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This year’s Salzburg Whitsun Festival gala, Ciao, bella ciao, features Cecilia Bartoli in a highly personalised musical programme structured as an autobiographical journey, unfolding as a blend of concert and self-portrait. 

Jean Rondeau’s anniversary tribute to Louis Couperin reveals a refined but inward-looking aesthetic – beautifully controlled, yet ultimately lacking the rhetorical energy, physicality, and communicative spark essential to this music.

The Celtic Connections festival showcases Górecki’s Sorrowful Songs, the BBC Scottish with soprano Francesca Chiejina conducted by Pawel Kapula with a thoughtful introductory song set from Alice Zawadzki.

An exciting gala concert led by Cecilia Bartoli closed the Whitsun Festival in Salzburg, under the expert baton of Gianluca Capuano.

The pianist impressed but the soprano proved less than ideally suited to some of the selections in a wide-ranging recital program that included Rachmaninov, Strauss, standards and spirituals.

Le Poème Harmonique undertakes musical time-travelling from regal Versailles to vibrant Venice, where divine harmonies collide with earthly celebrations. 

Whelan conducts the lively Irish Baroque Orchestra in a recreation of Mr Charles’ 1742 Dublin concert showcasing horns and introducing the oboe d’amore and the chalumeau.

The rediscovered version of the Tomasi Trumpet Concerto from Håkan Hardenberger, Fabien Gabel and the Indianapolis Symphony shares the limelight with an authoritative Indy premiere of Florent Schmitt's La Tragédie de Salomé. 

Sir Donald Runnicles led a vivid account of The Pines of Rome and an exciting yet thoughtful performance of Carmina Burana with three superb soloists.

Nicola Benedetti, the Festival's artist-in-residence, captures perfectly the intoxicating mix of Italian early music with her handpicked Baroque Orchestra.