If only Marc-André Hamelin had been resident in Paris in 1837. On the evidence of Liszt & Thalberg Opera transcriptions & fantasies (including the multi-authored Hexaméron), the outcome of any pianistic tournament in which he participated could never have been in serious doubt. With a seemingly effortless technique wholly at the service of the music, countering its most outrageous demands with clarity and lucidity, Hamelin remains absolutely unique, as September's Record of the Month demonstrates once again. The two Shostakovich Cello Concertos must come near the top of the list of great twentieth-century works written for the instrument, and both have been central to every cellist's repertoire since the glory days of Mstislav Rostropovich. These new accounts from Alban Gerhardt—with Jukka-Pekka Saraste and the WDR Sinfonieorchester—are set to join a select few of the most distinguished.

Their very first album having won a Gramophone Award in 2019, expectations are naturally high ahead of their second: Luís Toscano and Cupertinos now turn their attention to perhaps the pre-eminent figure from the Golden Age of Portuguese polyphony with an album of Masses, Responsories and motets by Duarte Lobo; a wonderful programme demonstrating the ensemble's consummate musicianship to best effect. And the delights of English chamber music from the dawn of the twentieth century are revealed by Piers Lane and the Goldner String Quartet in Piano Quintets by Thomas Dunhill & Frédéric d'Erlanger. The composers' names may now be little known, but the neglect is unjust: this is engaging and memorable music which requires no apology.

Flare & other works by Joanna Marsh, the composer's debut album on Signum, brings together a selection of music, mainly choral but also for orchestra or band, and much of it inspired by the architecture and culture of the Middle East where she now lives. The enthusiastically contributing artists include the BBC Singers & Symphony Orchestra, Onyx Brass and Royal Holloway Choir. Toby Young's Beowulf—variously narrated by Timothy West and Elin Manahan Thomas—is a new musical telling of the ancient story. Christopher Monks directs the Armonico Consort and a small army of children's voices. Requiem & other works by Borodin is a re-issue on the Cala Signum imprint and finds Geoffrey Simon and the Philharmonia Orchestra once again exploring the furthest reaches of the repertoire.

On the King's Cambridge label, former organ scholar of the college Parker Ramsay seats himself alone in the great chapel and performs his own arrangement for harp—his first instrument—of the great Bach Goldberg Variations. The result is both brainy and beautiful for, as Ramsay notes, the harp 'is a plucked instrument like the harpsichord, but is sensitive to pressure, like the piano'.

Newly restored to its place in the treasured family of Collegium recordings is A banquet of voices – Music for multiple choirs. John Rutter conducts The Cambridge Singers in a sumptuous programme with the dazzling Tallis 40-part motet as its centrepiece. Also included are Allegri's Miserere and the most magnificent of Bach's six motets, Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied.

A new recording from LSO Live brings us Janáček The cunning little vixen & Sinfonietta, the former recorded live during semi-staged performances at the Barbican in 2019. The outstanding cast includes Lucy Crowe, Gerald Finley and Sophia Burgos, and Sir Simon Rattle draws from this charming and melodious score an enthusiastic response from his London Symphony Orchestra forces.

On Signum Classics, the Philharmonia Orchestra makes its first recording with Principal Conductor Designate Santtu-Matias Rouvali. The programme of excerpts from Tchaikovsky Swan Lake well serves to remind how richly this work deserves its place as a staple of the ballet repertoire. And Elizabeth Sombart completes her cycle of Beethoven Piano Concertos with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Pierre Vallet, here performing the mighty No 5 alongside the popular 'Triple' Concerto with orchestra principals Duncan Riddell and Richard Harwood.

Eric Whitacre's The Sacred Veil is a narrative of courtship, death, grief and eventual recovery, a project undertaken in collaboration with poet, writer and long-time friend Charles Anthony Silvestri, whose wife Julie it commemorates. Performed by the Los Angeles Master Chorale under the composer's baton, this new Signum album is as uplifting as it is thought-provoking and unsettling.