Ardour Teebs

For its harmonia mundi début, the London-based La Nuova Musica, led by David Bates, presents a true rarity: the original 1712 version of Handel's opera 'Il pastor fido' (The Faithful Shepherd) featuring Lucy Crowe, Anna Dennis, Katherine Manley, Madeleine Shaw and Clint van der Linde.

With its 2012 release of Handel's Esther, the Dunedin Consort continues its admirable series of recordings of little known or recently reconstructed versions of Baroque oratorios, begun in 2006 with its award-winning Dublin version of Messiah. There have been other reconstructions of the early version of Esther, Handel's first English oratorio, but the impetus behind this one, "the first reconstructable version, 1720" comes from research published in 2010 by musicologist John H. Roberts that clarifies which music reflects Handel's intentions for a private 1720 performance at Cannons, the residence of James Bridges, who became Duke of Chandos, and which was added for its 1732 revival.

This is three-CD compilation released by Mellow Records as a King Crimson tribute. Among the performers are some of the most prominent contemporary progressive bands, with a wide variety ranging from the old-fashioned spaghetti-prog of Germinale or Malibran to the jazzcore ardour of Anatrofobia and Caboto. Some of the cover versions are quite calligraphic while others reshape the compositions more deeply (Nema Niko and Comfort bring in some electronica, Mariposa show their chamber-punk attitude - and their awful English pronounciation, Mosaic Orchestra almost have a fanfare sound), but they're all substantially faithful and well-played, with many great renditions and a very good overall result.

Telemann's comic opera Den neumodische Liebhaber Damon was first performed at Leipzig in 1719, two years before he took up his position as Music Director at Hamburg. But in 1724 Hamburg's newly refurbished Gänsemarkt Opera House needed a new piece for its reopening; Telemann, who had taken over the running of the Gänsemarkt theater from Keiser in the previous year, revised his Leipzig opera for the occasion, its first Hamburg performance taking place on August 30th, 1724… - -NA, Gramophone

“And the violin dances Furiant, carried away by an irresistible ardour”. Beyond the intrinsic character of gypsy music, which constantly moves back and forth between melancholy and joy, dance is the obvious thread running through this album. It creates a bond through its intensity and infinite rhythmic contrasts, revealing a wide range of emotions. One dance can contain an entire life, with its laughter, its tears, its perpetual movement, its ruptures, its unpredictability in the passage from one emotional state to another…

The British mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly, twice nominated for a Grammy, here performs a collection of songs by Robert Schumann, which combines two song cycles from the extremely prolific song year 1840 with several songs from the composer’s last years. She is accompanied by Eugene Asti. Sarah Connolly fell in love with Schumann’s songs in her youth. She has sung them since her early days as a performer and in the booklet she and Eugene Asti write, ‘at the heart of Schumann’s music on this recording lie a profound melancholy and a personal and completely honest, open-hearted empathy for the poetry, which is totally disarming. All the stories and situations depicted in these songs were so much a part of the composer’s own life experience that we just cannot help but be touched and moved by them. Perhaps it is for these reasons that our love for Schumann is especially great, and we feel privileged to be able to share this extraordinary music with you’.

Redesigned since it was first seen at the London Coliseum in 2011, Deborah Warner’s elegant and untricksy production of Tchaikovsky’s lyrical romance transferred last autumn to the Metropolitan Opera. Offering as it does a beautifully detailed and sensitively characterised reading of the piece, Chekhovian in atmosphere and period, it merits a warmer critical reception than it has received on either side of the Atlantic.

Tchaikovsky’s most famous work, The Nutcracker, is presented in this stunning new recording by the world’s greatest orchestra, the Berliner Philharmoniker, under the baton of their celebrated conductor Sir Simon Rattle. This musical fairytale follows Clara and her unusual prince and protector, The Nutcracker, through adventures and exotic delights in the magical Kingdom of Sweets.