Any new release from Marc-André Hamelin and the Takács Quartet promises outstanding music-making, and Dohnányi Piano Quintets & String Quartet No 2 (a particularly tempting Record of the Month for November) doesn't disappoint. This is a composer whom Hyperion has consistently championed, and in performances of this calibre it's easy to hear why. Distinguished advocacy may also be taken for granted wherever the voices of Cinquecento are employed. Looking ahead in the liturgical calendar they present one of the pinnacles of the Italian Renaissance: book two of Palestrina Lamentations.

Two distinctly superior Christmas albums bring appropriately seasonal fare. The Gesualdo Six and director Owain Park return with Christmas, an exceptionally eclectic album which will give pleasure above and beyond the canonical twelve days: this is singing which may be enjoyed throughout the year. And much the same may be said of Christmas at St George's Windsor, a selection of choral favourites taking the listener on a journey from Advent to Epiphany. James Vivian conducts, and it's a pleasure to welcome back to the label St George's Chapel Choir Windsor.

New from the King's College Choir Cambridge own label, A Festival of Nine Lessons & Carols – The Centenary Service, a live recording from Christmas Eve 2018, is a fitting celebration of both an enduring musical institution and of Sir Stephen Cleobury's stewardship over the past thirty-seven years. An added bonus is the series of personal essays included in the booklet, reflections on the Festival by some of those who have been closely involved with it over the years.

A new release on LSO Live brings Sir Simon Rattle's Bruckner Symphony No 6, his first recording of the great Austrian symphonist at the helm of the London Symphony Orchestra. A five-star concert review in The Times praised a performance which brought the work 'vividly to life', an interpretation now preserved for posterity.

On Signum Classics, The Soldier – From Severn to Somme is a touching and very personal song recital. In repertoire ranging from Schumann and Fauré to Butterworth, Mahler and Ives, Christopher Maltman and Joseph Middleton address the pity of wars past, present and future. While The King's Singers – The Library, Vol. 1 is the first in a series of EPs which will document The King's Singers' way with lighter repertoire old and new in the close-harmony arrangements so characteristic of this extraordinary ensemble.

A new Gimell release brings the penultimate in The Tallis Scholars' survey of Josquin Masses: the retrospective Missa Mater Patris, based on the motet by Antoine Brumel, and the Missa Da pacem, long considered among Josquin's finest but now thought to be by the contemporaneous Noel Bauldeweyn. Conductor Peter Phillips revels in its moments of exquisite perfection and invites us to decide for ourselves.

The debut release from master viol consort Fretwork was entitled 'In nomine' (Amon Ra, 1987, the words 'digital', 'stereo' and 'compact disc' all proudly emblazoned on its cover). Three decades later and on Signum Classics, In nomine II presents a further fourteen gems from this most English of repertoires alongside two modern responses to it.

Paul McCreesh and his Gabrieli forces have recorded Purcell King Arthur, the culmination of decades of performance development here attaining a convincing sum of the fragmentary parts surviving. The Signum Classics cast is headed up by Carolyn Sampson and Roderick Williams. The latest album from St John's College Choir Cambridge is entitled Magnificat, six settings of the timeless Evening Canticles, each with some special connection to the performers. Andrew Nethsingha conducts. Now may we singen is a wide-ranging programme of music for Advent and Christmas. In the hands of Westminster School Choir, youthful enthusiasm elicits performances of rare commitment.

The twelfth instalment in Signum's admirable Complete Bach Organ Works series comprises the complete Orgelbüchlein, forty-six chorale prelude harmonizations—introspective, expansive, sometimes even exuberant—on the hymn tunes of the day. As ever David Goode is at the console.