The partnership of Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien needs no introduction to Hyperion collectors, having been responsible over the last sixteen years for authoritative readings of much of the major repertoire for violin and piano. February’s Record of the Month is their latest collaboration, bringing compelling accounts of the three Schumann Violin Sonatas—passionate, intense works inspired by the calibre of musicians with whom Schumann associated in the early 1850s. But however distinguished those early performances by Joseph Joachim and Clara Schumann may have been, it’s difficult to imagine they could have surpassed these: this is a duo which can always be relied upon to produce rather special results.

If the Italian piano concerto is an elusive creature, largely absent from the standard repertoire, in War Silence – Rare Italian piano concertos pianist Roberto Prosseda helps redress such neglect in a programme consisting of no fewer than four of them. Written between 1900 and 2015, works by Guido Alberto Fano, Luigi Dallapiccola, Silvio Omizzolo and Cristian Carrara (whose concerto gives the album its arresting title) will be new to most listeners: two are first recordings and all are worth discovering in such committed performances as they receive here. The London Philharmonic Orchestra is conducted by Nir Kabaretti. With Guillaume de Machaut: A lover’s death The Orlando Consort concludes its magisterial survey of the secular music of France’s great fourteenth-century composer-poet, a survey which has greatly enhanced our understanding and appreciation of an extraordinary figure. The themes of this final instalment are familiar—the fleeting joys and lasting sorrows of courtly love, and the narrator’s near obsession with his lover, the desire for whom ‘Love in my heart has set ablaze / And stoked’ (to quote the vigorous opening motet).

New from historical piano label APR we have Cécile Chaminade and her contemporaries play Chaminade. Included are some of the very earliest recordings of all (Chaminade herself, captured on disc in 1901), while the set as a whole reminds us how fast-changing fashions can allow a block-busting composer to be consigned to the shadows almost overnight, awaiting ‘discovery’ decades later by new generations of enterprising artists.

A Plastic Theatre & other choral works by Joanna Marsh is a new showcase on Signum Classics for this most vigorous of composers. Featuring electrifying performances from I Fagiolini—as well as contributions from The Lyons Mouth, Stile Antico and Voces8—the thrilling title work was recorded live by mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnston and the Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Choir and Orchestra under conductor Ellie Slorach.

A third instalment in the complete cycle from the Calidore String Quartet on Signum brings us the Early Beethoven Quartets, a final triple-album of exquisite classical decorum. The six quartets of Opus 18 date from 1798 to 1800 and while elements of their style may indeed pay obvious homage to Mozart and Haydn, here Beethoven can be seen asserting his new dominance in the genre.

This year celebrating their twentieth anniversary, polyphony specialists Stile Antico have recorded what is perhaps surprisingly their first album dedicated to the music of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. Centred on the glorious Missa Papae Marcelli, this third instalment in the group’s ‘Golden Renaissance’ series for Decca Classics includes several of Palestrina’s most perfect motets, as well as a twelve-part, three-choir setting of Laudate Dominum in tympanis.

LSO Live immerses itself this month in the carnal excesses of inter-War Europe with a visceral recording of Kurt Weill’s Die sieben Todsünden. Soprano Magdalena Kožená plays the unfortunate Anna (charged with earning money for her feckless family, and by whatever means), while the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle throw everything they have at this centrepiece of an all-Weill programme.

Alone together from the male-voice masters of Minnesota-based Cantus takes as its theme a very modern problem: the more ‘connected’ our world becomes, the more isolated its citizens perceive themselves to be. The resulting album on Signum Classics is one of introspection and beauty, with music from a broad church (including a rare segue from Beethoven to Paul Simon) laying down a comfort blanket of opulent harmony.

The inaugural release of 2025 from Signum Classics sees the intrepid Armonico Consort and director Christopher Monks continue their exploration of a composer all-but forgotten with Francesco Scarlatti's Il Daniele nel lago de' leoni. Brother of Alessandro and uncle of Domenico, Francesco died in obscurity in Dublin some time around 1741. His sole oratorio tells the story of the Prophet Daniel in the den of lions, and appears never to have been performed during the composer's lifetime, receiving its probable premiere just last year following the discovery of the autograph manuscript in a Cambridge library.