John Work

Ever since 2001's Songs from the West Coast, Elton John and his longtime collaborator, Bernie Taupin, have been deliberately and unapologetically chasing their glory days of the early '70s, but nowhere have they been as candid in evoking those memories as they are on 2006's The Captain & the Kid, the explicitly stated sequel to 1975's masterpiece Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy…

Gripping choral singing, but weighty and deliberate with an expressive palette better suited to Handel's later, more grandiose choral works than his earliest. The soloist are pleasuring pure and clean in tone.

The Dunedin Consort, led by John Butt, has moved into the niche of recording original or obscure versions of Baroque choral masterworks using forces as close as possible to those of the original performances. Its 2006 performance of the Dublin version of Messiah is one of the liveliest and refreshingly intimate recordings of the work, and won a Gramophone Award for Best Baroque Vocal Album of the year. Here the group turns its attention to a much earlier Handel work, the 1718 pastoral oratorio Acis & Galatea. Through ingenious musical detective work, Butt has reconstructed the most likely constitution of the ensemble that originally performed the piece while the composer was employed at Cannons House in Middlesex.

Kalevi Aho is one of those rare creatures, a living composer whose self-effacing nature - he looks endearingly owlish in all his publicity photographs - conceals a consistent and enchanting musical talent. After 40 years of large-scale works he has entered a much more intimate phase with Rituals, which consists of three separate pieces designed to be performed as a single concert. The work was premiered and recorded by Storgårds and the Lapland Chamber Orchestra in November 2007.

John Adams’ 2005 opera explores the personal and moral issues surrounding the invention of the atomic bomb. Captured live in concert, it has colossal power and conviction. At its center is Gerald Finley’s commanding performance as Robert Oppenheimer, a scientist wracked by doubts. Having sung it at the premiere and many times since, he produces a magnificently characterized creation. Julia Bullock, Brindley Sherratt, Samuel Sakker, and Andrew Staples are all superb in supporting roles and Adams himself draws virtuoso playing from a truly galvanized BBC Symphony Orchestra. A major recording of a modern operatic classic.