This month sees the release of a further three 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.

Steven Osborne’s 2013 recording of Musorgsky’s Pictures from an exhibition & Prokofiev’s Visions fugitives won that year’s Gramophone Instrumental Award: ‘This may well be the most lucid and musicianly “Pictures” on record. Hyperion’s sound and presentation are beyond praise.’ Similarly ecstatic reviews greeted Marc-André Hamelin’s recording of Chopin Piano Sonatas Nos 2 and 3. Marc’s first (and thus far only) all-Chopin album united and surprised critics across the world as poetry combined with Hamelin’s superhuman virtuosity, The Sunday Times noting that ‘Hamelin, a poet among virtuosos, brings sensibility and a brilliant technique in equal measure to this oft-recorded music. Spellbinding.’ And from 1987 we have a chance to join Gillian Fisher and Michael Chance as they get straight to the soul of the glorious Pergolesi Stabat mater. This seminal album from The King’s Consort was hailed by Gramophone as being ‘so greatly superior to all previous recordings of Pergolesi’s deathbed Stabat mater as to put the others completely out of the running’.

Mishka Rushdie Momen’s debut Hyperion album ‘Reformation’ topped the UK Classical Chart, persuading critics and listeners worldwide to embrace the rich sonorities of a modern grand piano in early works written originally for harpsichord. With Hall of Mirrors, Mishka turns from England to France and jumps forward two generations to the court of Louis XIV and in particular to the music of Versailles. Here we encounter music by two of the greats—François Couperin and Jean-Philippe Rameau—alongside an extended suite by the rather less well-known Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, described by contemporary writers as ‘the marvel of our age’.

The latest in Hyperion’s series of limited-edition boxed-sets brings us to The Complete Violin Sonatas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Recorded by Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien, this multi-award-winning set of 10 CDs comes with comprehensive commentaries from Misha Donat. ‘If ever a Mozart recording were self-recommending, this is it’ (BBC Music Magazine).

Three new releases from Signum Classics this month bring us a devastating fourth instalment in the Sturm und Drang series from The Mozartists and conductor Ian Page (soprano Alexandra Lowe’s visceral incarnation of Georg Benda’s Medea a never-to-be-forgotten highlight). Nigel Short and Tenebrae mark 25 years of a remarkable choir with The journey, new recordings of some of the finest works discovered over the intervening years and with a focus on quiet but always active reflection. And a new EP from Alexander Chapman Campbell Towards peace presents four of this composer’s piano miniatures.

For her latest album on Decca Classics, soprano Lise Davidsen has recorded a thoughtful selection of Opera Arias by Giuseppe Verdi. Here we have scenes from Macbeth, Un ballo in maschera, La forza del destino, Don Carlo and Aida, all of them exploring the emotional worlds of the unfortunate women caught up in the stories. The London Philharmonic Orchestra is conducted by one of today’s foremost interpreters of this repertoire, Edward Gardner.

A new release from historical piano label APR brings us Karol Szreter – The Parlophon & Odeon recordings, 1926-1931, a double album centred on works by Beethoven (three sonatas and the first-ever electrical recording of the fourth concerto) and Schumann (an impressive Carnaval). The set concludes with an array of short genre pieces and a series of fabulously difficult Strauss paraphrases.

Love Songs & Lullabies by Roxanna Panufnik is a new album from Signum Classics which finds the composer collaborating with musical traditions and performers from around the world on a journey in sound through Croatia, Poland, Ukraine, Syria, China, Chile and Portugal. Fellow travellers include Matthew Barley (cello), Zeynep Özsuca (piano), the Brodsky Quartet and more, and all is bound together by this composer’s unique and very personal harmonic style.

Pianist Tianxu An makes his debut on Signum Classics with a programme of Piano Sonatas by Mendelssohn, Beethoven & Schumann, three works which reflect a specifically German approach to the form, distinct from the Viennese Classical tradition, and which were composed around those years when the genre truly came of age.

Two new albums from Decca Classics this month bring us Mujer Fatal – Portrait of a Woman from the velvet mezzo of Aigul Akhmetshina—a programme redefining the ‘femme fatale’ across Spanish, French, Russian and English songs and with luxurious piano accompaniment from Sir Antonio Pappano—and, from no less a team than the Philharmonia Orchestra and conductor Gustavo Dudamel, Life is a dream – Music composed by Sir Anthony Hopkins, an album of an unsurprisingly filmic exuberance.

Through the powerful darkness … Choral and organ music by Kenneth Leighton is an impressive new set from The Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys, Fifth Avenue, New York and conductor-organist Jeremy Filsell on the Signum label. The programme includes several intriguing rarities, and second half is given over to an imaginative pairing of Masses, the choral rigour of the Missa Sancti Thomae offset by the organ pyrotechnics of the instrumental Missa de Gloria. Performances throughout are of the very highest quality.