Celebrating its 30th release on Hyperion, The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge dedicates its latest project to the Requiem da camera, For St Cecilia & In terra pax by Gerald Finzi. This is music which tackles both the transience of mortal life and also human happiness: the introspective Requiem, the outwardly festive For St Cecilia and the touching ‘Christmas Scene’ In terra pax each revealing Finzi’s unique compositional voice. The soloists are Hilary Cronin, Gwilym Bowen and Florian Störtz and Steven Grahl makes his debut as Trinity’s new Director of Music.

Stephen Hough’s Piano Postcards is the latest fruit born of Sir Stephen Hough’s lifelong passion for ‘those encores which showcase the great pianists of the Golden Age … the miniature masterpieces which say much in a few notes’. Here we have everything from Sibelius, Schumann and Sinding through to the Mary Poppins encore with which Stephen delighted his 2025 Proms audience. It’s our Record of the Month for July and—for the full Golden Age experience—it’s also available on 180g vinyl.

‘The ultimate Vivaldi anthology, abundant in energy, rich with emotion, animation, and color, and enshrined in Hyperion’s fabled, warm, and incomparable sound’ (Fanfare). This month sees the welcome re-issue of The Complete Vivaldi Sacred Music from The King’s Consort and Robert King, eleven CDs of pure heaven.

A good number of our limited-edition vinyl releases are now sold out. But here is an opportunity to enjoy vinyl—always in gatefold presentation and with easy-to-read notes—at around 30% less than the normal price. Offer runs till the end of September. » Click here for a full listing.

Two new albums from Decca Classics this month bring us Mujer Fatal – Portrait of a Woman from the velvet mezzo of Aigul Akhmetshina—a programme redefining the ‘femme fatale’ across Spanish, French, Russian and English songs and with luxurious piano accompaniment from Sir Antonio Pappano—and, from no less a team than the Philharmonia Orchestra and conductor Gustavo Dudamel, Life is a dream – Music composed by Sir Anthony Hopkins, an album of an unsurprisingly filmic exuberance.

Through the powerful darkness … Choral and organ music by Kenneth Leighton is an impressive new set from The Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys, Fifth Avenue, New York and conductor-organist Jeremy Filsell on the Signum label. The programme includes several intriguing rarities, and second half is given over to an imaginative pairing of Masses, the choral rigour of the Missa Sancti Thomae offset by the organ pyrotechnics of the instrumental Missa de Gloria. Performances throughout are of the very highest quality.

Crack American low-voice ensemble Cantus’s latest album on Signum is entitled The secret letter, an exploration of those private loves which society has conventionally eschewed. Music by composers as varied as Abbie Betinis, Consuelo Velázquez, Francis Poulenc and Leoš Janáček enfolds extracts from letters by Marcus Aurelius, Emily Dickinson and more in a programme of mesmerizing effect.

Mark van de Wiel has teamed up with Soloists from the Philharmonia to record Strange Loops – Clarinet Quintets by Anna Clyne, Ruth Gipps & Carl Maria von Weber. While the Weber needs little introduction, this is the premiere recording of Anna Clyne’s riotous contribution to the genre, and Mark has included the Gipps Rhapsody ‘simply because it’s so gorgeous’. Much to enjoy, and the album comes to us from Signum Classics.

Earlier this year, the Decca Classics engineers travelled to the venerable Teatro Dal Verme in Milan to attend the world premiere of an opera composed in 1888: Umberto Giordano’s Marina – A melodrama in one act. In this epic of betrayal and ethnic rivalry, the star-crossed lovers are played by soprano Eleonora Buratto and tenor Freddie De Tommaso, with Nicholas Mogg and Mihai Damian as Daniele and Lambro, belligerent Montenegrins to the last. Vincenzo Milletarì marshalls the considerable forces of the Orchestra i Pomeriggi Musicali di Milano and the Coro della Fondazione Teatro Petruzzelli.

Marios Papadopoulos continues to see the re-issue on Signum Classics of an important cycle with the three Beethoven Piano Sonatas Op 10. These are relatively early works, published in 1798, and Op 10 No 3 is justly regarded as the composer’s first masterpiece in the burgeoning genre.