The next instalment of Mahan Esfahani’s highly regarded survey of the composer’s keyboard works delivers Book 1 of Bach’s The well-tempered Clavier. Those qualities which reviewers have praised throughout the series—‘daredevil spontaneity’ (Prospect), ‘absolute mastery’ (Gramophone) and a ‘fearless improvisatory approach’ (BBC Record Review)—remain very much in evidence in this compelling account of one of the peaks of the repertoire. With the bonus of essays from the instrument maker and the harpsichord technician, as well as Mahan’s own extensive booklet note—in which he discusses the performing, instrumental and scholarly histories of the ‘48’ over the course of the intervening three hundred years—September’s Record of the Month again confirms the truth of BBC Record Review’s claim that ‘Mahan Esfahani couldn’t make a routine recital of Bach’s keyboard music if you paid him to’.

‘Unique in its terrible magnificence, gloomy and bleak, as if one were walking among dark tombs’ was the awe-struck reaction of a nineteenth-century music historian to the Requiem Mass recorded here by the all-male adult voices of De Profundis in Cristóbal de Morales’s Requiem a 5 & Officium defunctorum. Coupled with Morales’s music for the Office for the Dead, it still packs as great an emotional punch today as it must have done in the mid-sixteenth century. This album is the second in a series of twelve that will encompass all of Morales’s Masses and Magnificats; Eamonn Dougan conducts.

This month sees the release of a further six albums in Hyperion’s Vinyl Edition. All are new to vinyl and feature some of the artists with whom the label has enjoyed particularly close or long-standing associations over the years. They are released as limited-edition 180g LPs, presented in full-colour gatefolds and with sleeve notes included.

Alina Ibragimova’s recording of the solo Bach Violin Concertos with Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo won universal critical praise on its CD release, with Gramophone magazine welcoming ‘an outstanding and distinctive addition to a catalogue bursting at the seams’. 2025 marks the sixtieth anniversary of The Nash Ensemble and Hyperion is celebrating the occasion with a programme of Debussy’s Sonatas & Prélude (an exquisite arrangement for chamber ensemble of the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune). For his 2011 recording of the Grieg & Liszt Piano Concertos, Sir Stephen Hough travelled to Bergen—Grieg’s home town—to join forces with Andrew Litton and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra. Now released on vinyl, the Grieg is coupled with Liszt No 1. More electrifying pianism in on display from Andrey Gugnin, who made his Hyperion debut with ‘totally compelling’ (BBC Record Review) accounts of Shostakovich’s Preludes & Piano Sonata. Hyperion’s collaborations with Stephen Layton and Polyphony over the years have resulted in some of the finest choral recordings available, and Cloudburst & other choral works by Eric Whitacre really is something else: described on BBC Radio 3 as ‘staggering’ and by The Times as ‘a winner’, this album helped introduce Whitacre’s unique compositional voice to a global audience. Finally, the Gramophone critic expected ‘extraordinary things’ of Marc-André Hamelin in C P E Bach’s Sonatas & Rondos: how right she was, and these ‘joyous’ recordings are now available as a double-LP set.

River of music is a charming new album from The Kanneh-Masons on Decca Classics. For the family’s first outing on record in 2020, they recorded Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the animals with narration from Michael Morpurgo and Olivia Colman. Here the format is a little different: the narrative element comes only in the booklet (available to download customers exclusively through this website), leaving the audio to speak eloquently for itself: folksong arrangements, wistful imaginings from Elgar, Dvořák and others, and concluding with a spirited rendition of Schubert’s ‘Trout’ Quintet.

Returning to the studio for Signum Classics, viol consort Fretwork turn to what they justly describe as ‘the apogee of the consort literature’ with Division – The virtuoso consort music of John Jenkins, and a generous compendium of Fantasia Suites, Fancies and Fantasies. And Viktoria Mullova and Alasdair Beatson continue a successful period-instrument cycle with Beethoven Violin Sonatas Nos 2 & 10, the former an endearing work from 1797/8 owing much to the spirit of Mozart, the latter a triumph of originality composed in 1812.

New from APR—the label specializing in historic piano recordings—we have Alfred Cortot: The 1942-3 Paris Chopin recordings. Cortot began recording as a soloist in 1919 and continued through to the 1950s, but nearly all his discs were made in the USA and the UK. It was only during World War 2 that he recorded solo repertoire in France and these recordings, originally only released locally, are much less well known than his London HMVs from the 1930s. Here we have the complete Chopin Études, Waltzes and Préludes in performances replete with virtuoso playing of the highest order.

Two major new works come to us courtesy of Julian Bliss, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and conductor Taavi Oramo: the Clarinet Concertos of Magnus Lindberg and Kalevi Aho. These join an impressive roster of concertos for the instrument to have been written by Finnish composers in recent decades, and share a compelling vision of opulent texture, energizing rhythm and, of course, unbridled virtuosity.

Resonance brings together major chamber works by Schumann and Farrenc, plus three duos from the much-neglected figure of Lucien Durosoir. Louise Farrenc’s piano quintet is a work full of Beethovenian passion. Originally conceived as a sextet for piano and winds, this is the first recording of the composer’s own revision for piano and string quartet, and it is performed on this new album from Signum Classics by Emmanuel Despax and the Piatti Quartet.

For a new album on Decca Classics, stunning young pianist Yunchan Lim presents Tchaikovsky’s The seasons—a set of twelve miniatures (they actually depict months rather than seasons) commissioned and published by a popular Russian arts journal over the course of 1876. These are pieces ostensibly aimed at the domestic music-making market, of course, but Tchaikovsky goes well beyond his brief, contributing works of a delicate intimacy which are more than able to tease out the skills of even so polished a performer as we have here.