Sandrine

For a musician, encountering a composer's work or a certain part of the repertoire may come at a time more or less favourable to the understanding of the music in question. It really doesn't matter: "You have to start them early", said Pablo Casals of the mighty works that impudent youths tackled with gusto. A work absorbed in this way, continues its underground route over the years before emerging at the appropriate time, and obviously and ingenuously declaring: "I'm here! Have you been expecting me?"

I cannot help feeling that Alessandro Stradella is possibly still one of the major unexplored talents of baroque music. I say this, not because I personally know of piles of forgotten masterpieces by him, but simply because when there is so much of his music that has not been recorded or made available in modern editions, and when what one does get to hear suggests so much talent (the powerful oratorio San Giovanni Battista, for instance), it makes you wonder just what else there might be waiting to be discovered.

Anyone who enjoys Mozart opera should hear this disc. Yet quite a few people who'd probably love it to death if they listened are going to pass it by. Why? Well, look at the selections - it's not exactly a 'greatest hits' selection in the truly popular sense. Lucio Silla, Il re pastore, Mitridate, Zaïde - hardly front rank Mozart operas in the public consciousness; with Die Entführung we're getting closer - and suddenly you spot track 2, Pamina's gorgeous lament to lost love from The Magic Flute: 'Ach, ich fühl's' - anyone who hears Sandrine Piau singing this famous number will want to experience the rest of the recording no matter what.

The monumental Vivaldi series on France's Naïve label rolls on with this gorgeous disc of somber sacred music, some of it instrumental. Part of the attraction of this series, based on a collection of Vivaldi manuscripts held at the University of Turin, is that so much of the music is unknown; the listener has the experience of seeing new masterworks unfurled at every turn. Consider the "Tunc meus fletus" aria from the opening solo motet (really more of a solo cantata) In furore iustissimae irae, RV 626, rendered here with truly tortured intensity by the dazzling French soprano Sandrine Piau.

The monumental Vivaldi series on France's Naïve label rolls on with this gorgeous disc of somber sacred music, some of it instrumental. Part of the attraction of this series, based on a collection of Vivaldi manuscripts held at the University of Turin, is that so much of the music is unknown; the listener has the experience of seeing new masterworks unfurled at every turn. Consider the "Tunc meus fletus" aria from the opening solo motet (really more of a solo cantata) In furore iustissimae irae, RV 626, rendered here with truly tortured intensity by the dazzling French soprano Sandrine Piau…