The latest addition to Stephen Hough’s extensive Hyperion catalogue—an album of Hough’s Piano Concerto, Sonatina & Partita—is another fruitful association between composer-pianist and label. The concerto’s subtitle ‘The world of yesterday’ works on more than one level, evoking the history of the piano concerto form as well as the title of Stefan Zweig’s eponymous memoir, itself a nostalgic reflection on the cultural milieu of early twentieth-century Vienna. As Hough writes in his characteristically engaging booklet note, the piano concerto was the public face of the pianist-composers of the past, their calling card: it hardly needs adding that his own marks an important contribution to the genre. Recorded in May last year, this performance documents the work’s UK premiere with Sir Mark Elder and The Hallé providing exemplary support; and the inclusion of two concise works for solo piano completes Hyperion’s very special Record of the Month for March.

Nicky Spence and Julius Drake bring their trademark ‘thrilling ardour’ (BBC Record Review) to a recital of Fauré’s La bonne chanson & other songs. The composer’s song output spanned some sixty years, sustained by his melodic gifts and a talent for selecting first-rate texts by the greatest French poets of the day. The album begins with what surely represents the art of Fauré’s song writing at its peak, the impassioned cycle La bonne chanson, with the Piatti Quartet participating in the composer’s revised accompaniment for piano and string quintet.