The sonatas were composed over several years from 1722 onwards, although they remained widely unheard until publication 100 years later. They have a constantly lively nature and a beauty of expression which belies early critical writing which claimed they had been composed merely as dry technical exercises in counterpoint and in independence of foot and hand. Although they lack the great rhetoric and drama of the preludes and fugues, they make up for that in their perpetual bright invention. There’s special interest in the instrument chosen for the recording – an organ known as the Garnisons Kirke in Copenhagen, which contemporary organ-maker Carsten Lund completed in 1995 as a reconstruction of the original baroque instrument which dated from 1724. The instrument lacks the grand sonority we associate with more modern instruments, but its agility and very clear piping sonority has great charm, especially when played with the facility heard here. The recording reveals every detail of the instrument and its special baroque-church ambience. It has been recorded in 5.1 Surround SACD, but for people not able to benefit from that, it can also be heard in stereo SACD or in conventional CD-format stereo. The result in all formats is outstanding.

Polish composer Karol Szymanowski’s two string quartets were written under vastly different circumstances. The First Quartet was completed in 1917 at the end of his three-year confinement in Russia during the First World War. It is typical of his output during this period – heavily influenced by both Debussy and Scriabin but, as ever with this remarkable composer, recognisably his. The Second Quartet was written ten years later, in 1927, after the return to his native Poland and during his first year as director of the Warsaw Conservatorium.  By this time, Szymanowski had been influenced by both Stravinsky and Polish nationalism and his mature style, while retaining his individuality, includes elements reflective of both. Biographical details of Ludomir Rózycki are not well known. As well as composing throughout his life, he was an important teacher and administrator in the Polish music scene. (He was the first chairman of the Polish Composers’ Society and Dean of Music at the National Higher School of Music.) His String Quartet, written in 1906, is a workman-like effort firmly rooted in a neo-romantic style. The Warsaw-based Royal String Quartet are superb advocates for this music and, especially in the two Szymanowski quartets, bring a subtlety…

Most people who want the much-recorded music by Elgar and Co will already have it, and mostly in better performances. Those who only want the contemporary works by Nicolas Maw et al will likely not want Holst’s Planets or the Walton works. Doubtless there is a droll side to packaging the Dream of Gerontius with Three Screaming Popes (surely a CD first!) but I don’t imagine that was the aim. So the collection has to be for the Rattle fan club. Setting aside my usual reservations about the conductor (had he been on the scene in the 1950s he would simply have been one of a large number of excellent conductors), these are all perfectly good performances. In the case of the more contemporary music, better than that. Rattle is excellent in this repertoire, making a case for even the most unrewarding scores. For me, the musical utterances of composers such as Turnage often leave a great deal to be desired. Whereas Thomas Adès’s marvellous Asyla, has altogether more colour and variety. The bag of Elgar is mixed. Falstaff is appropriately brisk. The Enigma is excellent. The Gerontius indulgent; with Janet Baker a shadow of her former self, and Nigel…

The music is quite unlike Weill’s “Berlin cabaret” idiom and seems to resonate with an emotional ambivalence between an unsentimental nobility in the extended central largo, combined with wit and grace in the outer ones. The Concerto for violin and wind orchestra is completely neo-classical and somewhat prickly but, as one commentator observed, contains “roses among the thorns”. The mood here is almost Hindemithian with occasional touches of Prokofiev and Stravinsky. Zimmermann plays with an appropriately pared down tone. The vocal works I find less satisfying and unlikely to reward repeated listening, despite fine singing. Elise Ross, conductor Simon Rattle’s first wife, doesn’t quite differentiate sufficiently between the various deadly sins (although is much better than Marianne Faithful). No one can capture the desperation of either Anja Silja or Gisela May in this music, not to mention the 40-unfiltered-cigarettes-a-day croak of the incomparable Lotte Lenya.

Apart from the recent Davis recording of the 1st Symphony with the Dresden Staatskapelle on the Profil label (an absolute blinder) this is the best recording of the work in my view. Barbirolli’s interpretation of the 2nd Symphony was also the best on disc for many years. Although over-shadowed by the remarkable 1st, it is nonetheless a great symphony, worthy of regular performances. Those of us who heard Vladimir Ashkenazy’s masterly performance with the Sydney Symphony last year can attest to this. Of course, the Philharmonia was the better English orchestra at the time. However the Halle orchestra players respond to Sir John Barbirolli in their own special way and play as if the devil were behind them. The interpretation is all. The lovely Serenade for Strings is always welcome. Norman Del Mar directs it well, with considerable sensitivity. Perhaps the recording is a little too reverberant, but that really is a minor problem. Of special interest in this recorded collection is the recording of In the South. Long regarded by Elgar buffs as the best performance ever recorded. If great Elgar playing is what you are after, you can’t go wrong with this excellent re-issue.

