Fabio Scoto

The symphonies of Danish composer Carl Nielsen, deeply rooted in the Danish landscape and culture yet with universal appeal, are among the great works of the symphonic repertoire. Deutsche Grammophon is delighted to include Nielsen's complete symphonies in its catalogue - and to do so with an orchestra closely associated with the composer and a conductor open to new ideas and inspiration. The Danish National Symphony Orchestra has been internationally renowned for its interpretations of Carl Nielsen's music since the composer himself conducted the orchestra in the 1920s and 1930s. Now, under its principal conductor Fabio Luisi, the orchestra has recorded its special interpretation of Nielsen's symphonies for the first time after many years of acclaimed live performances. "The DNSO plays with wonderful commitment and finesse."

Nowadays, little introduction on record is needed for the dramatic output of Jean-Baptiste Lully: his style has become unquestionably associated with French music of the 17th century. But long before he became the all-conquering composer of tragédies en musique at the court of Louis XIV, Giovanni Battista Lulli, during his early years in Paris and encouraged by the also Italian-born Cardinal Mazarin, helped to spread the music from his native country into the French court. Lully’s own initial compositions - forging his unmistakable style - focused on music for ballets de cour and for these his instrumental entrées were combined with vocal sections in Italian such as arias and Le Florentin’s early treatment of recitative. Not just transalpine composers were welcomed in Paris but singers too.

France's Naïve label has heavily promoted the career of the young pianist Lise de la Salle, who was 22 when this recording was made. Her fashion-spread good looks fit with Naïve's design concepts, and she has the ability to deliver the spontaneous, unorthodox performances the label favors. How does she fare in a field extremely crowded with Chopin recitals? Her performances certainly aren't derivative of anyone else, and this live recording from the Semperoper in Dresden (you get a one-minute track of just applause at the end) has a good deal of attention-getting flair. The standout feature of de la Salle's performance, in the four ballades at least, is her orientation toward slow tempos, inventively deployed.

For fans of the classical mandolin, here is a disc of the best works for the instrument by Antonio Vivaldi, the best friend the mandolin ever had. And for the rest of the world, here is a disc of colorful Baroque concertos by Antonio Vivaldi, the best friend the Baroque concerto ever had. After all, Vivaldi may have been the mandolin's best friend, but even he could only compose so many mandolin concertos.

The four concerti in The Four Seasons of Antonio Vivaldi have probably earned the distinction of being the most frequently recorded classical works in the digital era. Originally published as part of a set of 12 concerti as Vivaldi's Opus 8, the other eight concerti also get some attention, particularly La tempesta di mare, but the set as a whole is comparatively seldom recorded. In Europa Galante's Virgin Classics release, Vivaldi: Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione, violinist Fabio Biondi, who has recorded The Four Seasons at least once before for Opus 111, leads his expert ensemble in the whole of the Opus 8 set.

Handel's Imeneo, an opera almost contemporaneous with Messiah, has received few performances ever since Messiah librettist Charles Jennens slammed it as "the worst of all Handel's compositions" while still allowing that it contained some good tunes. The work exists in two versions; Handel attempted to rescue the opera that bombed in its London premiere by cutting arias and inserting new material, some of it borrowed from other works. It is this second version, premiered in Dublin, that is recorded here. Conductor Fabio Biondi extols it in his notes, but the earlier version also has its virtues, including a more coherent plotline involving the Greek maiden Rosmene, who has to pick either her true love Tirinto or her rescuer Imeneo (Hymen, the god of love on whose story the libretto is based).

No Baroque work is more familiar than Vivaldi's set of four programmatic violin concertos known as the Four Seasons, yet firebrand Italian violinist Fabio Biondi and his Europa Galante will make you feel as though you're hearing them for the first time in this recording, originally released on the Opus 111 label. Biondi's tempi are fast indeed in the outer movements, and he pushes some of Vivaldi's illustrative episodes into a realm of crescendi and descrescendi that's mighty unusual. And he ornaments the music freely. But his expressive devices are never Romantic – they come off as full-blooded, passionate responses to the music, and they never seem to violate the spirit.

Alessandro Scarlatti was only 24 and had just begun his enormously successful operatic career when he set a libretto by that great Roman patron of the arts, Cardinal Pamphili, on the subject of repentance and divine grace. It was performed before a distinguished audience by a small group of leading singers and instrumentalists of the day in March 1685—the year of the birth of Alessandro's son Domenico (in fact, as a matter of interest, three days before the birth of J. S. Bach). This simple little morality (oratorio is too grandiose a term for it) shows Magdalen torn between youthful pleasures and repentance for hedonistic living: the subject is treated in a sequence of extremely brief arias (and a few duets) and recitatives, which add up to a rather bitty effect, all the more because of seemingly haphazard key-sequences.