The orchestral suites on this enchanting disc of Telemann are beautiful works, considered by some to be the most difficult pieces Telemann wrote for recorder and oboe. The music fascinates from the first to the last note with its originality, partly due to its Polish inflection. Telemann once wrote that 'a Polish tune makes the whole world jig.' South African musician Carin van Heerden is a founding member of the Austrian L'Orfeo Baroque Orchestra and here directs the ensemble as she plays exquisite, virtuosic recorder solos. 'All three suites receive lively, colorful performances that should have your toes tapping in no time. If you wish to sample Telemann’s suites, you will find this a good place to start' (Fanfare). This reissue is available at budget price and accompanied by a complete CPO printed catalogue: over 900 superb titles to be discovered, from Baroque gems to rare German operas.

The fourth and final volume in the much-anticipated series celebrating a milestone in Australian music history: Vladimir Ashkenazy’s first festival as Principal Conductor of Sydney Symphony. Recorded live at Sydney Opera House during the Maestro’s triumphant Elgar Festival, the Pomp and Circumstances Marches are arguably the composer’s best known and most popular orchestral works. As with the acclaimed Rachmaninov boxed set (EXCL00017), also featuring Ashkenazy and the SSO, the Elgar discs are superbly mastered to the highest audiophile standards. Relive one of the most thrilling Australian orchestral concerts of recent years! And more exciting still: Exton has just completed recordings of Ashkenazy's recent month-long Prokofiev Festival at the Sydney Opera House, for release in 2010.

Handel Suite in D Minor, Harp Concerto HWV294, Bochsa Introduction on Handel's 'O Let Eternal Honours' and 'From Mighty Kings', For Unto Us a Child is Born from Messiah, Babell Lascia ch'io pianga from Rinaldo

The story of Handel’s associations with the harp and also those of harpists with his music stretches out across more than a century, from before the composer’s arrival in London in 1712 until well into the 19th century, when arrangements of his works were still being published. In an original and novel CD – in which the harpist Mara Galassi performs on two contrasting period instruments, a Welsh triple harp and an Érard pedal harp – there appear both compositions written by Handel for the instrument, such as the Harp Concerto HWV 294 and the Suite in D minor HWV 448, as well as later arrangements by composers such as Edward Jones and Nicolas Charles Bochsa, in new works partially attributed to Handel. This is Galassi’s third disc for Glossa (following Il Viaggio di Lucrezia in 1998 and Les Harpes du Ciel in 2003, two CDs which have been quietly acquiring cult status), and on it she shares centre stage with the keyboard player Giovanni Togini, who acts as the ideal musical companion on any of the three instruments which he makes use of for the Microcosm Concerto: the organ, the harpsichord and the fortepiano.

Duello Amoroso HWV82, Alpestre Monte HWV81

The Accademia degli Arcadi – that pioneering literary circle established by a group of poets, composers, aristocrats and churchmen -- championed a return to classical and pastoral ideals. One of the group's keenest members was the Marquis Francesco Maria Ruspoli, Handel’s patron in Rome, for whom this charming pastoral cantata was composed and who brings into focus the aesthetic background for this sixth and penultimate release in La Risonanza's acclaimed series of Handel's Italian Cantatas. In an engrossing liner-note essay by Carlo Vitali, the listener is introduced to the social and political context of the pastoral texts of Olinto, pastore arcade, the famous Duello amoroso, and Alpestre monte, the three cantatas which make up this CD. The series debut (GCD921521) was awarded the prestigious Stanley Sadie Handel Recording Prize in 2007, while other volumes have been selected as Gramophone Editor’s Choices. Listen to excerpts from the album.

Nominated for four Grammys, Conspirare is America's premier choral ensemble. In a rich and varied a cappella program performed on live TV, Craig Hella Johnson and his group move effortlessly from the Renaissance to spirituals, contemporary choral compositions to fresh arrangements of songs by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Dolly Parton and Annie Lennox! This compelling concert performance is also available on DVD (HMD9907535).

