This collection puts some of the best Purcell on display–and it couldn't have a more musical or vocally accomplished advocate than Canadian soprano Karina Gauvin. Her voice is pretty for sure, but it also has richness and substance, not to mention a most endearing vibrato that adds an earnestness and enlivening tension to everything she sings.

The anglophone listener may be deceived by both parts of the "Concertos pour flûte" title of this program of little-known Alessandro Scarlatti chamber music: the music is not for flute (or at least is not played by one), and there aren't any concertos. The recorder was and is known in French as a flûte a bec, whereas the transverse flute would have been known to Scarlatti's associates simply as a traverso.

One might be forgiven for thinking Beatles Baroque III by Les Boréades would actually sound Baroque, as it and two previous volumes are billed, but such is not the case. Even though this Canadian early music ensemble has impressive credentials, and plays the repertoire from Frescobaldi to C.P.E. Bach with aplomb, its performances on this disc are overwhelmingly modern in feeling and not too far removed from the actual music produced by the Beatles and George Martin in the 1960s.

This new CD of Les Boréades de Montréal, features acclaimed Canadian soprano Karina Gauvin in two French Baroque Cantatas: Orphée by Nicolas Clérambault and L'Hyver by Joseph Bodin de Boismortier. The recording is completed by two instrumental pieces: the lively suite from the opera Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse by Boismortier and by Michel Corrette's Concerto comique no 25 Les Sauvages.

These traditional noëls by Claude Balbastre, Michel Corrette, Louis Claude Daquin and Jean-Francois Dandrieu are intimate and elegant, and make a unique contribution to any collection of festive seasonal music. Borrowing tunes from popular songs of the day, these 18th century composers wrote noëls that are simple in nature, combining joy and devotion.

Journey is a compilation of greatest hits from CDs of Les Boréades de Montréal, an early music ensemble that focuses on music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was probably compiled as a promotional teaser, to tantalize listeners into going out and buying the albums from which these excerpts were extracted, and if that was the intent it ought to be entirely successful. The performers play with infectious verve and with a lilt that comes close to being a swing. The pieces from the earlier to mid-Baroque, by Purcell and Cavalli, come to life with a special energy. The excerpts from Cavalli's opera La Calisto, which include transcriptions of vocal pieces, are especially entertaining, and even without words the music conveys a sense of wild hilarity.