I've been listening to new recordings for weeks, trying to sort out a nice selection of musical gifts. Here's what I found among 2007 releases.
George Frideric Handel: "Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno"; Le Concert D'Astree, directed by Emmanuelle Haim with vocalists Natalie Dessay, Ann Hallenberg, Sonia Prina and Pavol Breslik (Virgin Classics; 2 CDs)
Choruses love "The Messiah." Why not dip into the rest of Handel's vast output, starting with this delicious account of an early oratorio, written in Rome, before he came to stardom in 18th-century London?
"Jardim Abandonado"; Sergio and Odair Assad, guitars (Nonesuch)
This Grammy-winning guitar duo convincingly links George Gershwin, Claude Debussy, Darius Milhaud and the great bossa nova composer Antonio Carlos Jobim. Full of flickering runs, lush chords and ringing harmonics, these vividly recorded performances are a delight for guitar aficionados. They also display the arranging talents of Sergio Assad, whose transcription of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" evokes all the colors and sonic weight of the original orchestration in 15 minutes of guitar pyrotechnics.
Bela Bartok: "String Quartets Nos. 5 & 6"; Arcanto Quartet (Harmonia Mundi)
Written in the politically troubled atmosphere of the 1930s, Bartok's final quartets brim with disconsolate melodies, driving rhythms and abrupt dynamic shifts. The young virtuosos of the Arcanto Quartet tap deep emotional veins in Bartok's profoundly Hungarian music.
Carl Nielsen: "Clarinet Concerto," "Flute Concerto" and "Wind Quintet"; Berlin Philharmonic, directed by Simon Rattle with Sabine Meyer, clarinet, and Emmanuel Pahud, flute (EMI)
Nielsen came to maturity in the age of Brahms and lived to produce these sparely textured, modernist wonders in the 1920s. You'll find that Nielsen has a special affinity for wind instruments, a taste he acquired as a teen playing bugle and trombone in a regimental band. Meyer and Pahud are equally virtuosic .
Miklos Rozsa: "Music for Violin and Piano"; Philippe Quint, violin; William Wolfram, piano (Naxos)
Rozsa left Hungary to become one of Hollywood's pre-eminent composers, writing scores for such films as "Double Indemnity." His roots are evident in this folk-drenched, violin-mad release, which gathers three works composed around 1930 and sets them beside a solo violin sonata from 1986. Grammy-nominated Quint fiddles with virtuosic abandon.
Osvaldo Golijov: "Oceana"; Kronos Quartet; vocalists Luciana Souza and Dawn Upshaw; the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra conducted by Robert Spano (Deutsche Grammophon)
Golijov's impassioned music pulls Bach cantatas, klezmer laments, gypsy music, Brazilian percussion and droning Middle Eastern pop into seamless personal statements. His collaborators are top-shelf.
Mozart: "Don Giovanni"; Freiburger Barockorchester and RIAS Kammerchor, directed by Rene Jacobs with vocalists Johannes Weisser, Lorenzo Regazzo, Alexandrina Pendatchanska, Olga Pasichnyk and others (Harmonia Mundi, 3 CDs)
Trained as a vocalist, director Jacobs knows how to find and cultivate singers. He also has been a key player in the period practice movement, translating scholarship into vivid productions of Baroque operas and oratorios. His ability to bring out the drama in a musical line is astoundingly evident in "Don Giovanni."
Marc Mellits: "Tight Sweater"; Real Quiet Trio (Endeavour) Is Mellits an "important" composer? I'll leave that question to the music lovers of the 22nd century. But everybody from the Kronos Quartet to the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra is commissioning works from the 41-year-old American. In this delightful suite of miniatures, played by an unorthodox trio of piano, cello and percussion, Mellits shows a taste for the bright, metallic sonorities of contemporary pop, for minimalism's obsessive working of simple rhythmic motifs and for the kind of catchy melodies that would have scandalized his modernist forebears. Chris Waddington, former Star Tribune books editor, wrote this article for the New Orleans Times-Picayune.