The two sets of Rachmaninov Études-tableaux are among the composer's greatest and most poetic creations. Steven Osborne (hugely admired in this repertoire) is absolutely attuned to their characteristic Russian melancholy and heroic defiance, the music's flickering half-lights perfectly rendered in a truly memorable Record of the Month for August. Bears, as Laurence Perkins will attest, are often to be found playing the bassoon in the woods. His new album centres around a performance of Richard Strauss's wonderful, late, Duet-Concertino, the hidden programme of which gives The Princess & the Bear its intriguing title. Clarinettist Sarah Watts takes the role of the princess; the enchanted forest glade is summoned by Sian Edwards and members of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Martin Roscoe joins the principals for clarinet trios by Beethoven and Glinka.

Contemporary music holds no terrors for the Royal String Quartet, whose account of the James MacMillan String Quartets brings such fluency and commitment to these three substantial scores—proof positive that the medium is alive and well in the twenty-first century—that it feels as if they've known them and been performing them all their lives. The Lily & the Rose completes an eclectic line-up of Hyperion new releases, another typically adventurous presentation from The Binchois Consort and director Andrew Kirkman. The booklet, illustrated throughout with exquisite images of English alabaster of the period, is scarcely less spectacular than the music, and perfectly complements this programme of fifteenth-century English motets in praise of the Virgin Mary.

LSO Live kicks off an important new symphonic cycle with Shostakovich Symphony No 5, the work which famously saved its composer from the clutches of Stalin's 'Great Terror' and remains to this day something of an enigma. Gianandrea Noseda conducts the London Symphony Orchestra.

From Signum Classics we have a treasure regained: Telemann's Solo Fantasias for viola da gamba, dating from the 1730s and presumed forever lost until their chance rediscovery in 2015, are here performed by Richard Boothby in a revel of expressive virtuosity. The tango has a developmental lineage that can itself be traced back through centuries of tradition. In Tanguero – Music from South America Christoph Denoth tunes his classical guitar into this world of melancholy-tinged beauty.

A new release from 1equalmusic finds musical polymath Antony Pitts at the helm of The Song Company of Australia. Their live programme, In illo tempore, melds the old and the new into a tapestry of intrigue.