All the music on this release is associated with the festival of Christmas. Bach wrote the cantata Unser Mund sei voll Lachens (BWV 110) for morning service on Christmas Day 1725, and the first version of the Magnificat in E flat major (BWV 243a) for Vespers on Christmas Day 1723, seven months after the Leipzig town council appointed him cantor of the Thomaskirche. It would hardly be exaggerating to say that Bach thus presented his visiting card to his new employer. According to the Bach scholar Christoph Wolff, the work is his "first really large-scale and complex piece of church music".

This is one of those occasions where beauty and artistry are reflected not only on the surface but right through to the core. This is a marvelous performance of Bach's six-cantata cycle that offers ravishing choral singing, sharply detailed orchestral playing, and superior contributions from the four solo vocalists, all presented in state-of-the-art sound.

Don't be put off by the precious title; this is a delightful collection of 17th-century English music built around the delicate viola da gamba skills of the Dutch virtuoso Mieneke van der Velden. Mostly oozing a delicious melancholy, but occasionally boasting a spring in its step, here is the best of such composers as John Dowland, Matthew Locke and William Corkine, with songs from Tobias Hume and Nicholas Lanier. Exquisitely played, with as much devotion to detail as technical mastery, here is period music to beguile many a modern moodswing.

Handel, a child of his time, was fascinated by the poignant human dramas and emotions exemplified by Greek and Roman classical myths, dramas and poetry. A theatre composer to his very bones, he was remarkably skilled in the portrayal of human psychology. The oboe was an instrument especially beloved by Handel and it is the unifying element in this fascinating anthology of arias and cantatas focusing on themes of love and madness sung by soprano Johannette Zomer. Zomer is accompanied by oboist Bart Schneemann and the ensemble Musica Amphion under direction of Jan-Pieter Belder.

This is sublime: quite simply the finest registration of 17th century English song on the market. It’s one of those perfectly designed programmes, which have all the built-in variety you need for over an hour’s uninterrupted listening pleasure. There is plenty here for the casual listener and connoisseur alike and, despite the title, the introspective mood is upliftingly beautiful throughout. The scholarly preparation which makes this possible, and the clear sense that these interpretations have been honed, through regular performance, are what we’ve come to expect from the brilliantly successful partnership of Dutch soprano and the lutenist… An outstanding achievement on every front.

The Tulipa Consort is an ensemble founded by Johannette Zomer in 2013. For their first recording, a selection has been made from the many wonderful sacred works composed by Antonio Vivaldi, the Red Priest of Venice. Motets, including the splendid Nulla in Mundo Pax and Laudate Pueri Dominum, and two beautiful arias from his only surviving oratorio Juditha Triumphans. The goal of Tulipa Consort is to passionately explore 17th and early 18th century music. Being based in Holland, the name of the ensemble was inspired by an event that happened at the beginning of the 17th century in the Low Countries, the so-called Tulip Mania.