Collaborations between the Takács Quartet and Marc-André Hamelin can always be relied on to deliver rather special results, and their fifth Hyperion album together—Piano Quintets by Antonín Dvořák & Florence Price—is no exception. The coupling is inspired: both quintets are major works, vital and invigorating, but while the Dvořák has long been a staple of the chamber music repertoire, Price’s is a recent find, one of the composer’s manuscripts discovered as recently as 2009, some seventy years or so after it was written and more than fifty years after her death. Pairing it with Dvořák makes for a memorable and life-enhancing Record of the Month in April.

With Havergal Brian’s Agamemnon & Symphonies Nos 6 & 12, Martyn Brabbins and his English National Opera forces pay tribute to one of the great mavericks of British music. All three works belong to Brian’s immensely productive old age and display the composer’s powerfully individual voice at its most concentrated: the earliest work recorded here (Symphony No 6) was composed in 1948 when he was seventy-two (with a further twenty-six symphonies to be written), while the single-act opera Agamemnon and Symphony No 12, both from 1957, ushered in the final phase of an extraordinarily long creative life. Despite the extravagant orchestral forces required, all three are masterpieces of concision, and this new release is a fine addition to the Havergal Brian discography.

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 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. 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.

A fourth instalment in an on-going cycle for LSO Live brings us Prokofiev Symphony No 6 under the baton of Gianandrea Noseda. The work was composed in the years immediately following the end of World War II, Prokofiev imbuing what is perhaps the greatest of his symphonies with visceral darkness and emotional intensity. A full-strength London Symphony Orchestra more than does the honours.

The Bevan Family Consort—seventeen members of the extended clan on this occasion—turns its expert liturgical gaze onto the seasons of Lent and Passiontide for a third outing on Signum Classics. Attende Domine begins with a starkly evocative plainsong call to attention, the programme then encompassing an impressively wide roster of composers whose varied responses to these familiar texts bind the whole together.