Roger Marcel Cicero Ciceu (6 July 1970 – 24 March 2016) was a German jazz and pop musician. He is interpreted the sound and spirit of the swing era for contemporary audiences, upholding the family traditions established by his father, renowned jazz pianist Eugene Cicero. In 2003 he founded the Roger Cicero Quartet as well as an 11-member big band, both of them adherents to traditional jazz idioms but with lyrics in their leader's native German tongue. After releasing the 2006 album Good Morning Midnight in collaboration with pianist Julia Hülsmann, Cicero issued his solo debut, Männersachen, later that same year… This "Best Of" compilation includes the studio and live tracks recorded beetween 2006-2016.

The countless musicians participating in the performance of magnificent baroque music produced an unprecedented variety already around 1650. The same is the case on this album - with the placement of the soloists, instrumentalists, and choirs in different positions in recording space.

"Guilty Pleasures" is the long-awaited follow-up to Renees Grammy winner The Beautiful Voice. This album allows Renee to indulge in musical cherry-picking, singing songs and arias in eight different languages. The sheer, unabashed beauty of these pieces provides their thematic connection. Ranging from familiar favorites like the Flower Duet from Lakme (sung with Renees friend Susan Graham) to rapturous, rarely-heard melodies of Tchaikovsky, Dvorak and Rachmaninov, Guilty Pleasures is a collection of treats Renee has long wanted to enjoy: an album of pure gratification. A special treat is an aria from John Coriglianos The Ghosts of Versailles, a twentieth-century American opera that allows Renee the chance to sing in her native language.

Launched by a fizzing account of the overture to the Paris ballet Les petits riens, the programme centres around three magnificent showpiece arias for Aloysia, famed both for her expressive cantabile and her coloratura prowess. Among her specialities were sustained pianissimo high notes; and I can’t imagine they were more delicately floated than they are by Sabine Devieilhe, a lyric coloratura who combines a pure, sweet timbre and dazzling virtuosity…In one of her signature roles, Devieilhe despatches the Queen’s ‘Der Hölle Rache’ with terrific pizzazz, her poise in alt even enabling her to shade the high-wire coloratura at will.

Junge Römer (Young Romans) is the second album by Austrian pop rock artist Falco, released in 1984. While the phrase in the German language is correctly written "Junge Römer", the title of Falco's album and single in both German and English pressings is "Junge Roemer". The album was a No.1 hit in his native Austria.

Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was one of the most linguistically as well as musically versatile sopranos of the post-war years. Her soprano accompanied by various other participants including the Pianisten, Orchestras & famous Conductors cover the classical great composers.

Johann Hölzel, better known by his stage name Falco, was an Austrian singer, songwriter and rapper. "Einzelhaft", (Solitary Confinement or Incarcerated!), is his first album. It was released in Austria, Germany, the United States, Japan, Spain, Italy, Canada, Sweden and Finland. The album achieved some success with its flagship single, "Der Kommissar", an innovative and influential German-language rap song.

Remaster of the late Austrian new waver's biggest U.S. album, which reached #3 when it was first released in 1986. Out of print in the States, it contains all 10 tracks from the original issue, including the #1 smash 'Rock Me Amadeus' and the top 20 hit 'Vienna Calling'.

Teodora Gheorghiu's second album for Aparte is 'Art Nouveau': the core is Richard Strauss' Op. 22 and 67, framed by a selection of songs from different cultural groups, linguistically and aesthetically. Gheorghiu's homage to 18th-century soprano Anna de Amicis included mostly premiere recordings of arias by Mozart, Gluck, Borghi, Cafaro and Myslivecek and was named Disc of the Month by International Record Review, by Opera magazine, and was BBC Radio Three’s Disc of the Week.

Barbra Streisand is one of the most distinguished pop singers of our generation. She showed there was no limit to her talents when she released "Classical Barbra". The masterpiece is her groundbreaking classical crossover album from 1976. It made a definitive statement in the classical music realm. Glenn Gould praised her voice as “one of the natural wonders of the age, an instrument of infinite diversity and timbral resource”. It remains one of the first and still one of the greatest records we know today as “classical crossover”. Nominated for Best Classical Performance – Vocal Soloist at the GRAMMYS, the album would go on to be certified gold.

For the first time on record, listeners can experience Bach's gripping John Passion within its original liturgical context. This recording of Bach's John Passion gives listeners a refreshing outlook, shining a new light into one of the best known pieces of the choral repertoire. John Butt recreates the Good Friday Vesper liturgy of a passion performance during Bach's time at Leipzig; in addition to the Dunedin Consort performance of Bach's composition, this recording features music from an original Leipzig hymn book with works by Jacob Händl, J. H. Schein and J Crüger performed by a congregational choir and the University of Glasgow Chapel Choir.

Jonas Kaufmann, German singer extraordinaire, may not be fully human. His exquisite chocolatey tenor, coupled with his extraordinary command of diction, tone and emotion, lend him an other-worldly air, whether performing opera or singing lieder. This man can do no wrong, as was witnessed Tuesday night at his Berlin Philharmonic performance of Schubert’s intense song cycle Winterreise. Accompanied by his long-time friend and mentor, Helmut Deutsch, Kaufmann inhabited a world of his own, one so far removed from that of the concert hall that he appeared dazed when the audience broke into applause.

All the music on this release is associated with the festival of Christmas. Bach wrote the cantata Unser Mund sei voll Lachens (BWV 110) for morning service on Christmas Day 1725, and the first version of the Magnificat in E flat major (BWV 243a) for Vespers on Christmas Day 1723, seven months after the Leipzig town council appointed him cantor of the Thomaskirche. It would hardly be exaggerating to say that Bach thus presented his visiting card to his new employer. According to the Bach scholar Christoph Wolff, the work is his "first really large-scale and complex piece of church music".

This is one of those occasions where beauty and artistry are reflected not only on the surface but right through to the core. This is a marvelous performance of Bach's six-cantata cycle that offers ravishing choral singing, sharply detailed orchestral playing, and superior contributions from the four solo vocalists, all presented in state-of-the-art sound.

Kaufmann’s fifth solo album on Decca is specially recorded for the Wagner anniversary year by the world’s leading Wagner tenor. Joined by one of the most formidable combinations in the opera world today – the chorus and orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin, under director Donald Runnicles – this recording is also a sonic spectacular, made in Decca’s time-honoured tradition.