David Zinman’s Mahler cycle really hits its stride with this remarkable performance of the Third Symphony. It only has two small drawbacks worth mentioning. First, alto Birgit Remmert sounds pretty good in her big fourth-movement solo, but she’s far less impressive during her brief contributions to the choral fifth movement. Perhaps this take came from another evening (the symphony was recorded during a series of live performances). Second, at the very end of the symphony, despite the very beautiful playing, the trumpets fail to ring out as Mahler’s score directs. Better this glowing sonority than stridency, but there’s no reason why we can’t have the best of both worlds (Haitink’s first recording with the Concertgebouw on Philips never has been surpassed in this respect).

Mackerras’s series of opera recordings, with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, has a character very much its own, deriving from his natural feeling for the dramatic pacing of Mozart’s music and the expressive and allusive nature of its textures, as well as the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s sensitivity and responsiveness to him. These are not period-instrument performances (except in that natural horns and trumpets are used, to good effect), but Mackerras’s manner of articulation, and the lightness of the phrasing he draws from his strings, makes it, to my mind, a lot closer to a true period style than some of the performances that make a feature of period instruments and then use them to modern ends (I am thinking less here of British conductors than some from Europe).

This recording of the 6th and 9th Symphonies is an interesting combination. The three-movement Sixth Symphony, with its brooding first movement, energetic second movement, and almost circus-like last movement, and the cheeky, almost light-weight Ninth. Note that I used the word "almost". Shostakovich manages to get pretty serious in places (the second and fourth movements come to mind here). That being said, the performances and recording of both works are first rate. There is no doubt that Mariss Jansons is a master interpreter of the music of Shostakovich.

Semiramide, based on a play by Voltaire about an ancient Assyrian queen, was Rossini's last Italian opera. Some five hours long in performance, it has always been subject to cuts from producers worried that it was a butt-breaker, but Rossini insisted that it be performed as written. He was right: its massive two acts have a logic and flow that do not flag. Despite its size and difficulty (check the hefty list of sponsors and patrons in the booklet), the opera is being revived increasingly often. The work has been called the last Baroque opera, with its tragic plot from antiquity encrusted with glittering, highly ornamented arias, and you might suppose that a performance stands or falls with the singers. This version certainly offers strong ones, including the superb pair of sopranos Albina Shagimuratova in the title role and Daniela Barcellona in the travesti or cross-dressing role of the commander Arsace.

This remarkable recording marks the first relationship on disc between an ensemble and the label Opus Arte, until now known for DVDs of live opera, ballet and theatre. Its new partnership with the choir of Magdalen College, Oxford, one of Britain's oldest and finest choral institutions, begins with Buxtehude's sublimely tender 1680 meditation on the crucified Christ, Membra Jesu Nostri. In the future, we are promised works by the glorious John Sheppard, a 16th-centuryinformator choristarum at the college, and contemporary pieces from Matthew Martin, a former Magdalen scholar recently given a British Composer award.

While Pergolesi’s vivacious intermezzo of 1733 – a crucial staging post in the development of opera buffa – has a toehold in the repertoire, Paisiello’s 1781 setting of the same silly libretto for Catherine the Great is virtually unknown. The more sophisticated Paisiello can’t match Pergolesi for verve and unassuming lightness of touch. His fast arias tend to be more emphatic, less melodically catchy. But there is plenty to admire in the polished craftsmanship, the colourful writing for woodwind (including prominent clarinets) and, in two of Serpina’s arias, a vein of soulful lyricism characteristic of the Age of Sentiment.

Zinman's Resurrection is the second release in Mahler's complete series of works for this conductor with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra. His Beethoven, Schumann, and Richard Strauss discs for Arte Nova have been a resounding success. The appearance of these Mahler discs on a full-priced label suggests that Sony-BMG Masterworks appreciates their potential to be the definitive Mahler recordings of the current decade.

