Angela Hewitt turns her attention to the piano music of Emmanuel Chabrier. Chabrier was a sensitive soul, prone to weep on hearing a single chord of Wagner, yet he cultivated a gaiety and sense of joy that is clearly heard in his music. Chabrier’s most important works are for the piano. The ten contrasting and evocative Pièces pittoresques form the centrepiece of this recording, and were described by Poulenc as being “as important for French music as the preludes of Debussy”. The remaining works are charming and varied character pieces. All are played with style and affection by Angela Hewitt, who with her renowned warmth and communicative flair makes a very special case for this music.

Two early Masses by Cristóbal de Morales launch an ambitious new series. The dedicated advocacy of De Profundis is sure to guarantee new standards in the music of this complex, enigmatic figure.

‘Rachmaninov fans won’t want to miss this’ was Gramophone’s verdict on Steven Osborne’s recording of the Études-tableaux, and this thrilling new release is an equally essential acquisition. Osborne proves a predictably fine exponent of the Faustian Piano Sonata No 1 and is no less compelling in the selection of shorter works which completes the album.

‘Layton has directed this annual St John Passion for several seasons now. His readings, which are becoming ever more dramatic and daring, have a raw intensity. It was easy to see why these concerts have become one of the highlights in London’s musical calendar’ (The Guardian)

Recorded in association with a live performance from Birmingham’s Symphony Hall in 2022, this account of Stanford’s Requiem from Martyn Brabbins and massed Birmingham forces thrillingly captures all the grandeur and intimacy of a neglected choral epic.

Domestic music-making of a distinctly superior sort is lovingly recreated in a rare recording of the notebooks Bach presented to his second wife.

Piers Lane brings all his pianistic panache to this splendidly eclectic recital of works from the 1700s to 2019, in a programme exploring very different aspects of the dance.

Two late, great Vaughan Williams symphonies: with the ‘Antartica’ and No 9, Martyn Brabbins and his BBC forces complete a cycle enthusiastically acclaimed by Radio 3 Record Review as ‘unmissable’.

Danny Driver proves a peerless guide to this fascinating music, performing with elegance and vigour. Hyperion presents a second volume of CPE Bach’s startlingly original and inventive keyboard sonatas. This release spans the composer’s career, taking the listener from the highly expressive manner of his early works to his mastery of the Classical style—in which he still retains the distinctive characteristics, the fantastical changes of mood and tempo which both astounded and perplexed his contemporaries.

The late G major sonata followed such landmarks as the ‘Great’ C major symphony and Schubert’s last string quartet, and explores similarly expansive terrain; the A major is an earlier, genial work. These frame the brief D769a fragment, which adds to the uniqueness of Stephen Hough’s marvellous recital.

Scriabin clearly responded to the passionate and emotionally charged nature of the mazurka, qualities shared by all twenty-three of the exquisite miniatures recorded here.

This new recording from Martin Baker and the Westminster Cathedral Choir features the three masses of William Byrd, paired with the Latin hymn Ave verum corpus. The album celebrates Byrd's Catholic liturgical music in two ways. Most obviously, it addresses great and timeless works. But at the same time it reminds us that the revival of Byrd's music in the late nineteenth century was pioneered by Roman Catholic church choirs. The recording celebrates a revival of Catholic choral traditions no less than it celebrates the works themselves.

The figures of Auguste Dupont and Peter Benoit may be little known outside their native Belgium, yet both enjoyed pianistic and pedagogical success in their lifetimes. Benoit’s symphonic poem is a piano concerto in all but name, ending with a spiritedly Mephistophelean ‘fantastical hunt’.

One phenomenal composer-pianist’s homage to another. Samuil Feinberg’s music is here championed by Marc-André Hamelin, whose performances are sensitive to all its shadows and anxieties while being—of course—fully equal to the prodigious technical demands.

The Mozarts—father Leopold and son Wolfgang Amadeus—bookend a virtuosic recital from Ursula Paludan Monberg, who traces the development of the natural horn as a solo instrument throughout the eighteenth century.