One might expect Andrew Manze's interpretations of Johannes Brahms' four symphonies to adhere to ideas of the movement for historically informed performance practice, due to his scholarship and dedication to authenticity in his early music performances. However, and somewhat paradoxically, he and the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra have delivered more or less mainstream readings on modern instruments; there are no signs of late 19th century woodwind or brass timbres, and the strings play with standard vibrato. Yet Manze's historical fact finding has gone to a deeper level than just replicating instrumentation or orchestral scale, and he has found numerous clues to Brahms' intentions in the composer's transcriptions of the symphonies for two pianos, which often vary with the published orchestral scores in accentuation, tempo indications, and phrasing. These are fine points that can be discerned with careful listening and great familiarity with many other recordings of the symphonies, both conventional and historic, but they may not be the main thing listeners will consider in appreciating this set. The playing and the recording quality are up to the extraordinarily high levels set by CPO in all its releases, and these resilient works sound as good as they ever did under any other conductor.

Andrew Manze is not only a superb violinist – check out his Biber sonatas – but also a superb music director. Since taking over the calcified old Academy of Ancient Music and bringing the group with him to Harmonia Mundi, he has produced a stunning series of recordings: a couple of Vivaldi discs, a wonderful set of Handel's Opus 6 concertos, a sublime disc of the Bach concertos. Now they have released Geminiani's Concerto Grossi after Corelli's Op. 5, and it is their best yet.

Recorded in 1990 at Rosslyn Hill Chapel, Hampstead (London), this beautifully produced CD contains six lesser-known works for violin(s) by Germany’s most prolific 18th century composer, Georg Philipp Telemann, who was, during his lifetime, considerably more famous (and more in demand) than any of the Bach dynasty. But as Nicholas Anderson points out in his rather brief introduction to this music, “Telemann did not altogether avoid in his own music those features which he criticised in others; sometimes his harmonies seem sparse, his passagework perfunctory.” Telemann was a great musician, but the violin “seems to have been that in which he was least fluent”. It is also well-known that Telemann’s facility in composing has gained him a reputation for producing quantity rather than quality – a reputation which, on the whole, is undeserved.

British tenor Mark Padmore brings together a collection of English and Italian arias from Handel oratorios and operas. Padmore, who performs works of many eras in a wide range of styles, has primarily settled into the kind of repertoire Peter Pears comfortably inhabited, but with a stronger emphasis on Baroque opera and oratorio. Padmore's voice resembles Pears' in some ways; it's a light instrument, and is capable of great agility. It has some of Pears' limitations, particularly a tendency toward tonal blandness and lack of variety in its colors, as well as a slight edge when pushed. Most importantly, though, Padmore does not have Pears' reedy quality or breathiness – his voice is pure and more mellow than Pears'.

The title of this exceptional disc, "Night Music", should not be taken to mean that the performances are in any way dark, mysterious, droopy, sluggish, or otherwise conventionally "nocturnal". Rather, the term evokes its 18th century musical meaning: a time for fun, relaxation, parties, entertainment both indoors and out, and of course, romance. Indeed, "Romantic" is perhaps the best way to describe these virtuosic, impulsive, and extravagantly expressive performances by the inimitable Andrew Manze and his team of crack "authentic-instrument" players.

On her second PENTATONE album FLOW, Annelien Van Wauwe presents a programme inspired by her love for yoga, combining Mozart’s famous Clarinet Concerto with the world premiere recording of Wim Henderickx’s concerto SUTRA. Van Wauwe performs both works on the characteristic basset clarinet, together with the renowned NDR Radiophilharmonie under the baton of Andrew Manze.

'Andrew Parrott's interpretation of these concertos is an imaginative one & ….effective. John Holloway is the solo violinist in each work and he gives stylish performances.’ –Gramophone
‘Manze’s feeling for detail, his lightly articulated bowing, in a word his sensibility, bring out the charm of Vivaldi’s music; and in this set, with its many affecting slow movements….. the charm is considerable’ –Gramophone

Natalie Clein adds a remarkable collection of Saint-Saëns’ music for cello and orchestra to her impressive discography. Clein first came to prominence when she won the BBC Young Musician of the Year award in 1994; it is appropriate that she performs the music of an extraordinary child prodigy.

