Album: Xaivier De Maistre, Notte Veneziana (Sony Classical)

In a week replete with intriguing cross-pollinations of style and sound, this may be both the most deliberate, yet the loosest-sounding.

Sometimes, an unusual alliance of material and instrument can breathe new life into a piece – as with Teodoro Anzellotti's accordion version of the Goldberg Variations. Here, the classical harpist Xavier de Maistre performs concertos by Venetian composers such as Vivaldi, Marcello and Albinoni alongside solo harp pieces by Pescetti, Godefroid and Alvars, and it's often hard to tell which are the bespoke compositions. De Maistre's fast, delicate work in the F minor "Winter" section of The Four Seasons, for instance, deftly evokes the soft but crystalline character of snowflakes. Surprisingly, amplitude is not a problem, the harp standing up well against the ebullient charge of the first part of Vivaldi's D major concerto.

DOWNLOAD THIS Concerto in F minor; Concerto in D major; La Mandoline; Sonata in C minor