Starting today (Tuesday, March 22), iTunes UK is focusing on classical music and making five recordings (box sets in their CD incarnations) available for the next week at under £5 each. Similar initiatives are running in France and Germany and their offers can be found on their country’s classical homepage).

In the UK, the offers are Daniel Barenboim’s Staatskapelle Berlin set of the Beethoven symphonies plus a handful of overtures (£4.49), the Alfred Brendel/VPO/Simon Rattle set of the Beethoven piano concertos (£4.99), “Pavarotti – The Best” (£4.99), The Sixteen’s recording of Handel’s Messiah (£4.99) and Yo-Yo Ma’s 1997 re-make of the Bach Solo Cello Suites (£4.99). The gem of the bunch has to be the Brendel/Rattle set of which Richard Osborne, in his Gramophone review wrote, 'Happily, though not surprisingly, Alfred Brendel's fourth recorded cycle of the Beethoven piano concertos shares with the previous three qualities of energy, sensibility, intellectual rigour and high pianistic finish which made the earlier recordings so interesting to contemplate.'  

The offer runs until Monday, March 28 and is unlikely to be repeated.