The third volume in Virgin's Ambient series doesn't change the game much; there are a few newer acts sprinkled amongst the two-disc set (FSOL, William Orbit, Bark Psychosis) but the main focus here is on classic ambient masters (Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, David Sylvian, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Harold Budd) and quieter selections from Virgin artists who wouldn't normally be classified this way (Prince Far I, Holger Czukay, Shu-De, Bill Laswell, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan). The result is another fine collection, a must have album for any eclectic music lover.

In his first album with Mirare, the pianist Lukas Geniušas offers us a recital featuring two early masterpieces of Prokofiev coupled with the only sonata the composer penned in Western Europe.
Even though the earlier works are four decades distant from the latter, a steady feature remains: Prokofiev’s feelings for his beloved Russia.

The cellist János Starker and the pianist György Sebök, both born in Hungary in the early 1920s, made a musical team for some 60 years. These recordings were made in 1959 in Paris, where they both found themselves after the Soviet crackdown on Hungary. “Starker [is] at the peak of his form,” wrote Gramophone. “The cello's timbre is refined and subtly coloured … and the pianist is completely in harmony with his partner.”

Originally released in 2001 but unavailable for almost two years, Glossa has designed gorgeous new packaging for this most important of Paolo Pandolfo’s projects, possibly a milestone in the recording history of Bach’s music. Everybody seems to know these discs – despite almost no marketing effort, they are perceived with such benchmarks as Glenn Gould’s or Gustav Leonhardt’s renderings of the GoldbergVariations or Anner Bylsma’s performances of the original cello suites.

J.J. Cale's guitar work manages to be both understated and intense here. The same is true of his seemingly offhand singing, which finds him drawling lines like "You get your gun, I'll get mine" with disarming casualness. But he has trouble coming up with original material as strong as that on his debut, and for some, his approach will be too casual; there are many times, when the band is percolating along and Cale is muttering into the microphone, that the music seems to be all background and no foreground. You may find yourself waiting for a payoff that never comes.

Pallas are a progressive rock band based in the United Kingdom. They were one of the bands at the vanguard of what was termed neo-progressive during progressive rock's second-wave revival in the early 1980s. Other major acts included Marillion, IQ, Twelfth Night, Pendragon, Quasar and Solstice. The Sentinel is the debut album by British Progressive rock band Pallas. It is a concept album with lyrics based upon Cold War themes, using a futuristic version of the tale of Atlantis as a metaphor for a technologically advanced society brought to the brink of destruction.