Some twenty years have passed since Angela Hewitt previously recorded Bach's Six Partitas, twenty years (as the pianist writes touchingly in her booklet notes) spent practising Bach's music, 'always trying to do better, to bring it to life even more'. Few artists, it hardly needs saying, bring Bach to life so convincingly as Angela, as is once again proved by this magnificent new set—a Record of the Month for December which no lover of Bach will want to miss. With Saint-Saëns Symphony No 1 & The carnival of the animals, Thierry Fischer and the Utah Symphony conclude their much-praised exploration of the composer's five symphonies. Discovering some splendid, if seldom heard, music has been one of the year's highlights and this final instalment of the series offers more in the same vein, with two lesser-known early works framing the evergreen 'Grande fantaisie zoologique'.

The juxtaposition of two albums from David Hill and Yale Schola Cantorum makes for some particularly exciting listening—the two settings of the Magnificat may be separated by three and a half centuries and four thousand miles but they share a common joy. The Christmas story & other works by Schütz offers a seasonal celebration of Baroque Dresden while, in sharp contrast, a vivid collection of New England Choirworks opens a window on to the thriving and stylistically pluralist new music scene to be encountered around Yale's New Haven home.

Also from Signum, this month offers two further instalments in Llŷr Williams' magisterial Schubert Piano Music compendium. Volume 3 comprises the sonatas D958 in C minor—the first of the great trilogy written in the final months of Schubert's life—and D850 in D major, a work from altogether happier times as the composer holidayed in the Austrian Alps. Volume 4 takes a break from the official sonatas, instead revelling in the delights of the two sets of impromptus, D899 and D935.

On their own label The Hallé Orchestra and Sir Mark Elder turn to the Debussy Nocturnes & other orchestral works, the composer's enigmatic 'scènes au crépuscule' complemented by the treacherous clarinet rhapsody, an early Rossetti cantata, and two rather less well known delights.

The BBC National Orchestra of Wales has recorded three Symphonies by Christopher Gunning for Signum Classics. For decades a master of the soundtrack genre, whether big screen or television drama, the composer's more strictly classical output proves to be a rich resource, and one clearly relished by its committed performers under the baton of Kenneth Woods.

Peter Donohoe has already recorded pinnacles of the Russian repertoire by Shostakovich and Musorgsky. His latest venture, once more on Signum, turns to the rather less well-known Solo piano works of Pyotr Tchaikovsky. In the composer's lifetime these works were championed by such greats as Konstantin Igumnov and Anton Rubinstein; the challenges posed by their lush orchestral textures perhaps explain their more recent neglect.

Soli Deo Gloria presents the eagerly anticipated recording of the solo Bach Violin Concertos from Kati Debretzeni, who also contributes her own arrangement (and premiere recording) of the BWV1053 E major harpsichord concerto. Sir John Eliot Gardiner and The English Baroque Soloists provide scrupulously alert accompaniment.

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.