If Trevor Pinnock and Christopher Hogwood represent the cooler end of the period instrument music-making spectrum, then Giovanni Antonini and Il Giardino Armonico represent the other explosive extreme. If you add to that volatile mix the melodramatic gestures of mezzo-soprano Bernarda Fink, who is more hyper-emotional than the most exaggerated daytime soap actress, then you are in for an ‘over the top’ listening experience, where the recitatives almost require sea sickness pills in order to deal with all the swells. The Italian tendency for outburst is given free reign in this collection of Marian works, and it is all utterly convincing, if not somewhat shocking. In certain dramatic figures, the strings play incredibly roughly, and yet at the beginning of the CD the playing is so quiet and delicate, the gut strings only just speak. This CD isn’t for everyone but I suspect it is closer to what Vivaldi and his colleagues had in mind when they wrote these works, and it certainly matches the historical descriptions of the weeping and wailing of famous Baroque divas. The works here are by a combination of minor Italian composers such as Ferrandini, Conti and Marini interspersed with works of Vivaldi and Monteverdi…

Inva Mula was born in 1963 and has been a star for 15 years. She has appeared with Plácido Domingo in Paris, Munich and Brussels and has also sung at the Vienna State Opera and the Metropolitan in New York. Her most important recording so far has been of Bizet’s little-known opera Ivan IV for Naïve. Mula has an agreeable voice with sufficient power and quality throughout its compass to manage the florid passages of the ‘Jewel Song’ (except for a weak trill) and the melodic legato of ‘Le roi de Thulé’ – both from Faust. Unlike many sopranos of this type, her lower register is firm and opulent, with an attractive vibrato. Her French and Italian are both excellent. She also has a good sense of the operatic situation and the ability to project her arias with dramatic conviction. She does not, however, have sufficient vocal resources to project ‘Sempre libera’ (from La traviata) with the bravura that will bring the house down. She includes a rarely heard aria from Faust that is omitted in many performances and is joined in ‘Sempre libera’ by an off-stage tenor, Agim Hushi. The record’s only real fault is the occasional shrillness it…

This disc, entitled simply Vivaldi, is the second collaboration between Czech mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená and the Venice Baroque Orchestra. It is fine enough to make me want to seek out that first partnership, of arias by Handel. This puts the spotlight on Venetian master-composer Vivaldi, in the musical area he favoured above all others – opera. We know Vivaldi mainly through his instrumental writing. However, as the notesto this disc stress, Vivaldi saw himself predominantly as a man of the theatre. The15 tracks here are drawn from 14 of the more than 90 works he wrote for the opera stage.  Kožená’s lustrous voice is clear and agile enough to handle with ease all the pyrotechnics of Vivaldi’s most technically difficult arias. But for this recital she has deliberately chosen the deceptively ‘easier’ slower arias where the singer must search predominantly for lucid expression and meaning. The result is ravishingly beautiful. Most of the arias will be unfamiliar – even the limpid and melancholic ‘Gelido in ogni vena’ from Farnace has its own unique style and beauty, even though we can hear that it has evolved from the famous ‘Winter’ violin concerto. Particularly effective are the arias in which Michele Favaro (transverse flute)…

The charms of the Children’s Corner Suite are well known and it sounds more effective in this original form than in Caplet’s orchestration. Less familiar are the three pieces constituting Pour le piano, written in homage to the Baroque composers whom Debussy admired. Only one of these, the Sarabande, has become well known, largely because of Ravel’s orchestration. But the others, a Prelude and a Toccata are enjoyable and rewarding to virtuosos. The three Estampes probably represent Debussy’s piano style at its most mature and enjoyable; Pagodes evokes the Orient, La Soirée dans Grenade, in Habanera rhythm, evokes Spain and Jardins sous la pluie, France. The two Arabesques are usually dismissed as immature by most commentators, but they are pretty and deserve an occasional hearing. L’isle joyeuse is one of Debussy’s most effective concert pieces (even Rachmaninov found it difficult to play). La plus que lente will be familiar to most listeners. A novelty is Pièce pour l’oeuvre du ‘Vêtement du blessé’ (Dressing the wounds of Soldiers), lasing precisely one minute, and written in homage to wounded soldiers in WWI. Pommier plays all these works excellently and the recording, although dating from 1989, is first-rate. Recommended to those who yearn…

It was premiered by its dedicatee, Gregor Piatigorsky, in January 1957. It is a calmer, more serene composition than many of his earlier works – the violin concerto for example – reflecting the brevity of expression common in his later output. Its opening movement (Moderato) is pastoral and frequently beautiful, the second (Allegro appassionato) lively and passionate and the third (Tema ed improvvisazioni) contrasts both the pastoral and the passionate. This live, warts-and-all recording, featuring Dutch cellist Peter Wispelwey, conductor Jeffrey Tate and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, was made in 2007 at the Sydney Opera House. Wispelwey is a passionate advocate for this work and it shows; the SSO, directed by the underrated Tate, play out of their skins. The remainder of this disc was recorded later in Holland and features Wispelwey playing solo cello pieces of the 20th century. It would be easy to dismiss these as mere filler, but they are actually wonderful and welcome renditions of some rarely heard pieces. Chief among them is a superb version of Ernest Bloch’s fascinating Bach-inspired Suite No. 1 for solo cello, alongside short works by György Ligeti, Walton and Benjamin Britten.

Statistics prove nothing, and what applies today may not have applied at all three centuries ago, but it is unusual to have a set as large as this to refer to in one place. Two CDs are just about big enough to hold all 31 movements of the 12 Concerti Grossi of Handel’s Opus 6, without any evidence of tampering with their content. Everything here attests to the fecundity of Handel’s imagination. Every variation you might think of is no more than his starting point, and from start to finish of this impressive undertaking by the ABO, there is not a dull moment, never a hint of repetition. Of course, without paying close attention to the detailed playlist, you will not stand a chance of being able to trace all of this sequentially from one concerto to the next. But in terms of the overall effect, that hardly matters at all. Wherever you are within it, what you find yourself listening to is fresh, vigorous even when introspective, exquisitely played and a real joy to be hearing. If you think of Baroque music as being yawn-inducingly dull fare, this might just change your mind. You owe it to your aural…

Every generation there is a new high-water mark in virtuoso violin playing set by a recording artist. Here is the CD equivalent of our time.