Given its monumental scale and the extreme pianistic demands it (still) makes of the performer, any new recording of Beethoven's Hammerklavier should be an event, the most memorable of musical occasions. This one certainly is—but nothing less should be expected of one of the year's most keenly awaited piano releases: Marc-André Hamelin's account of the mighty Op 106. Along with the coupling—the third of Beethoven's early Op 2 sonatas, the longest and most powerful of the set—October's Record of the Month is an album which no one remotely interested in Beethoven, the piano, or indeed music, can afford to miss.

Radically different piano repertoire—albeit from a similar period—is to be found on the enigmatically titled Unplayed Stories … in 40 Fingers. A piano concerto album like no other, this is a collection of Romantic discoveries and reconstructions of works for up to four pianists and orchestra, played by members of the MultiPiano Ensemble with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin conducted by Ivor Bolton. By a gradual process of metamorphosis (often involving the work of several contributors), music which began life for one or two pianos here finds itself with an orchestra and additional pianist(s) in tow, and the results are a delight.

A further instalment of titles from the rich catalogue of Decca Classics brings us to the gorgeous discography of Janine Jansen, and in prime position we have the chart-topping Violin Concertos by Sibelius & Prokofiev (the latter's No 1 in D major) recorded last year with Klaus Mäkelä and the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra. Other concerto albums feature Prokofiev's No 2 (with Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra), Beethoven & Britten (with Paavo Järvi), Mendelssohn & Bruch (Riccardo Chailly and the Gewandhausorchester), Tchaikovsky (the Mahler Chamber Orchestra under Daniel Harding) and Bach. And there's chamber music too, with a delightful album of the Schubert String Quintet & Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht, as well as the innovative recital albums Beau Soir (Itamar Golan at the piano) and 12 Stradivari (featuring a dozen of the world’s rarest violins, and with accompaniment from Sir Antonio Pappano). And let us not forget Janine's iconic 2004 rendition of the Vivaldi Four Seasons, imaginatively recorded with one-to-a-part accompaniment which really does work well, or the vivacious debut album whose plain title Janine Jansen disguises the violin-and-orchestra delights concealed within.

That sweet city is a fascinating new album from Queen's College Choir Oxford on Signum pairing two works which received their premieres at Queen’s in the college music society’s summer concerts of 1951 and 1952. Kenneth Leighton's cantata Veris gratia—written when the composer was a Queen's undergraduate—revels in the hedonistic poetry of the medieval Carmina Burana, while Ralph Vaughan Williams's An Oxford Elegy is a late work (he was 79 when he attended the premiere) which adopts a rather more nostalgic tone in its evocation of the bucolic. Owen Rees conducts, with orchestral accompaniment from the Britten Sinfonia and narration in the Vaughan Williams from Rowan Atkinson (a further alumnus of the college).

Close Harmony from The King's Singers is a new collection of—mainly—old favourites from this group's more than illustrious first half century. All newly recorded over the last few years, these tracks—and the entertaining accompanying booklet notes—tell the story of how nothing and no one from Gioachino Rossini to Ed Sheeran is safe from 'getting the treatment' …

For her second album on Signum Classics, 2015 Leeds-winner Anna Tsybuleva has recorded the Complete Debussy Préludes—to this day landmarks of the keyboard repertoire. This is music Tsybuleva first experienced aged just five—played to her by her 'flaxen-haired' mother—and there's a resulting tenderness to these new performances which is rather special. Light Stories is an altogether more viscerally autobiographical revelation from Matthew Barley: solo cello (with occasional accompaniment both electronic and avian) and a tale of hope.

When Sir Antonio Pappano and the mighty forces of the London Symphony Orchestra & Chorus gave their warmly received performances of Mendelssohn's Elijah at the Barbican in January, the engineers of LSO Live were pleasingly on-hand to capture the results. The soloists enjoying Mendelssohn's angelic flights of fancy are Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha and Dame Sarah Connolly, while Allan Clayton and Gerald Finley take the roles of the duelling prophets.

Alfred Brendel (b1931) needs no introduction; as one of the most notable pianists of the second half of the 20th century, his many recordings have been reissued repeatedly. But there is one small corner of his recorded legacy that remains almost unknown—the LPs he recorded at the start of his career for SPA (The Society of Participating Artists). Thanks to the historical piano label APR we now have the chance to hear Alfred Brendel: Busoni & Liszt, incorporating the first-ever recording of Liszt's Weihnachtsbaum and—with an informative note from Brendel himself—Busoni's epic Fantasia Contrappuntistica.

Nightfall—a new album from Voces 8 and Decca Classics—offers listeners an hour of crepuscular languor, with meditative tracks from composers as diverse as Max Reger, Kerensa Briggs and Ludovico Einaudi.