Our January 2025 releases will be available from Friday 10 January.

Described in The Sunday Times as ‘one of the reliably mesmerising musicians of the day’, Angela Hewitt this year marked three decades of recording for Hyperion. We are immensely proud of each and every one of her dozens of albums—which have so far covered repertoire from Bach and Beethoven to Messiaen and Chabrier, not to mention glorious mini-series of Mozart and Scarlatti, and all meeting with the highest of critical praise—and look forward to many more in the future. Thank you, Angela, from all at Hyperion.

“My relationship with Hyperion Records over the past thirty years has been one of the great joys of my life and career. When, in 1994, their founder Ted Perry asked me to record the complete keyboard works of Bach for the label, a dream came true! That project alone would have already been a great accomplishment, but to have had the opportunity to do so many recordings of repertoire as diverse as Messiaen, Couperin, the complete Beethoven Sonatas, Scarlatti, Liszt (to name but a few) shaped my career and my growth as both a person and a musician in the most glorious way. For that I am extremely grateful. Through their excellent distribution network and now through streaming platforms, Hyperion has made my recordings available to a worldwide public that is constantly growing in size. I extend my heartfelt thanks to all at Hyperion and to all my fans who have listened to my recordings over the years.”

No survey of Angela’s discography could start anywhere but with what has been described as ‘one of the record glories of our age’—the keyboard works of Johann Sebastian Bach. These are true glories of the Hyperion catalogue, and an essential part of any collection. Some highlights follow (and you can find the full series here).

Two other important series have kept Angela busy over the years, presenting the complete piano sonatas of Beethoven and, for completion early next year, Mozart—the admirable results being a clear demonstration of what a Baroque sensibility can bring to the wonders of the Classical age. Here are some of our favourites, plus Angela's three albums of Mozart concertos …

Angela's first non-Bach recording for Hyperion turned to the not-altogether-unrelated music of Olivier Messiaen, and since then a host of nineteenth-century composers have attracted her welcome attention, including an acclaimed survey of the Chopin Nocturnes & Impromptus, recitals of Fauré, Debussy and Ravel (something of a French theme?), and Haydn, Handel, Liszt and Schumann.

For the final word, we must surely return to Angela’s pioneering work establishing the piano as a more-than-valid instrument of choice in the Baroque. We’ve enjoyed three volumes of François Couperin ‘le Grand’, sublime suites by Jean-Philippe Rameau, and two albums (with another due soon) presenting choice sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti. But first a shameless plug for perhaps the most alluring album of them all, Angela’s Love songs … ‘a beguiling collection … and a delight’ (The Guardian).

And here are the most recent new releases from Hyperion …

‘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.

This month: extraordinary Dutch recorder player Lucie Horsch. We've got three albums to offer right now (there's a Vivaldi one to follow—we're currently trying to unearth the full artwork), and what treasures they offer … First up is The Frans Brüggen Project. Released just a few weeks ago, this is a programme of Baroque delights, and one so very enriched by the unique sounds of the instruments Lucie plays: fifteen invaluable treasures from the unique collection of Frans Brüggen. Baroque Journey, recorded in 2018 with the Academy of Ancient Music and Thomas Dunford, features works by Sammartini, Bach, Marin Marais and others (reaching No 1 in the UK Classical Charts and being awarded the prestigious Opus Klassik prize in Germany), while Origins (2022) is perhaps more of a surprise, as Lucie explores her fascination with the age-old traditional folk melodies deployed to such effect by the greatest composers of the Baroque period in their pursuit of a contented patron. This is a tradition now brought right up to date, and with results that are entrancing.

Christmas is very much a family time, and rarely more so than with two festive releases from Signum Classics. First up, a veritable army of Bevans have put together Christmas with The Bevan Family Consort, their innovative programme including several premieres (not least among them a previously unrecorded Mass-setting by Palestrina). And with Joanna Forbes L'Estrange's Winter light we have contributions from the family as composers, librettists, performers (gamely joined by London Voices and conductor Ben Parry), and even sound engineer—and a sequence which takes in some greatly appealing new works at the more 'secular' end of the spectrum …

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.

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.