Performer: I Barocchisti

An all-day Beethoven experience European style with both highs and lows: much diversity revealed and exploited but of variable quality.

This production of Antonio Vivaldi’s Orlando furioso showed the audience what a Baroque opera is.

In one of Bartoli's rare appearances on stage in the UK, she gave an utterly compelling performance as opera's ultimate woman scorned.

At the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Cecilia Bartoli's performance of long-forgotten baroque arias composed for the Empresses of Russian proves that her artistry is unmatched in this repertoire.

Under the baton of Diego Fasolis, French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky and Russian soprano Julia Lezhneva gave a most memorable and moving performance of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater at the Concertgebouw.

Winter in the Swiss Alps: freezing temperatures and snow outside. A modest seventeenth-century church of elegant proportions, painted plasterwork and wood panelling. A dozen crack musicians, specialists in baroque music.