Collaborations between the Takács Quartet and Marc-André Hamelin can always be relied on to deliver rather special results, and their fifth Hyperion album together—Piano Quintets by Antonín Dvořák & Florence Price—is no exception. The coupling is inspired: both quintets are major works, vital and invigorating, but while the Dvořák has long been a staple of the chamber music repertoire, Price’s is a recent find, one of the composer’s manuscripts discovered as recently as 2009, some seventy years or so after it was written and more than fifty years after her death. Pairing it with Dvořák makes for a memorable and life-enhancing Record of the Month in April.

With Havergal Brian’s Agamemnon & Symphonies Nos 6 & 12, Martyn Brabbins and his English National Opera forces pay tribute to one of the great mavericks of British music. All three works belong to Brian’s immensely productive old age and display the composer’s powerfully individual voice at its most concentrated: the earliest work recorded here (Symphony No 6) was composed in 1948 when he was seventy-two (with a further twenty-six symphonies to be written), while the single-act opera Agamemnon and Symphony No 12, both from 1957, ushered in the final phase of an extraordinarily long creative life. Despite the extravagant orchestral forces required, all three are masterpieces of concision, and this new release is a fine addition to the Havergal Brian discography.

Vinyl aficionados take note: five further releases in our Vinyl Edition are issued this month. All are new to vinyl, having previously been available only on CD and to download or stream, and all have been chosen to represent the Hyperion label at its very best.

We start with nothing less than the Complete works for piano and orchestra of Camille Saint-Saëns in multi-award-winning performances from Sir Stephen Hough and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Sakari Oramo. Spread across three LPs, all five concertos are here plus no fewer than four additional works by way of encores. And there are more grand orchestral works too, with Steven Isserlis and the Philharmonia Orchestra performing the Elgar & Walton Cello Concertos. Paavo Järvi conducts a collection welcomed in 2016 by Gramophone magazine as ‘an unmissable release’. The members of The Gesualdo Six may not have been alive when vinyl was last in vogue, but here they have chosen their remarkable 2017 debut album of English Motets as a showcase for their abundant talents. And from the Takács Quartet we have a pair of Mendelssohn String Quartets: Fanny’s sole contribution to the genre plus Felix’s heartfelt Op 80, composed in grief at his sister’s premature death. Finally, from Steven Osborne it is a great pleasure to present his 2016 album of Claude Debussy’s Images, Estampes & Children’s Corner: ‘Music-making of great subtlety and finesse which neither lovers of Debussy and French music nor those who value piano-playing on the highest artistic level will want to miss’ (Gramophone).