, which is what turns this sophomore effort into their first classic.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo