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Rich sounding viols, lively percussion and spicy theorbo and guitar in eclectic consort music from Jordi Savall and Hesperian XXI in their 50th year. 

Countertenor Reginald Mobley and the Academy of Ancient Music shine in an alternative history of English Baroque, with a new work by Roderick Williams. 

A varied programme of harpsichord pieces interleaves with songs from Shakespeare and the following century.

The Bergen Phil and the Edvard Grieg Choir trace music from Elizabethan themes to 20th century works on them, culminating in Pärt's Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten.

The tenor man told Thomas Hardy’s familiar verses with such probing honesty that I heard newness in all of them.

Hespèrion XXI dazzle us with virtuosity as they celebrate musical Europe in the heart of Westminster.

Pared-down forces of the ACO performed pared down masterpieces, in a brilliantly conceived programme which included works by Wagner, Strauss and Mozart.

Hugo Ticciati and Víkingur Ólafsson explore notions of time, but a lesson in mindful performance comes from the gravity-defying Sanddorn Balance act.  

Julius Drake, Krzysztof Chorzelski and Mark Padmore contributed their notable gifts of piano, viola and voice respectively in a very special, often heartfelt fundraising evening for two music education charities. 

A second concert featuring Jordi Savall at the 2018 Perth Festival comprised much reduced forces - just himself and harpist Andrew Lawrence-King - but was just as rich, varied and captivating.

An evening of English repertoire at King's Place where the pleasures were flecked with disappointments. 

Britten’s Ceremony of Carols with pieces by Tavener, MacMillan and Lauridsen contrast with Byrd and Dowland in a thoughtful and moving performance of Christmas musical icons from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra Chorus.

Inhibited by a cold and unable to give a full 100%, Andreas Scholl pulled off a solid 99 in a recital of early English music with harpsichordist Tamar Halperin.

A ravishing performance, with Shakespeare’s words delivered primarily through the prism of living composers.

Mark Padmore gives a matchless demonstration of English singing as he and the English Concert follow 18th century historian Charles Burney on his travels around Europe.

Dame Emma Kirkby and Jakob Lindberg delight with an intimate and varied programme on the theme “Heroines of the Golden Age” at Brighton Early Music Festival. 

There comes a stage in every countertenor’s career when he feels himself ready to tackle the exposed repertoire of John Dowland, and hence the need to find himself a talented lutenist.

Red Note Ensemble's Sounding Brass in a unique afternoon of brass, percussion and electronics in an imaginatively scouted industrial setting.

The intimate Vancouver Playhouse was nearly full to hear Iestyn Davies and Thomas Dunford. Consisting of lute songs by John Dowland and his contemporaries, in addition to the Canadian premiere of Nico Muhly’s Old Bones, it’s hard to imagine a more artistically satisfying and entertaining way to spend an afternoon.

This concert for the Valletta International Baroque Festival comprised a programme of melancholy songs with lute by the English lutenist and composer John Dowland, given by Canadian tenor Justin Burwood, accompanied by Swedish lutenist Magnus Andersson.

Amidst the furore of celebrations for the anniversaries of Verdi and Wagner, the final Chamber Prom of this season gave pause to savour the music of the great English Renaissance lutenist, singer and composer John Dowland, whose 450th birthday also falls this year.

A near capacity audience gathered at the Wigmore Hall last week to celebrate another English musical anniversary – not the birth of Benjamin Britten one hundred years ago, but that of lutenist and composer John Dowland, some 350 years earlier.

The ability of musicians to take music from the past and present it in a new way gives an important sense of continuity that holds together our musical tradition, and this applies equally to performers and composers, as demonstrated this evening by Northern Sinfonia and their young guest conductor Ilan Volkov, in Hall One of The Sage Gateshead.

Frequent concertgoers in our modern age will be all too aware of the irritation factor of mobile phones going off during performance. The King’s Singers, however, make a feature of the phenomenon and take it to another level. This world-class ensemble delighted a packed Hereford Cathedral, the closing concert of their 2011/12 season coinciding with the Three Choirs Festival.

On February 2, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society produced its first-ever solo lute recital, featuring Hopkinson Smith. The concert took place in the intimate Benjamin Franklin Hall at the American Philosophical Society, allowing audiences to enjoy the subtle sounds of the instrument.

Danielle de Niese, the much-marketed new star of the opera world, has been performing at the Met in The Enchanted Island this week, and came downtown on a night off this Monday to promote her new album of Baroque arias. A packed house filled (Le) Poisson Rouge, a club popular for both classical and mainstream artists, despite its unsuited acoustic.

The symbolism of plants and images of the garden are abundant in medieval and renaissance art, and this evening’s Musicon concert by Jacob Heringman and Faye Newton celebrated not just the imagined gardens of Elizabethan poetry, but also a real garden.

If one had idly wondered how a programme of English love songs, sung by a German, would be received by a Norwegian audience, in a wet and windy Bergen, the answer came loud and clear at this week's International Festival.