Performer: Ann Hallenberg

One of Handel's lesser operas receives a deluxe concert performance at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, with Il Pomo d'Oro and a fine array of singers. 

Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha is the pick of the soloists in a weighty reading of Mendelssohn's Lobgesang under Kazuki Yamada. But can Schubert's Fifth withstand the same approach? 

Under the direction of Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Zurich’s fine Tonhalle Orchestra, The Monteverdi Choir and soloists launch a sonorous holiday season with Hector Berlioz’s sacred oratorio L’Enfance du Christ.

Although filled with beauty and sweetly played, the fragmentation of the symphony felt too disruptive.

Soloists and choir, headed by a spellbinding Christian Gerhaher, brought real lustre to Schumann’s treatment of Goethe’s magnum opus.