Hyperion’s third disc in the Romantic Cello Concerto series sees the brilliant young cellist Gemma Rosefield making her label debut. She was the winner of the prestigious Pierre Fournier Award at Wigmore Hall in 2007 and has garnered great acclaim for her spirited playing.

A transformative force in historically informed performance, Ton Koopman is renowned as a conductor, harpsichordist and organist. In 1979, aged 35, he founded the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra in the city where he had studied with the great Dutch harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt. Drawing on an international pool of players, the ensemble soon gained a reputation for flexibility, colour and expressivity as it explored the music of such composers as the Bach family, Handel, Telemann and Buxtehude.

The eighteenth century is probably the most extraordinary period of transformation Europe has known since antiquity. Political upheavals kept pace with the innumerable inventions and discoveries of the age; every sector of the arts and of intellectual and material life was turned upside down. Between the end of the reign of Louis XIV and the revolution of 1789, music in its turn underwent a radical mutation that struck at the very heart of a well-established musical language. In this domain too, we are all children of the Age of Enlightenment: our conception of music and the way we ‘consume’ it still follows in many respects the agenda set by the eighteenth century. And it is not entirely by chance that harmonia mundi has chosen to offer you in 2011 a survey of this musical revolution which, without claiming to be exhaustive, will enable you to grasp the principal outlines of musical creation between the twilight of the Baroque and the dawn of Romanticism.

The music on this disc is about sonority, about the brilliance of trumpets and strings in a live, reverberant acoustic such as that of Salzburg cathedral, for which at least some of these works were conceived. And Andrew Manze and his English Concert unequivocally deliver (albeit in the less-opulent confines of London’s Temple Church), from the opening fanfare through the vibrant, tuneful, richly scored sonatas that periodically spice this thoughtfully organized program. The featured work is a Mass, the Missa Christi Resurgentis, likely written for Easter in 1764. It’s a lavish celebration scored for two four-part choirs, an added bass singer, plus two instrumental ensembles, designed to be performed antiphonally in a grand display.

The wonderful French pianist Cédric Tiberghien has made several admired recital and chamber recordings. Now he joins the impressive roster of pianists who have contributed to Hyperion’s Romantic Piano Concerto series with Volume 60: Théodore Dubois. Three works by this French composer are included here, and they present a captivating panorama of the evolution of Dubois’ style over some forty years: the Concerto-capriccioso of 1876 seems like a preliminary study in the style of such composers as Weber and Mendelssohn, whereas the highly Romantic Concerto in F minor (1897) is reminiscent of Saint-Saëns. The completely unknown Suite for piano and strings (1917), for its part, resembles a neoclassical pastiche.

Volume 57 in Hyperion’s Romantic Piano Concerto series turns up another ‘discovery’: the music of Swedish composer Adolf Wiklund. These little-known but lusciously tuneful works are characterized by big-boned, symphonic gestures reminiscent of Rachmaninov, yet tempered with the Nordic clarity of Grieg. Wiklund’s two piano concertos are central to his output, and in fact they enjoyed considerable popularity in Sweden until as recently as fifty years ago, when modernist sensibilities deemed them unfashionable.

These two splendid concertos by Stenhammar are offered together on one CD for the first time. The original orchestration of Stenhammar's first concerto was long thought to be lost when the offices of the publisher were bombed during the second world war. However, in 1983 a copy of the original was found in the Library of Congress and this version is featured here. The twenty-two year old's opus one is a masterpiece. Majestic and virtuosic at its opening, the work explores a world of Nordic mystery in the third movement and ends with music of sad, reflective sweetness. The second concerto is a distinctly different work, with a novel structure and a steady tension between soloist and orchestra that is only resolved in the virtuosic finale.