D. C. Giancoli, Fisica 2 (ii o Iii Edizione), Casa Editrice Ambrosiana Contiene Ampia Raccolta di Esercizi C. Mencuccini, V. Silvestrini, Fisica II (iv Edizione), Casa Editrice Ambrosiana Contie

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi owes much of his fame to La Serva Padrona, a comic intermezzo designed to be performed between the acts of an opera seria. In it, a maid and a servant conspire to convince their master to marry the maid. When Aldo Tarabella was asked to direct a performance of Pergolesi’s intermezzo, he wanted to do more than simply pair it with one of the operas it traditionally sits alongside – so he composed Il Servo Padrone, a companion piece, and a kind of sequel, to Pergolesi’s original.

This is the latest and, they tell us, the last of EMI’s Simon Rattle Edition, gathering together the conductor’s complete forays into certain composers and repertoire. As with any such project the sets hitherto released have contained both treasures and duds. Even though not everything here is perfect, this set sends the series out on a high with his complete Vienna recording of the Beethoven symphonies.

After a long period of neglect, Handel's 1719 opera Ottone has attracted renewed attention from historical-performance groups. The opera deals with episodes from the life of Otto II, Holy Roman Emperor in the 10th century, a topic so obscure that even for an 18th century audience an "argument" had to be attached to the libretto by way of background information. The opera was highly successful in Handel's own time, perhaps less for its musical value than for the always fun news stories about the stars in Handel's orbit; this time the feature was soprano Francesca Cuzzoni, who refused to sing the aria "Falsa imagine" until Handel threatened to throw her out a window.

Volume 2 of Discovering the Classical String Trio is a continuation of The Vivaldi Project's exploration of the 18th-century string trio, of its relationship to the earlier Baroque trio sonata (as exemplified by Vivaldi and contemporaries) and of its role as an important genre in its own right, side-by-side with the emerging string quartet. The string trio, although largely overlooked during the past century, was manifestly popular in its day at its compositional peak (c. 1760-1770) out-publishing the string quartet by a ratio of more than five to one! These forgotten works, some 2000 string trios by more than 200 composers, reveal not only a wonderful amalgam of instrumental techniques and styles, but also a significant, untold part of chamber music history.

A powerful performance by Pappano, who is highly acclaimed for his wonderful performance expression even in religious music works. Rossini: Gloria Mass, Stabat Mater, Small Solemn Mass, Verdi: Requiem, four chants, etc., Britten: War Requiem, etc. 85 tracks / 7 hours recording. Recorded 2000-2021.

A powerful performance by Pappano, who is highly acclaimed for his wonderful performance expression even in religious music works. Rossini: Gloria Mass, Stabat Mater, Small Solemn Mass, Verdi: Requiem, four chants, etc., Britten: War Requiem, etc. 85 tracks / 7 hours recording. Recorded 2000-2021.

Queen Christina of Sweden was a lavish patron of music in her own kingdom - initially she mainly extended her patronage to French musicians but from 1652 it was largely Italian musicians whom she brought to her court in Stockholm. Having secretly converted to Catholicism, Christina abdicated in June of 1654 and almost immediately left Sweden - most of her valuable library had been smuggled out earlier - and made her way to Rome, her journey there seeming at times to be effectively a series of triumphal processions; there’s a fine account of all these events in Veronica Buckley’s Christina. Once established in Rome - where her arrival was greeted by special musical performances in the Palazzo Barberini, the Palazzo Pamphili and elsewhere - she soon became one of the city’s most active patrons of literature and music.

The Philadelphia-based baroque orchestra Tempesta di Mare here reveals an unparalleled musical legacy, presenting long forgotten works by the German baroque composer Johann Gottlieb Janitsch, confined for centuries to unexamined archives.