The personnel may have changed over the years but the musical standards remain reassuringly high: currently celebrating its sixtieth anniversary season, The Nash Ensemble here delivers perfectly judged accounts of Debussy's String Quartet & Sonatas. Besides that early quartet and the three sonatas which date from the composer's final years, the programme also includes a rare outing for David Walter's chamber ensemble arrangement of the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. Scored for twelve players (single strings and winds, plus harp and crotales), this is an idiomatic version which loses none of the mystery and languor of the orchestral original. This album again demonstrates the truth of The Sunday Times's evaluation of the Nash—'chamber music royalty'.

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.

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.

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 personnel may have changed over the years but the musical standards remain reassuringly high: currently celebrating its sixtieth anniversary season, The Nash Ensemble here delivers perfectly judged accounts of Debussy's String Quartet & Sonatas. Besides that early quartet and the three sonatas which date from the composer's final years, the programme also includes a rare outing for David Walter's chamber ensemble arrangement of the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. Scored for twelve players (single strings and winds, plus harp and crotales), this is an idiomatic version which loses none of the mystery and languor of the orchestral original. This album again demonstrates the truth of The Sunday Times's evaluation of the Nash—'chamber music royalty'.

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.

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.

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 personnel may have changed over the years but the musical standards remain reassuringly high: currently celebrating its sixtieth anniversary season, The Nash Ensemble here delivers perfectly judged accounts of Debussy's String Quartet & Sonatas. Besides that early quartet and the three sonatas which date from the composer's final years, the programme also includes a rare outing for David Walter's chamber ensemble arrangement of the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. Scored for twelve players (single strings and winds, plus harp and crotales), this is an idiomatic version which loses none of the mystery and languor of the orchestral original. This album again demonstrates the truth of The Sunday Times's evaluation of the Nash—'chamber music royalty'.

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.

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.

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.