From the ‘undisputed greatest string quartet in the world’ (Daily Telegraph) comes the Takács Quartet’s 21st album on Hyperion: Mozart String Quintets K515 & 516. Recorded at London’s Wigmore Hall in 2025, the Quartet is joined by internationally celebrated violist Timothy Ridout, whose participation brings a fresh dimension to the inner voices of these two masterpieces, all lusciously captured by Hyperion’s recording team of Andrew Keener and David Hinitt.

Women and the Piano is Susan Tomes’s homage to the female composer-pianists through the ages who have all-too-often slipped through into obscurity. Their often-extraordinary stories are told in the accompanying booklet, and their music given a chance to re-live its contemporaneous lustre—they may be little-known today, but during their lifetimes these composers moved in the uppermost echelons of musical and royal society.

Minsoo Sohn makes his debut Hyperion recording with an impressively lyrical interpretation of Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier Book 1. First Prize Laureate of the 2006 Honens International Piano Competition, Sohn has performed throughout Europe, North America and Asia, earning particular acclaim for his searching interpretations of Bach and Beethoven.

Steven Isserlis plays The Marquis de Corberon is an opulent boxed-set celebrating the 300th anniversary of the eponymous 1726 Stradivarius, cited as one of the world’s greatest cellos. Here we have 10 CDs of Isserlis’s greatest albums performed on the instrument—with music ranging from his recent Boccherini ‘Music of the Angels’ album to Concertos by CPE Bach, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Dvořák right up to John Tavener, enabling listeners and enthusiasts to enjoy this incomparable instrument across a range of eras and styles.

Recorded live at the 2025 Mahler Festival in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, a new album from Decca Classics brings us Mahler Symphony No 8, the so-called ‘Symphony of a Thousand’. Klaus Mäkelä conducts the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra with a full complement of eight starry vocal soloists and five choirs coming together for this most grand of symphonic masterpieces.

Reaching farther is a joyful and varied celebration of the musical activities of Clare College in Cambridge, founded by the music-loving granddaughter of Edward I in 1326 but whose choral excellence is the work only of the past 100 years. Today, Clare College Choir Cambridge is conducted by Graham Ross, and this Signum Classics recording features works by fifteen composers with links to the college—many of them sometime members of the choir—and was recorded under the watchful eyes and ears of former director of music John Rutter. A host of voices to discover here, and in performances of impressive vigour.

Joseph Nolan unleashes the majestic Stahlhuth-Jann of Église Saint-Martin de Dudelange in Luxembourg for a second instalment of Organ Works by Charles-Valentin Alkan on Signum Classics. The main work here is the set of thirteen Prayers—be they hieratic or heroic—which make up Op 64. Additionally Nolan tackles the reverberant Op 54 Benedictus, and the first six of the improbable Études pour les pieds seulement, tipping a wink to the fact that much of this music owes its existence to the composer’s predilection for the short-lived ‘piano à clavier de pédales’.

A new album from Decca Classics this month showcases the abundant talents of saxophonist Jess Gillam. Effortlessly spanning 900 years of music, Shine is a bold reflection of the energy and eclecticism of Jess’s musical upbringing and tastes.

On Signum Classics, La Serenissima’s latest foray into the world of unexpected album titles brings us Hell’s Angels, director/violin virtuoso Adrian Chandler putting together an enticing sequence of works by Vivaldi, Marcello, Leclair, Guillemain and Mascitti. And Promised Land from Grammy Award-winning Phoenix Chorale and Artistic Director Christopher Gabbitas surveys two and a half centuries of American choral music in a rich and purposefully programmed celebration of America’s choral heritage.