A new release of Mozart Piano Sonatas K457, 533, 545, 570 & 576 marks the completion of Angela Hewitt’s self-recommending Mozart sonata cycle. Angela recorded all the sonatas in chronological order, and those issued here—the third and final double album—are the products of the composer’s maturity: Viennese masterpieces dating from the late 1780s and contemporary with the great piano concertos, symphonies and operas with which they stylistically have so much in common. As usual, Angela’s accompanying essay is no mere afterthought but offers a fascinating ‘performer’s-eye’ view of the works themselves, and of the interpretative challenges they pose. ‘An excellent recital that yields rewards on every listen’ was BBC Music Magazine’s verdict on a previous instalment, and this, Hyperion’s Record of the Month for June, is a memorable conclusion to a fine series.

Judith Weir’s In the Land of Uz and Amy Beach’s The Canticle of the Sun make up just the sort of release which has always been something of a Hyperion speciality—two major choral works (by two major composers, including a former Master of the King’s Music), which may have been overlooked by a wider audience and yet which amply repay closer acquaintance. Both are settings of texts which address the inadequacies and complexities of the human condition (from the Book of Job and Saint Francis of Assisi), but any expectations of unremitting solemnity are quickly dispelled: the sinuous, jazz-inflected soprano saxophone which plays a prominent role in Dame Judith’s piece is alone worth the price of admission. David Hill conducts, and the varied forces—choir and vocal soloists, accompanied by instrumental ensemble in Uz and orchestra in the Canticle—are drawn from Yale Schola Cantorum.

For his latest recording on Decca Classics, Finnish maestro Klaus Mäkelä has chosen to couple Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique & Ravel’s La valse, two cornerstones of the French orchestral tradition. And who better to record them than the effervescent Orchestre de Paris? These new versions offer pulsating new visions of both works.

The music of Calvin Hampton invites listeners into the audacious world of a New York maverick, The Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys, Fifth Avenue, New York and Jeremy Filsell offering up a generous range of Hampton’s choral and organ works. While the latter have been sporadically represented in the catalogues, this new album from Signum Classics is believed to be the first commercial recording to showcase his choral oeuvre, much of it composed during his tenure at the Parish of Calvary St George’s in Manhattan.

Volume 4 of The Panufnik Legacies from LSO Live continues with the vital work of offering a full orchestral voice to composers as-yet little known. Fourteen are represented here, the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jack Sheen (himself one of the featured composers).

Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring must be one of the most-recorded of all ballet scores. Here Santtu-Matias Rouvali conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra in a performance which fully engages with this explosive score.

For Decca Classics, pianist Benjamin Grosvenor has recorded Chopin Piano Sonatas Nos 2 & 3, two of this composer’s most profound and contrasting works. Grosvenor recorded the two concertos back in 2019 (‘the kind of disc that makes you rethink these works and appreciate them all over again’—Gramophone), and this new album also includes the mighty Ballade No 1, the Op 57 Berceuse, and the Op 55 Nocturnes.

For Signum Classics, the viol masters of Fretwork have recorded an intriguing programme pairing Gibbons Fantasias & ‘My days’ by Nico Muhly. The Elizabethan master’s six six-part Fantasias—jewels in an elaborate crown—are presented complete, while for Nico Muhly’s contemporary response (a ‘ritualized memory piece about Orlando Gibbons’) the instrumentalists are sinuously joined by vocal quartet Iestyn Davies, Samuel Boden, Hugo Hymas and Jimmy Holliday.

Yunchan Lim’s recording of the Chopin Études on Decca Classics held its own in the Top 10 of the UK Classical Charts for a good chunk of 2024. Now we get to hear the performance which catapulted this Korean prodigy into the international piano stratosphere in the first place: Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No 3, recorded with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and an astonished Marin Alsop. This performance was captured at the final of the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and in front of a live audience, an audience clearly so captivated by this extraordinary pianist that you could hear a mouse drop a pin—till tumultuous applause engulfs the hall and the dying final chord.

Lament & Liberation is an ambitious new recording from St John’s College Choir Cambridge. Their programme—devised by in-coming Director of Music Christopher Gray—is unashamedly ‘not for the faint-hearted’: Sir James MacMillan’s Cantos sagrados triptych of 1989 is joined by new works (specially composed for St John’s) by Joanna Marsh, Helena Paish and Martin Baker, the whole bookended by the relative tranquillity of Roxanna Panufnik and Dobrinka Tabakova. Also on Signum Classics, Life by Oliver Davis is a tenth collection of this composer’s balletic inspirations, here focusing on works for violin (Kerenza Peacock and Benjamin Baker) and/or piano (Huw Watkins) with orchestra (the Royal Philharmonic).

A new recording from Decca Classics brings us a programme featuring a Cello Concerto & Cello Sonatas by Shostakovich & Britten. The concerto in question is Shostakovich’s No 2 in G major and it is performed by Sheku Kanneh-Mason and the Sinfonia of London under the baton of John Wilson. Then to complete the programme we have two cello sonatas: those of Shostakovich (dating from 1934, and a work which marked a turn towards more classical forms in the composer’s output) and Benjamin Britten (written shortly after he shared a box with Shostakovich at London’s Royal Festival Hall for the UK premiere of the Russian’s Cello Concerto No 1). Isata Kanneh-Mason is at the piano for these seminal works of the cello-and-piano repertoire.

Sir Edward Elgar’s The Kingdom remains something of a poor relation among the composer’s dramatic works—outshone by his two earlier oratorios, The Apostles and Gerontius—but as this new recording from Signum Classics amply shows, such preconceptions are perhaps unjust, and this despite the work never officially being completed. Soloists Francesca Chiejina, Dame Sarah Connolly, Benjamin Hulett and Ashley Riches are here ably supported by the Crouch End Festival Chorus and London Mozart Players, David Temple conducting a performance very much from the heart.

French School pianists play French Concertos—an important new set from APR, the historical piano label—draws together twelve pianistic titans of the years 1930-1949 in performances, most of them premieres, of concertos by Saint-Saëns, Ravel, Widor, Poulenc and more.