Lina Tur Bonet & Musica Alchemica Antonio Vivald

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.

Antonio de Cabezón was the most important composer of Spain’s Golden Age, the 16th century. He served at the court of Charles V, and was the music teacher of his children with Isabella of Portugal.

Giacomo Antonio Perti (1661-1756) was the most important composer and representative of the Bolognese school at the beginning of the 18th century. From 1696 up until his death, he was conductor at the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna.

David Bates directs La Nuova Musica in a pair of contrasting settings of Psalm 109. Handel's masterful and ambitious HWV282 was penned in 1707 during a youthful visit to Italy. Vivaldi's vivid and economical RV807 (his third Dixit Dominus) was long mistakenly attributed to Baldassare Galuppi; it probably dates from the early 1730s. Rounding out the programme is Vivaldi's dazzling motet for solo voice, "In furore iustissimae irae", featuring soprano Lucy Crowe.

The ensemble Musica Antiqua Roma specializes in the vast and partly forgotten repertoire of the music by Roman composers from the 17th and 18th centuries. Here they turn their attention to Corelli and his contemporaries, including Sonatas by Corelli himself Carbonelli, Mossi, Viconti, Castrucci, Locatelli and Montanari. Many of the works here are world premiere recordings.

This magnificent recording of Aida, made in Rome, rises to all the musical and dramatic challenges presented by Verdi’s richly-coloured Egyptian epic. Antonio Pappano, once again proving his mastery of Italian opera, moves between sumptuous grandeur and touching intimacy. The responses of the Orchestra e Coro dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia are both immediate and vibrant, while the singers – Anja Harteros, Jonas Kaufmann, Ekaterina Semenchuk, Ludovic Tézier and Erwin Schrott – do justice to every facet of their roles.

Vivaldi, the Venetian: master of the whole palette of human emotions. From the church to the opera house, from tragedy to joy, the immediately recognizable sensibility, the expressiveness, the inimitable colors and an unbeatable talent to say so much in just a few notes. The contralto Delphine Galou (who recently won a Gramophone Award, one of the most prestigious awards in the classical music world) and Ottavio Dantone's Accademia Bizantina have created two recitals of sacred music and of opera that illustrate the incomparable richness of Vivaldi’s body of work and establish the emotional connections between the two repertoires.