Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Andreas Scholl

Whether one considers Messiah to be really appropriate for Christmas, it always a welcome gift for the Handel aficionado, and this performance from Rotterdam, while suffering some unfortunate cuts, is an otherwise solid musical offering.

A glorious performance of Handel's Biblical oratorio is marred by poor staging.

Joined by the exquisitely subtle Accademia Bizantina led by Alessandro Tampieri, Scholl brought little-known but no less great devotions to the Virgin Mary to life with impetus and intimacy.

Andreas Scholl and Collegium 1704 team up for a refreshing treatment of an early repertoire.

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 tantalising selection of Italian Baroque music from Andreas Scholl, Avi Avital and friends at Wigmore Hall.

Andreas Scholl, Klara Ek and the Academy of Ancient music perform Vivldi, Pergolesi and Wassenaer at the Barbican. All the musicians worked exceptionally well as part of the collective, turning the programme into a real delicacy.

Pairing music from the 18th and 20th centuries is a common programming strategy, one which can bring out interesting parallels between the musical preoccupations of two very different eras. Some 20th-century composers looked to the more distant past as a way of engaging with traditions before the emotionally coercive 19th century.

Giulio Cesare, an opera populated with manipulative characters that only interact with each other when shared interests are at stake, is a receptive vessel for a scornful indictment of imperialism and the dubious alliances it forges.

Read our review of Stephen Wadsworth's production of Rodelinda by Handel, in its 2011 HD broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Handel, two cracking counter-tenors and Renée Fleming were all the excuses needed for a long-overdue trip to New York to hear Stephen Wadsworth's production of Rodelinda - the very piece which revived interest in Handel's opera following its performance in Göttingen in the 1920s.

17th Century Europe witnessed the rise of Italian opera and French ballet. These forms, and the distinct musical language of their composers, were highly influential on the music of England and Germany. The cosmopolitan music of Henry Purcell made up the bulk of The English Concert’s program, along with two instrumental works by his German contemporaries Heinrich Biber and Georg Muffat.

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.

Right, we had our fun with the lively Scholl/Jaroussky concert in the Barbican in December, now for the serious stuff, Andreas Scholl singing the Purcell his admirers have wanted to hear for years. With one or two exceptions, the programme concentrated on Purcell's quieter, deeper and more reflective repertoire.

The countertenor voice seems to polarise opinion like no other - you either love it or hate it, there is little middle ground - and even amongst the aficionados (in whose number I count myself), there can be strong, almost tribal allegiances to one school or another and sometimes to individual proponents.