Found Objects / Sound Objects—Marc-André Hamelin’s latest solo album and November’s Record of the Month—promises a rollercoaster ride through works by some of the twentieth century’s great musical mavericks. Built around The perilous night (John Cage’s first major piece for prepared piano, a piano which has had nuts, bolts, screws and similar inserted between its strings), the programme begins with Frank Zappa and ends in the only way imaginable: with a work by Hamelin himself, the fast and furious Hexensabbat. En route are contributions by John Oswald—whose eclectic Tip is an assemblage of fragments taken from a wide range of classical, jazz and pop favourites—Salvatore Martirano, Stefan Wolpe and Yehudi Wyner. Not for the faint-hearted.

A programme of choral anthems from The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge and Stephen Layton, its distinguished former Director of Music, takes its name from one of them—Kenneth Leighton’s Let all the world in every corner sing. A number of predominantly early twentieth-century favourites are on the menu, including Basil Harwood’s O how glorious is the kingdom (written in 1899), while Jonathan Dove’s Seek him that maketh the seven stars (1995) and Matthew Martin’s virtuosic St Albans triptych for solo organ (expertly dispatched by Harrison Cole from the console of Ely Cathedral where this album was recorded) provide textural contrast and the album’s most recent music.

“Among the speeding plinks and plonks a spell was being cast … the most obvious lure was the skill of the pianist, the magisterially wonderful Marc-André Hamelin, famous for tackling the piano repertoire’s most formidable creations and making them seem what is technically known as a piece of cake …” So wrote The Times of Marc-André’s latest album Found Objects / Sound Objects. But these are words which could equally have been applied to any of this pianist’s extraordinary catalogue, and we’re pleased to be able to offer a diverse array of these treasurable albums at a reduced price until the end of November: CDs are just £10.00 each, with download prices reducing correspondingly, and we hope you will find albums to whet your interest. Some highlights are listed below and are included on Vol. 2 of our November sampler (free to download), and you can also » Click here for a full listing.

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Santtu-Matias Rouvali and the Philharmonia Orchestra have recorded Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben, the mighty tone poem which caused such a furore when first performed in 1899. Orchestra and conductor have already won their spurs with this composer, Fanfare magazine describing their previous Strauss programme as ‘nothing short of a triumph’. Also from Signum Classics, Little Wanderer is an intriguing new recital album from tenor Nick Pritchard and pianist Ian Tindale. Their chosen soundworld is very much ‘Benjamin Britten’—the programme is framed by Winter Words and a selection of the folksong settings—and we have complementary songs by Imogen Holst and Daniel Kidane, whose Songs of illumination set poems by William Blake and provide the inspiration for the album title.

Two new recordings from LSO Live this month bring us three symphonies from the middle decades of the twentieth century. First up we have Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Symphonies Nos 5 & 9, a second RVW instalment from Chief Conductor Sir Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra and featuring two of the composer’s most moving contributions to the genre. And then Gianandrea Noseda takes to the podium for Prokofiev’s Symphony No 4, a work whose troubled gestation reached its final form only a few years after RVW’s No 5.

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.

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.

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.