Laurence Perkins is not only an extremely accomplished bassoonist, he also has the enviable talent of devising memorable and attractive programmes (and album titles) for his instrument. Honey-coloured cow—his latest release, and a deserved Record of the Month for May—charmingly delivers on all fronts. Perkins’s bassoon expressively sings throughout an album covering a century of music, and if the occasional porcine grunt or plaintive moo intrudes—for example near the end of the Ruth Gipps piece which gives the album its title—humour is just one element in a programme exploring a wide range of moods, styles and accompanying forces, with contributions from harp, piano (John Flinders), string quartet, bassoon ensembles, and string orchestra (the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by William Goodchild). Something to gladden the hearts of moosic-lovers everywhere.

Composer and works may be unfamiliar, but Viktor Kalabis: Duettina, Chamber music & Diptych is very much the sort of repertoire in which Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica (to both of whom Hyperion extends the warmest of welcomes) specialize. All three works—for varying numbers of strings—date from the second half of the twentieth century, and if the influence of figures such as Martinů, Bartók and Berg may be heard in the background, that isn’t to deny the individuality of Kalabis’s own compositional voice, a voice which emerges as determinedly, defiantly tonal. This is a powerful album which will repay repeated listening as well as introducing a wider audience to a lesser-known Czech composer.

Sir Stephen Hough’s account of The Complete Chopin Waltzes has long been considered a favourite version of these much-recorded works. A commercial and critical success since its release in 2011, it is reissued this month—and with a very special reason. In the spring of 2024 a postcard-sized music manuscript was discovered in New York’s Morgan Library & Museum. Written in the composer’s hand, the manuscript has been confirmed as containing nothing less than a previously unknown Chopin waltz. Hough’s recording of the piece and its addition to this album—now once again genuinely complete—gives listeners the opportunity to enjoy a ‘new’ work by Chopin. And, this time in the role of composer as well as pianist, Stephen makes a second appearance this month with the release on vinyl of Stephen Hough’s Piano Concerto—the latest in Hyperion’s burgeoning catalogue of LP releases. This performance documents the work’s UK premiere with Sir Mark Elder and The Hallé providing exemplary support; side B contains two concise works for solo piano.

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.

Sir Simon Rattle continues a glorious cycle on LSO Live with a new rendition of Janáček’s Jenůfa. With principal soloists Agneta Eichenholz, Katarina Karnéus, Nicky Spence and Aleš Briscein, the London Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, this epic re-telling of Gabriela Preissová’s Her Stepdaughter occupied its composer for ten gruelling years, the result a miraculous combination of tragic power and lyrical ardour.

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.

New recordings from Signum Classics bring us All will be well & other choral works by Will Todd—BBC ‘Choir of the Year’ in 2016, the Newcastle-based Voices of Hope, lending these approachable miniatures their own special luminescence—and Fantasies from the cello and piano of Zlatomir Fung and Richard Fu: extended reminiscences of operatic highlights by Janáček, Donizetti, Rossini, Wagner and Tchaikovsky, as well as an intriguing new ‘re-contextualization’ of Bizet’s Carmen …

A major new release from Decca Classics brings us Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer, Edward Gardner taking up the helm at Norwegian National Opera. Gerald Finley is the eponymous ‘flying Dutchman’ whose eternal soul depends for salvation on true love—his redemption secured by the Sea Captain’s daughter Senta, the glorious soprano of Lise Davidsen sweeping all before her.

Marking the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth, Malcolm Martineau has masterminded a new compendium presenting The Complete Songs of Maurice Ravel on Signum Classics. His singers include Nicky Spence, Lorna Anderson, Sarah Dufresne and Simon Keenlyside, and the accompanying booklet includes full sung texts plus translations and notes by Richard Stokes.