Quite a choice for Hyperion's November 2009 Record of the Month, but pride of place must go to a new partnership between the Takács Quartet and Marc-André Hamelin and their stunning new recording of the Schumann Piano Quintet. After fifteen sell-out years at St John's, Smith Square, Stephen Layton and Polyphony have finally committed their seminal Messiah to disc with the support of the Britten Sinfonia, while Rupert Gough and his expert Royal Holloway Choir have turned to the altogether less charted waters of Rihards Dubra Choral Works. Orchestral fare comes from Poland, with a pioneering album of Grazyna Bacewicz from the New London Orchestra, indefatigably led by Ronald Corp, and from Sweden, as the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra gives Seta Tanyel and Andrew Manze a run for their money in Romantic Piano Concertos by Stenhammar. Recent champion in the RPC series Danny Driver returns, sans orchestra, to his passion and the York Bowen Piano Sonatas, mercurial and romantic both.

Wondrous re-issues also: a super bargain boxed-set presenting The Golden Age of English Polyphony from The Sixteen and Harry Christophers, the first full-scale English opera—Thomas Arne's Artaxerxes—from Roy Goodman and The Parley of Instruments, the earliest known polphony in Magister Leoninus performed by Red Byrd, and Westminster Cathedral Choir's glorious Masterpieces of Mexican Polyphony under James O'Donnell.

We do not issue new discs in the month of December.