String Quartets in E Flat Major No 28 Op 54, D Minor No 29 Op 55, C Minor No 30 Op 56

Described in Gramophone as 'one of the five quartets you should know about', The Diotima Quartet has announced its first Australian tour for The Sydney Festival in January 2010. In concert as on this recording, Diotima explores the music of the unjustly neglected French-English Romantic composer George Onslow, who wrote more than 60 quartets and whose genius is being rediscovered and re-evaluated today. This disc includes two world premiere recordings of his works. Founded by graduates of the Paris and Lyon conservatoires, the quartet takes its name from Luigi Nono’s Fragmente-Stille, an Diotima, thus affirming its commitment to the music of our time.

Bach 'Jesus bleibet meine Freude', Magnificat, Christmas Oratorio, Handel Alleluia Chorus, Franck Panis Angelicus, Mozart Alleluia from Exultate Jubilate, Pachelbel Canon, Saint-Saens Christmas Oratorio, Benedictus, Bizet Farandole, Buxtehude Alleluia

A magical Christmas evening spent with Naïve's brightest stars, including soprano Sandrine Piau, Concerto Köln and cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton. Classical and seasonal favourites included in this inspiring selection: Panis Angelicus, Pchelbel's Canon, the Bach Magnificat and Handel Alleluia Chorus, alongside lesser-known Christmas works by Buxtehude and Saint-Saens.

Arpeggione Sonata (arr viola), Der Hirt auf dem Felsen, Romanze der Helene

French violist Antoine Tamestit lovingly takes on one of the most popular works of chamber music for cello in an arrangement for his own instrument. Schubert's yearning Arpeggione sonata sounds just as warm and lyrical recast for the mellow tones of the viola, while French soprano Sandrine Piau contributes several heart-wrenching Schubert Lieder to this Romantic album. Watch the mini-documentary about Antoine Tamestit and his previous recordings on Naive.

It's been an annus mirabilis of astonishing productivity and brilliance for celebrated conductor Marc Minkowski, who has conducted critically acclaimed recordings of major works including the Bach Mass in B Minor (V5145) and a unique concept album devoted to Cecilia, patron saint of music (V5183). Following these successes, he presents his much-anticipated contribution to the Haydn bicentenary of 2009: the complete London Symphonies. These twelve symphonies represent the pinnacle of the classical genre, at the height of Haydn's powers as the greatest and most prolific symphonist of his time. Minkowski has already garnered a reputation as one of the most innovative and progressive Mozart conductors performing today; now his renown in the field can be extended to Mozart's friend and contemporary, Haydn.

Piano Sonata No 2 Op 35, Etudes Op 25, Marche Funebre in B Flat Minor, 24 Preludes Op 28, 23 Mazurkas, 9 Polonaises

Celebrating the 2010 bicentenary of Chopin's birth, this beautifully presented boxed set of his best-loved piano works is available at 4 CDs for the price of 1! These beautiful, deeply moving performances by renowned Chopin greats, Grigory Sokolov and Janus Olejniczak, are among the finest available, making this the ideal boxed set for music lovers and pianists this Christmas.

A special budget release on RCO Live of Musorgsky’s beloved Pictures at an Exhibition in the orchestrated version by Maurice Ravel. Recorded Live at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Mariss Jansons and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra display magnificent form and produce a wonderful pallette of colours and rich sonority in this dazzling orchestral piece.

Schubert An Sivlia, Einsiedelei, Verklarung, Die Sterne, Himmelsfunken, Standchen, Wolf Der Knabe und das Immelein, Gesang Weyla's, An die Geliebte, Auf eine Christblume, Lied eines Verliebten, Lied vom Winde, Faure Aubade, En Sourdine, Green, Notre Amour

One of Britain’s most sought after and charismatic singers, Simon Keenlyside won a Gramophone Award for his 2007 arias disc. Here, he tackles more intimate repertoire in a recital at London's famous Wigmore Hall: Romantic Lieder and songs in German and French, sensitively accompanied by the acclaimed pianist Malcolm Martineau. Lauded by Gramophone as England's finest baritone singer of Lieder, Keenlyside's Wigmore recital has been described as 'the most eloquent performance that this hall has heard in decades' (The Times). His richly dramatic vocal range and agility are enriched with a subtle, sensitive tone, particularly in beautiful songs by Fauré and Ravel.

