‘From a musical point of view, but especially with regard to the stageworthiness of the work, these cuts represent an absolute improvement’ Bartok wrote to his publisher when he had finished his definitive revision of his Wooden Prince – cutting out much of the music relating to specific stage action, but also generally tightening the symphonic structure, making its large-scale mirror form appear clearer. Normally performed and recorded in its non-revised full-length version, it has been a joy now to follow Bartok’s inspired last wish revision of this mystic, vital, otherworldly, and grotesque fantasy music. (Thomas Dausgaard)

Alpesh Chauhan’s début recording for Chandos – Tchaikovsky: Orchestral Works, Vol. 1 (CHSA 5300) – met with widespread critical acclaim and awards, including recording of the week for both The Times and Presto Music, and the BBC Music magazine’s Orchestral Choice. This second volume – with the same forces – offers equally crisp and attentive playing from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, in another album that mixes well-known and less-heard Tchaikovsky.

Max Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1 is the daddythe most popular ever written. Much recorded, Jack Liebeck turns in a dazzling performance of youthful vigour, prefacing the Concerto with the gorgeous Serenade and a Romance.

A bracing excursion to the Indian subcontinent via the Scottish Highlands: the compelling force of Scottish Modernism that is Erik Chisholm makes a welcome reappearance on Hyperion. Matthew Trusler and Danny Driver are the committed soloists in the two large-scale concertante works.

Poles apart? Ignacy Jan Paderewski is a familiar name, but the same can hardly be said of Jerzy Gablenz. Jonathan Plowright makes the strongest case possible for Gablenz’s piano concerto: a substantial work rich in melodic invention and thunderous pianism.

2013's album from the Gramophone Award-winning team of Steven Osborne, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Ilan Volkov. Here they present Stravinsky’s complete music for piano and orchestra as a rare complete set, plus the Concerto in D for string orchestra. The taut rhythmic brilliance of this music is perfectly suited to the particular artistry of these performers. Volkov’s mastery of Stravinsky’s neo-classical idiom is clear from the ecstatic critical response to his recordings of many of the composer’s orchestral works.

Contemporary British composer Thomas Hyde's first foray into the Symphony genre receives its premiere in this live recording of the Symphony's first performance by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra with conductor Geoffrey Paterson.

Alison Balsom must be counted among the most popular Classical trumpeters before the public today. Yet, she has gained wide international recognition only since the turn of the century. Her first recording, Music for Trumpet and Organ, was issued in 2002, and her first major award was given to her in 2006, when the jurors of the Classical BRIT Awards named her Young British Classical Performer. Other awards and citations followed and her concert appearances quickly became major events across England, Europe, Asia, and the U.S. Of course, her supermodel looks and charismatic manner haven't hurt her career, but in the end it has been her talent on the trumpet, forged by an all-encompassing technique and deft interpretive sense, that landed her at the top.

Natalie Clein performs works for cello and orchestra by Camille Saëns. The first concerto has always been one of Saint-Saens's most popular pieces. It is a gloriously playful piece that carries the listener along on a melodic and emotional roller coaster. The second concerto is less familiar to most listeners. Extremely difficult for the soloist, Clein surmounts its challenges with the marvelous technique, musicianship and the passion for which she has become so well known.

German violinist Tanja Becker-Bender returns to the Romantic Violin Concerto series along with Hyperion house band the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Garry Walker. Volume sixteen features concertos by Busoni and Strauss. In D major, the key of Beethoven's and Brahms's violin concertos, Busoni's Violin Concerto is clearly intended to continue their lineage although it never descends into mere imitation. The seventeen-year-old Strauss wrote his Violin Concerto during his final year at the Ludwigsgymnasium. The work is fairly unknown on the concert platform, but Becker-Bender's interpretation should win it new friends.

Ludomir Różycki, a composer who remains frustratingly obscure outside of his native Poland. On this exciting disc, pianist Jonathan Plowright is the soloist in Różycki's three works for piano and orchestra, accompanied by Łukasz Borowicz leading the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. These pieces showcase a composer with an accomplished ear for instrumental color, whose late-nineteenth-century musical language responds to the horrors of two world wars with an irrepressible spirit.

Bartók’s ‘The Miraculous Mandarin’ (published as ‘A Pantomime in One Act’) was composed at a time of violent unrest in Hungary. The Soviet Hungarian Republic had collapsed in 1919 and was replaced by an ultra-nationalist regime which persecuted communists, Jews and leftists and left over 1,500 dead and thousands imprisoned without trial.