This imaginatively-curated, generously-filled Christmas package is sure to find favor during this and future holiday seasons. Why? Because it packs in every conceivable carol, tune, choral work or song in timeless performances from the greatest artists in the world: singers of immense communicative gifts including Cecilia Bartoli, Bryn Terfel, Renee Fleming and Luciano Pavarotti to name but four. It truly offers something of every Christmas mind, spirit, and looks fantastic.

In this installment in 'an ongoing Shostakovich survey that has rightly won him three Grammy Awards' (New York Times), Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra bookend the composer's brilliant, often turbulent symphonic career. Nearly half a century lies between Shostakovich's triumphant debut with the 'First', premiered before his 20th birthday, and the 'Fifteenth', an inventory of influences written under the shadow of his own mortality. Penned just two years earlier, the 'Fourteenth' is a symphonic song cycle, and the Chamber Symphony is a skillful adaptation of that tragic masterpiece, the Eighth String Quartet.

For a kinder, gentler, more tuneful, and even a more danceable Stravinsky in his High neo-Classical period, try the wind chamber music Czech-French-American composer Bohuslav Martinu wrote in his High French period. Three of the works on this disc by the Ensemble Villa Musica – Le Revue de Cuisine from 1927, the Sextet from 1929, and the Quartre madrigaux from 1937 – represent Martinu at his Parisian best: archly lyrical, angularly rhythmic, and brilliantly colorful. For a lighter, deeper, more conservative, and even a more melancholy Stravinsky in his postwar late neo-Classical period, try the last work on this disc,

Max Bruch was eighty years old when, in 1918, he decided to return to the chamber music genre he had frequented in his early years. Stimulated by the violin virtuoso Willy Hess, he composed two string quintets and an octet, monuments to beauty and harmony, at the end of a tumultuous personal life and in the midst of a western world on the brink of collapse. After an album devoted to Beethoven’s chamber music, the Chamber Players of the WDR Sinfonieorchester now tackle one of the last chapters of German Romantic music, with pieces that constitute Bruch’s swansong.

Paris, early Twentieth Century: in the space of three ballets, a previously unknown Russian composer revolutionised the music of his time. With The Firebird and Petrushka, respectively fairytale and folktale, and of course The Rite of Spring, a telluric invocation with its insanely innovative harmonies and rhythms, Stravinsky dynamised the Late Romantic orchestra, taking it to literally unheard-of places.

Although Max Reger (1873-1916) is one of the most mature composers of the 20th century, his death in 1916 in the middle of the Great War may have contributed to the relative lack of interest in his work. It is only in the last two decades that his music is starting to be regarded as truly warranting serious investigation. Both works on this disc date from the last five years of Reger's life and both are among his finest chamber pieces. The String Sextet, Op. 118 was promised to be delivered to the Gewandhaus Chamber Music by March 1911, but the composer found the filling of this obligation to be a hard task.

Jongen's Etude of 1920 and Deux pieces for Piano op.33 of 1908 are wonderful, substantial works totaling over 16 minutes. Debussy is an influence but Jongen no more of a cheap imitator than Seurat is of Monet. All three are colorful, exquisite, and not miniature in scope. Reger's "Fireside Dreams" have the charm his corpus otherwise lacks. As Amazon's rip off does not include notes, I would refer the avid reader to Fanfare magazine issue 34.3 Jan/Feb 2011 and a rave review by Boyd Pomeroy for additional detail and guidance. .

This fine CD is a thoughtful and very generous combination of three late-Romantic pieces: one well known (the Brahms), one less known (the Zemlinsky), and one (the Rabl) that appears to have its first ever recording here. All three pieces are served admirably by this remarkable ensemble, and also by sensitive high-quality engineering. While all three are excellent, I agree with the last reviewer that the Rabl stands out from the other two.

Each one of Bohuslav Martinů’s (1890-1959) three cello sonatas belongs to a significant period or event in his life. Composed in May 1939, the first seems indelibly marked by the tension and anxiety which gripped Europe in the months before war broke out, though the composer was also going through a crisis in his personal life, having lately had an intense extramarital affair with Vítězslava Kaprálová, a young composer and conductor.

Though there are many recordings of the popular Symphony No. 7: 'Leningrad' (for good reason, as this is one of the finest of Shostakovich's glowing works), the catalogue listing for recordings of the Symphony No. 12: The Year 1917 is less lengthy. This would probably come as no surprise to Shostakovich himself, as this particular work represented inner conflicts in his own view of his homeland political milieu, views more nebulous on the surface but suggested in the context.

Paavo Järvi inaugurates his new contract as conductor of the Tonhalle Orchestra in Zurich with a programme devoted to Messiaen. Alpha Classics will accompany this extremely promising combination: ‘I’ve always admired French music very much. (…) I think Messiaen is the most original voice, someone absolutely unique. You need only listen for three seconds to a work by Messiaen to be sure that it is by him. His style is so clear, so unmistakable. In his two early works Les Offrandes oubliées and Le Tombeau resplendissant, religion and mysticism play an important role. If you listen carefully, you will notice how a harmony is continually transformed, so that you can never predict what sound will come next. But Messiaen’s harmonic language is not experimental: it produces an inevitable meaning, and you get the feeling that the chord sequence can be that way and no other.Music is a language of its own; music begins where words leave off.’

This live recording of Ariadne auf Naxos in October 2014 took place not only at the site of the opera premiere of the version of the opera that we are best familiar with these days, but it also testifies Christian Thielemann’s first conducting engagement of a scenic performance of a Strauss opera at the opera house on the Ring. The cast includes Soile Isokoski as Ariadne, Johan Botha - in one of his latest performances before his untimely death - as Bachus, Daniela Fally as Zerbinetta, Sophie Koch as the composer, Jochen Schmeckenbecher as the music teacher and Peter Matic as the dancing master. Many attendees of the premiere of Strauss’ first version of Ariadne - which was intended to succeed Moliere’s Le Bourgeois gentilhomme and for this reason was six hours long - felt that they had just been part of a first-rate funeral.

Oskar Lindberg was a composer of popular organ and choral works. I have previously reviewed his Requiem, an impressive score of richly melodic bent. It is hardly surprising he veered towards these particular genres, as he was organist at the Engelbrekt Church in Stockholm for forty years. He also taught music at the city’s Royal College of Music. A homebird by inclination, he never strayed further afield. His orchestral music includes one symphony, two rhapsodies, four suites, five symphonic poems and six small orchestral pieces. Two of the works on this release, the Symphony and Fiddler Per, He Fiddled are receiving their world premiere recordings.

Historical recordings: The ensemble's confidently-chosen name made it clear from the outset that the Quartetto Italiano saw itself not simply as an Italian string quartet among many, but as the authoritative one. The ensemble was soon recognized as a pioneer of Italian chamber music culture following the Second World War. Through their tireless obsession with detail, in-depth exploration of the works' musical expression, and the remarkable homogeneity of their quartet sound, the Quartetto Italiano conquered a firm place in the top league of leading string quartets over the first two decades of their career.

Violin on Stage presents selection of exquisite pieces from opera and ballet and features original works and arrangements for violin and orchestra, including dazzling showstoppers.