Celebrating its 30th release on Hyperion, The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge dedicates its latest project to the Requiem da camera, For St Cecilia & In terra pax by Gerald Finzi. This is music which tackles both the transience of mortal life and also human happiness: the introspective Requiem, the outwardly festive For St Cecilia and the touching ‘Christmas Scene’ In terra pax each revealing Finzi’s unique compositional voice. The soloists are Hilary Cronin, Gwilym Bowen and Florian Störtz and Steven Grahl makes his debut as Trinity’s new Director of Music.

Stephen Hough’s Piano Postcards is the latest fruit born of Sir Stephen Hough’s lifelong passion for ‘those encores which showcase the great pianists of the Golden Age … the miniature masterpieces which say much in a few notes’. Here we have everything from Sibelius, Schumann and Sinding through to the Mary Poppins encore with which Stephen delighted his 2025 Proms audience. It’s our Record of the Month for July and—for the full Golden Age experience—it’s also available on 180g vinyl.

Pianist Tianxu An makes his debut on Signum Classics with a programme of Piano Sonatas by Mendelssohn, Beethoven & Schumann, three works which reflect a specifically German approach to the form, distinct from the Viennese Classical tradition, and which were composed around those years when the genre truly came of age.

Two new albums from Decca Classics this month bring us Mujer Fatal – Portrait of a Woman from the velvet mezzo of Aigul Akhmetshina—a programme redefining the ‘femme fatale’ across Spanish, French, Russian and English songs and with luxurious piano accompaniment from Sir Antonio Pappano—and, from no less a team than the Philharmonia Orchestra and conductor Gustavo Dudamel, Life is a dream – Music composed by Sir Anthony Hopkins, an album of an unsurprisingly filmic exuberance.

Through the powerful darkness … Choral and organ music by Kenneth Leighton is an impressive new set from The Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys, Fifth Avenue, New York and conductor-organist Jeremy Filsell on the Signum label. The programme includes several intriguing rarities, and second half is given over to an imaginative pairing of Masses, the choral rigour of the Missa Sancti Thomae offset by the organ pyrotechnics of the instrumental Missa de Gloria. Performances throughout are of the very highest quality.

Crack American low-voice ensemble Cantus’s latest album on Signum is entitled The secret letter, an exploration of those private loves which society has conventionally eschewed. Music by composers as varied as Abbie Betinis, Consuelo Velázquez, Francis Poulenc and Leoš Janáček enfolds extracts from letters by Marcus Aurelius, Emily Dickinson and more in a programme of mesmerizing effect.