With a beautifully economical piano style full of grace, depth, tone, and plenty of swing, Ahmad Jamal is simply one of the greatest pianists in the history of jazz, but he has been woefully underexposed, even as he has been a giant influence in the genre, on Miles Davis, for one, and Gil Evans, who flirted with Jamal's chamber jazz style. This set collects eight of Jamal's seminal albums, 1955's Chamber Music of the New Jazz, 1956's Count 'Em 88, 1958's Ahmad Jamal Trio at the Spotlight Café and Ahmad Jamal at the Pershing: But Not for Me, 1959's Jamal at the Penthouse, 1960's Happy Moods, and 1961's All of You and Standard Eyes, all in one package. Together they form perhaps Jamal's richest creative stretch, making this set a welcome delight.

Ahmad Jamal leads his long-running trio with electric bassist James Cammack and drummer Idris Muhammad for these 2004 studio sessions. Mixing it up with four standards and five originals, the trio sounds as if they have just completed a several-week tour playing these numbers every night. Jamal begins "I'm Old Fashioned" in a fairly straight-ahead fashion, taking only a few sudden detours near the end of the performance. The old chestnut "Yours Is My Heart Alone" was a favorite of Oscar Peterson during the '60s, yet Jamal finds his own path in this lyrical gem by Franz Lehár. "My Heart Stood Still" is one of the most beloved ballads penned by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, though the pianist has a bit of fun with it by speeding up the tempo at times (evidently racing, rather than stilling one's heart, though the symbolism is the same for love).

If today no one questions the greatness of Mozart, the most famous composer in Europe at the end of the 18th century was probably Antonio Salieri. For many years court composer of the Austrian Emperor, Salieri wrote an enormous amount of music, some of the best of which remains that composed for the theatre. Les Danaïdes was premièred at Paris’s Opéra on 26th April 1784 and met with a triumphant success. The present recording, qualitatively very high also from a technical point of view, dates from 1983 and features an extraordinary Montserrat Caballé in great vocal form. Gianluigi Gelmetti conducts the renowned RAI Orchestra.

Here in Orange, France, on a windswept, night in 1974, they had greatness itself. Pierre Jourdan's film of the event is a priceless document, first of all, in the history of the opera. Stage-settings of Norma are usually hopeless: an offence to the eye, a chafing confutation of the spirit by gross matter. The ancient Roman amphitheatre is at any rate worthy and appropriate, and the Mistral, which threatened to close down the whole show and turn away an audience estimated at 10,000, adds a fine reminder of the power of Nature as it sets the druidical robes billowing and attacks the microphones.

Never in rock & roll history has there been a production like Springsteen on Broadway. Following a busy 2016 which opened with him touring a revival of The River with the E-Street Band and concluded with the publication of his autobiography Born to Run, Springsteen decided to stay in one place for 2017 – New York City, to be specific, where he began a residency at the Walter Kerr Theatre in October 2017, performing a show based on his memoir. Springsteen on Broadway turned out to be a runaway success, staying on Broadway through December 15, 2018 and commemorated with a Netflix special supported by this double-disc document of the show.

This memorable recording from the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin was Arthaus Musik’s first official release in 2000. It features one of the most popular Mozart operas, „Le Nozze di Figaro“, a witty satire on the authority of the reigning noble class and infidelity in love relationships. Starring a great cast of singers with Dorothea Röschmann, René Pape, Emily Magee and Peter Schreier – to name but a few – this performance is conducted by Daniel Barenboim, chief conductor of the Berlin State Orchestra since 1992 named conductor for life by the orchestra in 2000.