‘This is the best of me … this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory.’ Despite the inadequacies of its 1900 premiere, the stature of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius was never seriously doubted, not least by its composer who fully recognized the work’s claims on posterity. This new account features Martyn Brabbins—a noted exponent of Elgar, as of so much else—conducting the forces of the Huddersfield Choral Society and Orchestra of Opera North, and marks another highlight in this choir’s long and fruitful association with the work, from a wartime performance under Elgar’s baton in 1917, through the first complete recording (made in April 1945—eighty years before this one, virtually to the day), to a fictionalized account of the story behind that 1917 performance in the recent Nicholas Hytner/Alan Bennett film The Choral. An impressive line-up of soloists—Karen Cargill, David Butt Philip and Roland Wood—caps Hyperion’s Record of the Month for February.

Allusions to the year and its history are never far away in Steven Isserlis’s new recital, 1851: Sonatas by Robert Schumann & Ignaz Moscheles. Whether in the date of composition of the principal works recorded (the Schumann being the second violin sonata in Isserlis’s own arrangement), or the close-knit musical world of the Leipzig which produced them, or the Great Exhibition which took place in London’s Hyde Park in 1851 and at which the Érard piano played by Connie Shih may well have been on display; this is an album which delights in uncovering coincidences and correspondences. And don’t overlook the (irresistible) encore … unmissable.

The piano works of Georges Bizet will come as an agreeable discovery to many listeners—here is a body of work by a major composer which has never established itself on record or in the concert hall. Who knew that the twelve- and thirteen-year-old Bizet won prizes for his piano playing from the Paris Conservatoire? Or that composing for the piano only ceased to be a concern following his success in winning the Prix de Rome in 1857? Roberto Prosseda guides us through an hour and a half of piano music which sheds new light on its composer.

This month sees the release of a further five albums in Hyperion’s Vinyl Edition. All are new to vinyl and feature some of the artists with whom the label has enjoyed particularly close or long-standing associations over the years. They are released as limited-edition 180g LPs, presented in full-colour gatefolds and with sleeve notes included.

Angela Hewitt is represented by the LP release of her recording of Bach Arrangements, a selection from the wealth of twentieth-century piano transcriptions of Bach’s music by Wilhelm Kempff and others, culminating with Eugen d’Albert’s magnificent transcription of the C minor Passacaglia. Described by The Independent as ‘the stuff of legend’, Steven Isserlis’s multi-award-winning accounts of the Bach Cello Suites need little introduction. These must count among the most highly praised versions ever committed to disc, and vinyl aficionados will welcome the appearance of this three-LP set. Fading is another of the remarkable concept albums from The Gesualdo Six, an exploration of the ancient Office of Compline in a programme stretching from the twelfth century (Saint Hildegard) to the twenty-first. Radio 3’s Record Review thought the 2020 CD release ‘just incredible’. A critical and commercial success since its original release, and hailed by Gramophone as a ‘remarkable disc … played with a nonchalant aplomb and magical dexterity hard to imagine from any other pianist’, Marc-André Hamelin’s coruscating album of Piano Music by Nikolai Kapustin now makes its appearance on vinyl. Alina Ibragimova’s accounts of the two Shostakovich Violin Concertos, strongly supported by Vladimir Jurowski and the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia ‘Evgeny Svetlanov’, rank with the finest. This album won the Concerto category in the 2021 Gramophone Awards; it’s now available as a double-LP set.

To mark the landmark release of Angela Hewitt – The Bach Recordings—27 lavishly presented CDs in a smart box—we’re pleased to make the whole of Angela’s stupendous back catalogue available at the reduced price of around £10 per CD (£8 or less for lossless downloads) until the end of February. Some highlights are listed below and are included on our January sampler (free to download), and you can also » Click here for a full listing.

American Tapestry is a daring new album on Signum Classics from the Calidore String Quartet. Opening with Samuel Barber’s String Quartet No 1 (the one with the adagio …), the quartet then leaps fearlessly into the weird and wonderful world of Wynton Marsalis’s Octoroon Balls, concluding with a special arrangement (by the composer) of John Williams’s hit from the film Lincoln, and Erich Korngold’s supremely filmic String Quartet No 3.

Something rather special from Decca Classics this month: the Bach Goldberg Variations as performed by Yunchan Lim at Carnegie Hall on 25 April 2025. This recording offers a deeply personal vision of Bach’s seminal composition, one which amply rewards the listener with its compelling purpose.

A new recording from LSO Live imaginatively couples Tchaikovsky Symphony No 6 with the Prelude to Khovanshchina by Musorgsky, the latter as completed by Rimsky-Korsakov after its composer’s all-too-early death. Tchaikovsky wrote of the symphony—it was to be his last—that he had put his whole soul into it: suffused with tragedy and violence, this is Russian Romanticism at its most raw, and it is performed here with vivid relish by Gianandrea Noseda and his London Symphony Orchestra forces.

Reflection from Tamsin Waley-Cohen and Huw Watkins brings together works by Stravinsky and Prokofiev, Oliver Knussen and Huw Watkins himself: two violin sonatas, one Duo concertant (Stravinsky’s riposte to sonata form) and Knussen’s Reflection, composed for and dedicated to the current performers. This is a programme sublimely marrying musical interest with performances and recorded sound of the first order. Also on Signum Classics, Alexandra Dariescu has recorded A Child’s Dream. Kicking off with Mozart’s K382 Rondo (the Academy of St Martin in the Fields in hot pursuit), the programme goes on to include delightfully unexpected rarities and discoveries from the widest panoply of composers.

A new release from The King’s Singers explores the facility of choral music to engender that sense of calm to which many aspire. Taking the ancient liturgy of Compline as its cue, their programme is entitled Head Space – Candlelight and threads together works from Tudor England, contemporary Iceland and more. Also from Signum Classics we have A road less travelled & other song cycles by Alec Roth. Mark Padmore is the inimitable singer in the title work which has evocative guitar accompaniment from Morgan Szymanski, while Martha McLorinan and the Sacconi Quartet perform The garden path, and Hugo Hymas and Nicholas Daniel (oboe) Other earths and skies.