Hyperion Records

Hyperion has new esoteric surprises—but enriching ones—on offer, and as Record of the Month for March 2012 we present first recordings of two Kalkbrenner Piano Concertos, this fifty-sixth volume in our Romantic Piano Concerto series featuring dazzling performances by Howard Shelley and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. Shelley is also at the tiller of the admirable Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana in the final instalment of their commended Spohr Symphonies cycle, this time offering up No 7 'The earthly and divine in human life' and No 9 'The Seasons'.

Hagai Shaham and Arnon Erez see another premiere in the first recording of the Complete Achron Suites for violin & piano, a greatly expanded survey based around a single CD previously on the Biddulph label—this is music, and performance, truly worth getting to know. And arch-Medtner-ite Hamish Milne has completed a personal journey through the Medtner Short Piano Works, an anthology very much more than the sum of its parts.

A third recording from the explorative Royal Holloway Choir under Rupert Gough takes us into a glorious world of Swedish contemporary polyphony in an album of Choral works by Bo Hansson.

Re-issued this month are Philip Martin's expectation-defying The Maiden's Prayer & other gems from an old piano stool, St Paul's Cathedral Choir making some veritable discoveries in Passiontide at St Paul's, the Dohnányi Piano Quintets from The Schubert Ensemble of London, and another of Westminster Cathedral Choir's seminal Palestrina Masses recordings.