‘Music of the Angels’ is absolutely irresistible. A delicious programme of Cello Concertos, Sonatas and Quintets by Luigi Boccherini, the title is taken from a contemporary description of the composer's work, and never has it been more aptly applied than here. Dispensing the celestial nectar is the peerless Steven Isserlis, with a stellar line-up of colleagues including the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, harpsichordist Maggie Cole and fellow cellist Luise Buchberger. And the only possible way to end such a perfect album as November's Record of the Month? How else but the world's best-loved Minuet, stripped of all inauthentic accretions and sounding newly minted.

A monk's life charts the progress of a young man joining a Benedictine or Augustinian monastery in the late sixteenth century, from entering the monastery and celebrating his first Mass through to his election as Abbot, eventual death and presumed entry into heaven. Music would have been an essential component of the monastic life, and Stephen Rice and The Brabant Ensemble present examples of repertoire which our music- and wine-loving monk might have heard, with motets by Clemens non Papa, Cipriano de Rore and others (including several lesser-known composer-monks) framing an account of Lassus's Missa super Veni in hortum meum. It is perhaps unlikely that many religious institutions of the time would have boasted such flawless singing.

The composer herself may have written disarmingly of being 'surprised, honored and fearful' on being approached to write a new work for the Takács Quartet, but Flow by Nokuthula Ngwenyama is a triumph. The work's multiple sources of inspiration—dizzyingly spanning the worlds of sub-atomic physics and interstellar cosmology, Sanskrit mantras and the murmurations of starlings—cohere in a compact, muscular twenty-minute string quartet of great beauty, recognizably part of that tradition of quartet writing of which the Takács players are such distinguished exponents. Though as a professional violist as well as a gifted composer, active as soloist, recitalist and chamber musician, it comes as no surprise that Ngwenyama writes so well for the medium. Available to download and stream (and as a limited-edition CD-R), this is a notable addition to the Takács' recorded repertoire.

New from LSO Live we have a vivacious recording of the Violin Concertos by Miklós Rózsa & Béla Bartók, two works sharing more than a pinch of Hungarian folk influence. The soloist here is LSO principal Roman Simović, the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Simon Rattle (in the Rózsa) and Kevin John Edusei (the Bartók).

Two new orchestral albums from Signum this month: Visions of St Anne & other works by Roderick Elms is a worthy showcase for this most approachable of contemporary composers—with Barry Wordsworth conducting a spirited BBC Concert Orchestra—while The Song of Songs & The Poet in Exile by Walter Arlen (1920-2023) explores the little-known compositions of a figure better known for his work as a music journalist and educator. Kenneth Woods conducts the English Symphony Orchestra, with soloists Anna Huntley and Thomas Mole heading up the BBC Women's Chorus of Wales.

The Frans Brüggen Project is an unusual new album from ace recorder player Lucie Horsch and Decca Classics. While the programme itself is one replete with Baroque delights—from Bach, Haydn and Handel to Telemann and Corelli—perhaps the greater interest here lies in the sounds and personalities of the recorders themselves, for these are the period instruments—fifteen of them in all, dating from the turn of the seventeenth century—lovingly collected and curated by the late, great Frans Brüggen. The accompanying booklet has colour photographs of them all (plus details of some of the slings and arrows to be encountered when playing such fragile instruments), while the musicians lucky enough to have joined Lucie for the occasion include Rachel Podger on the violin, Tom Foster (harpsichord) and the period orchestra co-founded by Brüggen himself, the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century.

Music for clarinet & piano by Clara and Robert Schumann is a nicely balanced recital album from Julian Bliss, James Baillieu at the piano. Never known to miss a marketing opportunity, several of the works here more commonly associated with violin or oboe were also published by the Schumanns in clarinet versions, and it's a tradition here extended to more works with new arrangements by Bliss himself. Also on Signum Classics this month we have a debut recording from the Oxford Bach Soloists: under the direction of Tom Hammond-Davies, Bach Cantatas Nos 4, 55 & 82.2 features soloists Nick Pritchard (tenor) and Yu-Wei Hu (flute).

A new Gimell album from The Tallis Scholars is always an event, and this year's offering is no exception: Maria plena virtute by Robert Fayrfax. One of Tudor England's finest musicians—his name heading the list of singers at the coronation of Henry VIII—Fayrfax was also a prolific composer by the standards of the day, and the four opulent votive antiphons chosen here by conductor Peter Phillips represent pinnacles of his art.

For their latest collaboration the Philharmonia Orchestra and Principal Conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali turn to Shostakovich Symphonies Nos 6 & 9, the earlier work a troubled response to the cultural repression of the Soviet Union during the late 1930s, the later an enigmatic response to the closing months of World War II. Also on Signum Classics, Llŷr Williams has recorded a double album of Early and late piano works by Johannes Brahms, imaginatively interleaving the effervescent variations and third sonata of the composer's youth with his final magisterial offerings in the genre.

Benjamin Britten's The Prince of the Pagodas is among the composer's least-known scores: the present offering from the Hallé Orchestra and incoming Principal Conductor Kahchun Wong is just its second complete recording. Commissioned by Sadler's Wells Ballet in 1954, the creation of the score was not without its tribulations (‘That b. Ballet is FINISHED, & I feel as if I’ve been just let out of prison after 18 months’ hard labour’ …), but the skill with which Britten manages to bind together the episodic sequences inherent to the genre into a larger whole gives an impressive foretaste of his later operas, his virtuosic writing for full orchestra including an early—and, to contemporary critics at least, perplexing—use of Balinese gamelan.

Historical piano label APR has put together a triple album of significant interest: The earliest French piano recordings. Featuring composer-pianists Camille Saint-Saëns, Vincent d’Indy, Louis Diémer and Raoul Pugno playing their own works, as well as performances from Lucien Wurmser, Francis Planté, Gaston Régis and Aimée-Marie Roger-Miclos, some of these recordings date back well over a century, right to the very earliest days of the industry. What they may lack in terms of sound quality is more than made up for by their historical value.

That sweet city is a fascinating new album from Queen's College Choir Oxford on Signum pairing two works which received their premieres at Queen’s in the college music society’s summer concerts of 1951 and 1952. Kenneth Leighton's cantata Veris gratia—written when the composer was a Queen's undergraduate—revels in the hedonistic poetry of the medieval Carmina Burana, while Ralph Vaughan Williams's An Oxford Elegy is a late work (he was 79 when he attended the premiere) which adopts a rather more nostalgic tone in its evocation of the bucolic. Owen Rees conducts, with orchestral accompaniment from the Britten Sinfonia and narration in the Vaughan Williams from Rowan Atkinson (a further alumnus of the college).