Neeme Järvi returns to the Royal Scottish National Orchestra for a dazzling album of suites from the ballets Sylvia, La Source, and Coppélia by Delibes. Born into a musical family, Delibes enrolled at the Paris Conservatoire aged twelve, studying under several professors including Adolphe Adam. He spent the 1850s and early 1860s composing light operettas and working as a church organist, before achieving public recognition for his music for the ballet La Source in 1866. His later ballets Coppélia and Sylvia were key works in the development of modern ballet, giving the music much greater importance than was previously the case.

La morte di San Giuseppe (The Death of St. Joseph) is a fascinating curiosity from the pen of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, the Italian composer of La serva padrona – the little intermezzo through which the irreverent breezes of Mozartian opera first blew. This recording is a world premiere of La morte di San Giuseppe, which was known to scholars through fragmentary manuscripts in European libraries but for which a full autograph manuscript only recently surfaced. Designated as an oratorio, the work depicts the death of Joseph, husband of Mary. It features three characters in addition to Joseph, a tenor; St. Michael and Divine Love, both sopranos; and Mary, a contralto.

Johann Wilhelm Wilms was once called the Dutch Beethoven. His works were extremely popular and were met with tremendous praise. However like contemporaries such as Eberl and Fesca, it became increasing difficult to compete with Beethoven and his works eventually fell into oblivion. This new release on CPO documents two of Wilms’s symphonies and the Overture in D major. Howard Griffiths and the NDR Radiophilharmonie give an inspired interpretation and demonstrate the accessibility of this composer’s music.

This disc marks the beginning of a new Mahler cycle with these forces in SACD sound. If you collect SACDs, you’ll be impressed with the engineering in the surround-sound format, which is very natural, coherent, and has plenty of room ambience without excessive rear-channel emphasis. “Natural” also describes Zinman’s performances. The first movement has a great sense of flow, and he doesn’t drag out the introduction as relentlessly as some others have. He catches the rustic character of the scherzo to perfection, though I do wish he’d exaggerated the Jewish music in the funeral march a bit more. The music could take a bit more schmaltz, and a bit more spookiness in the march itself despite the careful observance of Mahler’s dynamics.

Here Spohr manifests himself not as a serial producer from the nineteenth century’s age of virtuosity but as a highly imaginative composer who lent a unique imprint to each and every one of his concertos. Brought together in this new box set are the Violin Concertos with the Concertanti for two violins and orchestra.

At the end of a brief but brilliant career - his compositions cover a period of just over six years - Giovanni Battista Pergolesi worte his last two works, the 'Stabat Mater' and the 'Salve Regina' in C minor. Nicola Porpora's 'Salve Regina' for solo voice and instruments, recorded here for the first time, was probably written during the composer's stay in Venice as 'maestro di cappella' of the Ospedale degli Incurabili, from 1726 to 1733, no doubt for one of the young ladies attending the musical establishment.

The poetry and radiance of Bachs cello suites (BWV 1007-1012) are transfigured in these remarkable interpretations by Kim Kashkashian on viola, offering a different kind of somberness, a different kind of dazzlement as annotator Paul Griffiths observes. One of the most compelling performers of classical and new music, Kashkashian has been hailed by The San Francisco Chronicle as an artist who combines a probing, restless musical intellect with enormous beauty of tone. An ECM artist since 1985, she approaches Bach s music with the same commitment as revealed in her other solo recordings, the legendary Hindemith sonatas album and the widely acclaimed (and Grammy-winning) account of Kurtág and Ligeti.

Carlo Francesco Cesarini was one of the most important Italian Baroque composers as well as a virtuoso violinist also known as Carlo del Violino. His six cantatas, receiving their first recording here, were regularly performed between 1700 and 1717. They are all taken from Manuscript 2248 of the Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome, a rich anthological collection assembled for Cardinal Pamphili, a major figure in Roman cultural life. These major rediscoveries are performed by soprano Stéphanie Varnerin accompanied by the ensemble L'Astrée led by Giorgio Tabacco.