6 English Suites BWV806-811, 6 French Suites BWV812-817, Harpsichord Book for W F Bach

In addition to being a fine conductor and the founding director of the superb Les Talens Lyriques - specialising in baroque music and working with the likes of Cecilia Bartoli, Nathalie Dessay and Sandrine Piau - Christophe Rousset has recorded some of the finest Bach harpsichord discs to be released in recent years. Here, his English Suites, French Suites and the Harpsichord Book for W. F. Bach are gathered together in a specially priced boxed set from the boutique French label Ambroisie.

Beethoven Variations on an Original Theme in C minor WoO80, Brahms Three Intermezzi Op 117, Ravel Gaspard de la Nuit

Piano & Forte is full of contrasts, an intense and highly personal first album in which young rising star Mihaela Uruleasa takes the listener on a musical journey from the past to the present and back to her Romanian roots.

Rapsodia Espanola for Piano and Orchestra, Navarra, Piano Sonata No 5, Third Ancient Suite, Azulejos, Piano Concerto No 1 'Concierto Fantastico'

This series of the piano music of Isaac Albéniz has so far focussed on solo works – including, of course, the celebrated collection Iberia. For the sixth volume, Miguel Baselga has chosen to record two works for piano and orchestra: the First Piano Concerto (Concierto fantástico), and Rapsodia Española. The present disc also includes solo pieces from the same period, often showing the influence of Liszt, Chopin and Schumann. But Albéniz also liked to include Scarlatti sonatas in his own concert programmes. One result of his interest in earlier music was the three Suites anciennes, a two-movement work consisting of a gavotte and a minuet. Azulejos and Navarra come from the opposite end of the composer’s career. Composed at the same time – and in a similar vein – as Iberia, both works were left uncompleted upon Albéniz's death in 1909. In the case of Azulejos, Miguel Baselga performs the familiar version completed by Enrique Granados, but for Navarra he has opted for a version made by the great Spanish pianist Pilar Bayona, which is heard for the first time on this disc.

Symphonies Nos 0-9

BIS is proud to present the only available collection of the complete symphonies by Alfred Schnittke. The recordings, part of the Schnittke Edition begun in 1987, have been brought together in a 6-CD boxed set which also includes an initiated essay by Schnittke’s close associate Alexander Ivashkin: a fascinating chapter in the history of the late 20th-century symphony, at the price of only two discs. The music of Alfred Schnittke reflects a highly complex and fragile late twentieth-century mentality: a mixture of old and new styles, of modern, post-modern, classical and baroque idioms.

Shostakovich Piano Trio No 1 in C Minor Op 8, Piano Trio No 2 in E Minor Op 67, Schnittke Piano Trio (arr of String Trio)

The highly emotionally charged works on this disc were composed during periods of upheaval in the lives of their creators. Shostakovich's father died in the aftermath of the turbulent years of the revolution, and a year later he himself was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Sent to Crimea to recuperate, the sixteen-year old music student fell in love with the daughter of a Moscow professor and began to compose his First Piano Trio, a passionate work representing a vital stage in his development towards the First Symphony. In the midst of the 2nd World War, Shostakovich completed his Piano Trio No.2, born out of the appalling sufferings of his fellow countrymen and darkened still more by the loss of his closest friend, the writer Ivan Sollertinsky. Also coloured by a close encounter with death, Schnittke's only Piano Trio was composed to mark the centenary of Alban Berg in 1985. Schnittke avoided his trademark stylistic confrontations and direct quotations, preferring subtle allusions to the world of the Viennese classics, especially Schubert. Soon after completing the trio, Schnittke suffered the first of a series of massive strokes but in 1992 he revisited the work, dedicating the version for piano trio to his doctor Alexander Potapov, 'who saved my life twice'. The Kempf Trio's performances of Russian piano trios have been described as 'fiery, cogent, intelligent and wholly compelling' (Evening Standard).

