The Little Ones: Morning Tide - the Sunday Times review

Like the intrusive efforts of an overfriendly Californian waiter, it gets pretty wearing

Alexander Goehr: Little Symphony, String Quartet No 2, Piano Trio - the Sunday Times review

Significant performances of works by a composer at the peak of his early maturity

The Rise of the North Italian Violin Concerto: Volume 3 - the Sunday Times review

This disc contains a hugely appealing selection of works from the vast northern Italian late-baroque repertoire

Polar Bear: Polar Bear - the Sunday Times review

It’s a shame a record as adventurous as this should end up with the unappetising label of "avant-jazz"

Bill Dixon: 17 Musicians in Search of a Sound: Darfur - the Sunday Times review

Last year, at the age of 81, he premiered this structured improvisation for 17 musicians at the Vision festival

Erwin Schrott: Opera Arias

Schrott is suave and honeyed in the serenades from Don Giovanni and Gounod’s Faust, but his singing lacks variety

Various Artists: Give Me Love: Songs of the Brokenhearted - Baghdad 1925-1929 - the Sunday Times review

Violins and voices jostle; Arab, Kurdish - and Jewish - performers lay out their wares with varying degrees of reserve

Beethoven: Symphonies 1-9 - the Sunday Times review

Claudio Abbado’s power and dynamism propel the Eroica and the Fifth inexorably to their triumphant conclusions

Rachmaninov/Shostakovich: Sonatas for Cello and Piano - the Sunday Times review

Performance of potent and poetic intensity, intelligence and clarity by Robert Irvine and Graeme McNaught

Ida Maria: Fortress Round My Heart - the Sunday Times review

With no duds and no hanging about, this half-hour sketch of the modern female singer-songwriter is a down-in-one treat

Jakob Dylan: Seeing Things - the Sunday Times review

Dylan’s songs are his best yet: strong, warm, brooding, hypnotic. Fans of his dad should definitely have a listen

Danilo Perez/Claus Ogerman: Across the Crystal Sea - the Sunday Times review

There’s little sense of genuine adventure, with Perez’s group floating amiably above Tommy LiPuma’s soft-focus production

Derek Meins: The Famous Poet - the Sunday Times review

If young Peter Doherty were the jaunty decadent his pork-pie hat suggests, he would be Derek Meins, 21

Stephanie McKay: Tell It Like It Is - the Sunday Times review

There are no big-name collaborators for McKay this time round, but she clearly doesn’t need any

Ted Barnes: Portal Nou

An album of damp, larder-cool loveliness from Barnes, beautifully aided and abetted by a range of fine singers

Musica Amphion: Purcell Chamber Music

Top-quality playing marks out this seven-disc box set of all that Purcell wrote either for consort or solo keyboard

John McLaughlin: Floating Point

For his latest album the guitarist again mingles Western beats with exotic Asian polyrhythms, but with mixed results

Working for a Nuclear Free City: Businessmen and Ghosts

This ambitious album from the Mancunians ranges so wide you gain the impression that they have no sound of their own

Valery Gergiev: Mahler Symphony No 7

The Seventh Symphony is known for being tricky, but Gergiev and a lively LSO find a cohesive, epic thread throughout

Ida Maria: Fortress Round My Heart

Punchy punk-pop from a Norwegian singer who, on the evidence of this debut album, can truly be said to rock