When Elvis Costello's back catalog from 1977-1986 shifted from Rhino to Hip-O in 2007, the third major EC reissue campaign was inaugurated by the just-the-basics hits set The Best of Elvis Costello: The First 10 Years and its companion, Rock and Roll Music, the first of a projected series of thematic trawls through Costello's back pages. Since it arrives hand in hand with a compilation that deliberately serves up nothing but the usual suspects, Rock and Roll Music is a welcome fresh take on Costello's catalog.

The Budapest strings make a delightfull sound and you can get a complete set of the Op.5, 7 and 9 concertos on the same box, for a very affordable price (in this offer you get only Op.5) The sound is not cristal clear but the playing is exciting. You can try either the Naxos series of these concertos, the Nikol Matt with the Sttutgart Chamber and even the Negri version on PHILIPS with a clear spaciouos sound although a bit old, but very good.

The playing is strongly Romantic in character, emphasizing the violent contrasts and almost painful expressivity of the score; the ensemble can deliver feathery, near-inaudible pianissimos and powerful fortissimos with equal presence. Intonation is more or less flawless, and ensemble work is superb with all five parts often being equally audible with no loss of coordination. On each repeated listen I find new details springing out of the texture. There are occasional miscalculations—the cello pizzicati at the start of the adagio are a bit too prominent, though the reverberant acoustic (recorded in a church) could also be partly to blame—but for the most part everything is well judged.

Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice is an opera whose historical value is as great as its musical worth. It stands as a starting point for what is often referred to as the “Gluck reform” of Italian serious opera, and the first performance of Orfeo, which took place in Vienna on the 5th of October 1762, is considered to be one of the key moments in the history of music in the eighteenth century.

The Cardinall’s Musick are acknowledged as the foremost performers of Byrd’s music. Under their director Andrew Carwood they have recorded the complete Latin church music, the final volume of which won the Gramophone Record of the Year. Now they turn to Byrd’s English church music, a genre which shows the composer treading a path between his own innate Catholicism and the requirements of the reformed Church of England. But far from sublimating Byrd’s genius this difficult situation gave rise to one of his most fertile periods.

This is quite simply magnificent violin-playing, the sort that while you’re listening to it convinces you that the music couldn’t possibly be played any other way. You soon realize just how far she’s come since her teenage years, the tempo marginally more mobile and the variety of nuance and tone on offer so much wider than it had been.