In 1806, Beethoven composed two concertos – the Fourth Piano Concerto followed by the Violin Concerto Op. 61. In both cases the composer soon returned to the works to produce new versions, and it is these later versions that are presented here. At the public première of the Fourth Piano Concerto in 1808, Beethoven performed the piano part very ‘capriciously’ according to his pupil Carl Czerny, playing many more notes than are to be found in the printed edition. A clear indication of what Beethoven played comes from his copyist’s orchestral score, in which the outer movements contain annotations in the composer's hand. These have been transcribed by Beethoven scholar Barry Cooper who, in his insightful liner notes, describes this rarely recorded 1808 version as 'strikingly inventive’ and ‘more sparkling, virtuosic and sophisticated than the standard one'. In the case of the Opus 61 concerto, Beethoven succeeded in writing what many consider to be the quintessential violin concerto. Less well-known is the fact that soon after the first performance, Beethoven produced an arrangement of the solo part for piano, modifying the violin part slightly in the process. When the work was first published, it was as a concerto for violin or piano. Ronald Brautigam and the Norrköping SO under Andrew Parrott have received acclaim for two previous discs of Beethoven's works for piano and orchestra: 'These well-known works emerge as if freshly minted' wrote International Record Review about Concertos Nos. 1 and 3.

Dutilleux Toute un monde lointain (All A Distant World) for Cello and Orchestra, Three Verses on the name Sacher for solo cello, Lutoslawski Cello Concerto, Sacher Variation for solo cello

All four works on this disc share Mstislav Rostropovich as a common denominator. As the dedicatee of Henri Dutilleux’s Tout un monde lointain and Witold Lutosławski’s Cello Concerto, in 1970 Rostropovich gave the first performances of both works, and six years later he was instrumental in commissioning a series of short seventieth-birthday tributes to the Swiss conductor and music patron Paul Sacher, to which both composers contributed. Lutosławski and Dutilleux are near-contemporaries whose most characteristic music sounds very different. In Dutilleux’s case, the hypnotic atmosphere, intensity and allusive expressiveness of his best compositions owe much to French literature, and it was his fascination with the poetry of Charles Baudelaire that led him to chose the title Tout un monde lointain from a poem which speaks of an utterly remote world of exotic places and sensations. While Dutilleux’s music is concerned with echoing the abiding strangeness of the poet’s ambiguous, erotic symbols and images, Lutosławski’s concerto offers musical drama of a very different kind: here the orchestra is much more adversarial, while the soloist might represent an independent-minded artist, determined to resist social conformity at all costs, and emerging from a titanic conflict at the end, bloody but unbowed. Fanfare has described cellist Christian Poltéra as ‘a resounding smash …his tone is lovely, technique lively, and he is able to sell this music like no others I have heard...’.

Wagner's epic four-opera cycle is a work of extraordinary scale - a full performance takes place over four nights with a total playing time of approximately 15 hours. Based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas, it is a work that follows the struggles of gods, heroes, mythical creatures, and the eponymous magical Ring that grants dominion over the entire world. The music is richly textured, and grows in complexity as the cycle proceeds - Wagner wrote for an orchestra of gargantuan proportions, including a greatly enlarged brass section with new instruments invented especially for the work. The Bayreuth Festspielhaus was constructed for this work to be performed in, with a specially designed stage that allows singers voices to blend with the huge orchestra without straining - essential for such long performances. Recorded live at the Bayreuth Festival in 2008, this production stars a host of international stars including Michelle Breedt, Albert Dohmen, Stephen Gould, Hans-Peter Konig, Linda Watson & Eva-Maria Westbroek. Christian Thielemann, one of the most sought-after conductors in the world, takes the baton with the Bayreuth Festival Chorus and Orchestra. This 14-disc CD box set marks the first ever Opus Arte CD release, and the start of an exciting new direction for the company.

