CDs/DVDs

With members hailing from Senegal, Italy, Egypt and The Gambia, funky afro-jazz quintet Seckou Keita SKQ are as multinational as a UN assembly, but their latest CD The Silimbo Passage is more personal than political.

Guitarist Carl Herring’s album title deliberately evokes the warm colours of sunnier climes, ‘the earthy, honest, rustic and immediate quality’ of the music he’s chosen to record.

Hailed as one of the 20th century’s greatest conductors, Stokowski’s 70-year career included Wagner in programmes from his first performance in 1907 to his late appearances at the age of 95.

Leon Botstein’s trademark of innovative programming and uncovering unusual repertoire is represented beautifully on this CD.

The award-winning Marin Alsop is no stranger to conducting the London Philharmonic and is certainly not a stranger to the works of Brahms, having conducted his complete symphonies and overtures for the Naxos label.

From the opening bars of the Tonhalle Orchestra’s horn section, this recording promises to be one that will stand alongside the great Mahler interpretations of Solti and Bernstein.

This is the fourth offering of piano music by Arnold Bax on the Naxos label. Pianist Ashley Wass, who has recorded the three previous discs, teams up with the internationally acclaimed Martin Roscoe to present us with a disc of Bax’s works for two pianos.

This CD of music by the king of English operetta, Sir Arthur Sullivan, adds to David Lloyd-Jones’ already extensive and successful discography for Naxos.

An unusual, startling and highly accomplished recording of our famous classics being what can only be described as ‘jazzed up’, this comes across initially as a novelty record – almost like G4 but backwards.

Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic live up to high expectations with these performances, full of character and formal clarity. What I didn’t expect was the remarkable sense of wit and intimacy as the cut-down orchestra adopts the feel of a string quartet.