The month of December combined with the start of the New Year was something of a golden period for BBC Radio 3. For the eight days leading up to Christmas it was Bach every minute of the day - and what a treat that was (provided you allowed yourself the occasional break - I did long for the sound of a symphony orchestra after a few days!). So, if the Bach Christmas whetted your appetite, what does iTunes (www.apple.com/itunes) have in store?

One of the most engaging commentators during Radio 3's Bach festivities was Sir John Eliot Gardiner and he is well represented on iTunes. If you missed the Gramophone Classic FM Record of the Year for 2005, Volume 1 of the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage of 2000, then £15.99 will unite you with this remarkable set in about five minutes. And if that first volume makes you want to hear more, then iTunes is starting to catch up with the volumes that have come out since (including, for £7.99, the delightful little aria Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn' ihn sung by Elin Manahan Thomas - who incidentally sang it again in a concert broadcast by Radio 3 during Bach week: what a delightful piece it is).

From Gardiner's discography for DG's Archiv label, there are many of his studio discs of cantatas though I'd suggest sticking to the new versions for their spirit, passion and for the sheer sense of occasion which really does carry through into the music-making. But you can also find the Christmas Oratorio (£14.99) and the St Matthew Passion (£24.99). Fine achievements both, with some magnificent solo work and of course quite superb singing from Gardiner's tremendous Monteverdi Choir.

Another hugely engaging commentator on music - as well as being a fine musician - is Christopher Hogwood (who also made some thought-provoking appearances during the Bach festivities). He, too, is well represented on iTunes - and I was drawn to his set of Handel's Messiah (still one of the best) for £14.99 and his delightful programme of the Coffee and Peasant Cantatas with Emma Kirkby, David Thomas and Rogers Covey-Crump (£7.99). These two secular cantatas are a sheer delight with all the performers in complete accord about style, and there is some truly thrilling solo work (especially from horn-player Anthony Halstead and flautist Lisa Beznosiuk).

One of the incidental pleasures of the Bach Christmas was hearing his music performed in a way that we seldom encounter these days. And I'm not just referring to the big-band symphonic approach but rather to the chamber-scale style of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields - once one of the most ubiquitous ensembles on disc, today seldom recorded. I caught Sir Neville Marriner directing his band in some of Bach's keyboard concertos with the pianist Andrei Gavrilov and thoroughly enjoyed them (though looking back at old Gramophone reviews I'm not sure I should have!). Well, Marriner is also well represented on iTunes and if you are now thinking Mozart rather than Bach then look out for his version of the Mass in C minor (with glorious singing from Kiri Te Kanawa and Anne Sofie von Otter) at £7.90 or a nice trio of Mozart piano concertos (Nos 15, 21 and 23, aka K450, 467 and 488) with Alfred Brendel the stylish soloist (also £7.90).

A fine if not shattering performance of Beethoven's Ninth under Myung-Whun Chung on New Year's Day sent me off to iTunes to see what versions are available. And indeed there's a cornucopia of Choral Symphonies to be had. And since they're nearly all available at £7.90 or £7.99, price is not going to be the deciding factor. If you incline towards the historic, then there are both Toscanini (RCA from 1952) and the famous Furtwängler from the re-opening of Bayreuth (1951). Mainstream versions include two of Karajan's recordings (the 1962 DG with his incomparable line-up of soloists and the later 1978 from his second DG cycle - either of which would probably be my choice). Günter Wand is represented, as are Karl Böhm (the digital set with Jessye Norman and Plácido Domingo, no less, among the soloists) and Leonard Bernstein (his VPO/DG version). If you incline towards the lither, more revisionist approach of David Zinman then you can only get it as part of his complete cycle (though frankly it's probably cheaper to buy the CDs and rip them into your computer). Also, from our own time, is Claudio Abbado's second DG version (with the BPO), a performance I really enjoyed. The only version that has the edge in price terms is Wyn Morris's LSO account from 1989 - first issued on IMP Pickwick. Richard Osborne, who memorably once described Morris as a 'Celtic Furtwängler', enjoyed the performance, characterising it as 'a traditional reading, warm and eloquent and persuasively played and sung'.

Other recent iTunes additions include the Mahler series from Michael Tilson Thomas, our current Artist of the Year (single discs are £7.99 and doubles £12.99, though for some strange reason the Third Symphony is £15.99). Looking at the 'Great Recordings' section on iTunes I was struck at how similar someone's taste in recordings was to mine - until I realised that they were indeed a selection from my '100 Greatest Recordings' of all time published in our 1000th issue!

James Jolly