Komm Jesu komm BWV229, Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf BWV226, Jesu, meine Freude BWV227, Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied BWV225, Ich lasse dich nicht du segnest mich denn, Furchte dich nicht ich bin bei dir BWV228, Lobet den Herrn, alle Heiden BWV

During a journey Mozart made from Vienna to Berlin in 1789, he visited Leipzig and attended a rehearsal of Bach’s motet Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied (BWV 225), performed by St Thomas' Choir. One of the boys in the choir at the time, Friedrich Rochlitz, would some years later bear witness to the artistic revelation that struck Mozart: “The choir had sung but a few bars, when Mozart interrupted us, crying “What is this piece?”, and it seemed that his entire soul was then to be found in his ears. When we had completed the motet, he called out, filled with joy, “Now that is indeed quite something!"' This performance, featuring renowned countertenor Robin Blaze and directed by Bach Collegium Japan stalwart Peter Kooij, undoubtedly would have captivated Mozart himself.

Tavener The Lamb, Howells A Spotless Rose, Jenkins Gaudete, Rutter There Is A Flower, Nativity Carol, Jingle Bells, Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day, The Twelve Days of Christmas

Tenebrae is a professional chamber choir, founded and directed by Nigel Short in 2001. Often performing by candlelight, the choir creates an atmosphere of spiritual and musical reflection, where medieval chant and renaissance works are interspersed with contemporary compositions. The carefully selected team of singers use the acoustic and atmostphere of the building to enable the audience to experience the power and intimacy of the human voice. What Sweeter Music is a festive treat, with a sumptuous collection of songs and carols for Christmas - touching on traditional favourites (Silent Night, Away in a Manger), modern classics (The Lamb, What Sweeter Music) and some new light-hearted arrangements (Jingle Bells, We Wish You a Merry Christmas).

Opting for the French-language version of Gluck’s Orpheus, director David Alagna was faced with the task of achieving an appropriately subtle adaptation. In a plot transposed to the present day, Eurydice dies in a car accident on the day of her wedding, and Orpheus’s quest for his beloved is a dream beginning and ending at the cemetery. The enormously talented Roberto Alagna throws himself body and soul into this production. His incredible vitality and flawless timbre and diction make him an unforgettable Orpheus. His partner, young Italian soprano Serena Gamberoni, is simply stunning as Eurydice, while French baritone Marc Barrard is suitably terrifying as the guide to the Underworld. The Orchestra of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna is conducted by Giampaolo Bisanti, who masterfully captures Gluck’s poetry, romantic melancholy and depth.

For its first DVD release, Glossa has chosen Purcell's Baroque masterpiece King Arthur, brought to the stage as a veritable spectacular combining the strong creative ideas of its renowned ensemble, Le Concert Spirituel, with the fabulously funny French comedy duo Shirley and Dino and brilliant film director Olivier Simonnet. Herve Niquet and Le Concert Spiritual had already recorded King Arthur on CD for Glossa (GCD921608) and were now imagining quite a different approach. This incisive new production allows for the role of King Arthur himself (assumed here by João Fernandes) as well as riotous comic sketches starring Shirley and Dino – even the musical director gets his turn to emerge from the pit and partake in the action. Staged and recorded in March 2009 at the Opéra de Montpellier in France, where Le Concert Spirituel has been in residence since 2006.

Nominated for four Grammys, Conspirare is America’s premier choral ensemble. In a rich and varied a cappella program performed on live TV, Craig Hella Johnson and his group move effortlessly from the Renaissance to spirituals, contemporary choral compositions to fresh arrangements of songs by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Dolly Parton and Annie Lennox! This compelling concert performance is also available on CD (HMU9907534).