Virtuoso piano transcriptions of Russian Ballet Suites by Tchaikovsky & Stravinsky take the listener on a thrilling ride through four nineteenth- and twentieth-century favourite ballet scores. The suites in question are drawn from The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, Petrushka and The Firebird, and were written for—or by—three of the great pianists of the day, from Arthur Rubinstein and Guido Agosti in the 1920s to Mikhail Pletnev in 1978. All make formidable technical demands of the player, demands which are easily met by Andrey Gugnin (of whose piano-playing, Gramophone magazine wrote, ‘it’s all but impossible to get enough’) in this, his fifth Hyperion album and October’s Record of the Month.

Any choral album conducted by David Hill is likely to prove irresistible, and especially so when the choir is constituted of some of the finest professional singers in the UK. For its Hyperion debut Ikon has devised an unusual yet rewarding programme of Herbert Howells’s Sine nomine & other secular choral works. Poems from around the British Isles, set to Howells’s typically rhapsodic melodic lines, reflect on the changing seasons and the passage of time, while reminding us of a neglected side to the composer. Iain Farrington makes a twofold contribution to some, as pianist, arranger, or both.

In the Poet’s Garden is a treat of a new album from Sir John Rutter and The Cambridge Singers. Their all-Rutter programme opens with I’ll make me a world, an extended setting of James Weldon Johnson’s whimsical Creation narrative, 1920s Americana fantastically rendered with top-notch soloists Melanie Marshall and Roderick Williams. Three further works are included—a choral celebration of London among them—and the album comes to us from the Collegium label.

Llŷr Williams has returned to the studio for Signum Classics, and behind the unassuming title of Schumann: Piano Works, Vol. 2 lie some of the composer’s greatest works for the instrument: the first and third sonatas, Kreisleriana, Blumenstück, the Arabeske and the Études symphoniques. Performances and recorded sound immediately demand our attention: here is an understated pianist with much to say.

Simply titled and profoundly moving, Elegy is a heartfelt recital from Mary Bevan and Joseph Middleton and a meditation on that peace which can only be found through death. Encompassing works by composers from Ravel and Chausson, Brahms, Schubert and Mahler, through to Samuel Barber and Errollyn Wallen, this new album comes to us from Signum Classics.

Letters from Paris is classical guitarist Alexandra Whittingham’s first full-length album on Decca Classics, and with it she visits some of France’s most iconic musical characters. From melancholy miniatures to the soaring melodies of French chansons, this is an album which gives us the space to contemplate, marvel and hope.

New from APR—the historical piano label—we have The complete recordings of Fanny Davies & Adela Verne. Fanny Davies was a disciple of Clara Schumann and her recordings of Robert Schumann’s major works are some of the most important documents of nineteenth-century pianism to have survived (and prompted an amusing swipe from Compton Mackenzie, writing in Gramophone magazine in 1928: “Once again I must remind the recording companies that Miss Fanny Davies is alive and that she plays Schumann a great deal better than Cortot ever will”). Southampton-born Adela Verne was an active performer up till the 1950s, but her recorded legacy comprises just the four sides included here as a bonus.

The Monteverdi Choir has teamed up with customary partners The English Baroque Soloists to record a programme entitled Charpentier: Baroque Christmas for SDG. Here we have the grandest of Charpentier’s In nativitatem Domini canticum settings (he wrote four), the popular Messe de Minuit pour Noël, and eight palate-cleansing Noëls sur les instruments. Christophe Rousset conducts, while the pirouetting soloists include Samuel Boden, Ruairi Bowen and Florian Störtz.

The Mozartists and director Ian Page have teamed up with star mezzo Ann Hallenberg to produce an album of Arias by Gluck, several of them recorded here for the very first time. Perhaps most famous today for Orfeo ed Euridice, Gluck’s name remains synonymous with the birth of modern opera (he contributed an impressive 49 works to the genre), and the diversity of styles on display on this new album from Signum Classics is testimony to the fecundity of his musical imagination.

Recording for LSO Live, London Symphony Orchestra leader Roman Simović steps back into the solo spotlight with a new recording of one of the cornerstones of the violin repertoire: Ysaÿe’s Six Sonatas for solo violin. Composed in 1923, this creative love letter to the violin challengingly embraces the instrument’s panoply of technical and lyrical possibilities, and gave birth to six stylistically unique sonatas.