Virtuoso piano transcriptions of Russian Ballet Suites by Tchaikovsky & Stravinsky take the listener on a thrilling ride through four nineteenth- and twentieth-century favourite ballet scores. The suites in question are drawn from The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, Petrushka and The Firebird, and were written for—or by—three of the great pianists of the day, from Arthur Rubinstein and Guido Agosti in the 1920s to Mikhail Pletnev in 1978. All make formidable technical demands of the player, demands which are easily met by Andrey Gugnin (of whose piano-playing, Gramophone magazine wrote, ‘it’s all but impossible to get enough’) in this, his fifth Hyperion album and October’s Record of the Month.

Any choral album conducted by David Hill is likely to prove irresistible, and especially so when the choir is constituted of some of the finest professional singers in the UK. For its Hyperion debut Ikon has devised an unusual yet rewarding programme of Herbert Howells’s Sine nomine & other secular choral works. Poems from around the British Isles, set to Howells’s typically rhapsodic melodic lines, reflect on the changing seasons and the passage of time, while reminding us of a neglected side to the composer. Iain Farrington makes a twofold contribution to some, as pianist, arranger, or both.

In the Poet’s Garden is a treat of a new album from Sir John Rutter and The Cambridge Singers. Their all-Rutter programme opens with I’ll make me a world, an extended setting of James Weldon Johnson’s whimsical Creation narrative, 1920s Americana fantastically rendered with top-notch soloists Melanie Marshall and Roderick Williams. Three further works are included—a choral celebration of London among them—and the album comes to us from the Collegium label.

Llŷr Williams has returned to the studio for Signum Classics, and behind the unassuming title of Schumann: Piano Works, Vol. 2 lie some of the composer’s greatest works for the instrument: the first and third sonatas, Kreisleriana, Blumenstück, the Arabeske and the Études symphoniques. Performances and recorded sound immediately demand our attention: here is an understated pianist with much to say.

Virtuoso piano transcriptions of Russian Ballet Suites by Tchaikovsky & Stravinsky take the listener on a thrilling ride through four nineteenth- and twentieth-century favourite ballet scores. The suites in question are drawn from The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, Petrushka and The Firebird, and were written for—or by—three of the great pianists of the day, from Arthur Rubinstein and Guido Agosti in the 1920s to Mikhail Pletnev in 1978. All make formidable technical demands of the player, demands which are easily met by Andrey Gugnin (of whose piano-playing, Gramophone magazine wrote, ‘it’s all but impossible to get enough’) in this, his fifth Hyperion album and October’s Record of the Month.

Any choral album conducted by David Hill is likely to prove irresistible, and especially so when the choir is constituted of some of the finest professional singers in the UK. For its Hyperion debut Ikon has devised an unusual yet rewarding programme of Herbert Howells’s Sine nomine & other secular choral works. Poems from around the British Isles, set to Howells’s typically rhapsodic melodic lines, reflect on the changing seasons and the passage of time, while reminding us of a neglected side to the composer. Iain Farrington makes a twofold contribution to some, as pianist, arranger, or both.

In the Poet’s Garden is a treat of a new album from Sir John Rutter and The Cambridge Singers. Their all-Rutter programme opens with I’ll make me a world, an extended setting of James Weldon Johnson’s whimsical Creation narrative, 1920s Americana fantastically rendered with top-notch soloists Melanie Marshall and Roderick Williams. Three further works are included—a choral celebration of London among them—and the album comes to us from the Collegium label.

Llŷr Williams has returned to the studio for Signum Classics, and behind the unassuming title of Schumann: Piano Works, Vol. 2 lie some of the composer’s greatest works for the instrument: the first and third sonatas, Kreisleriana, Blumenstück, the Arabeske and the Études symphoniques. Performances and recorded sound immediately demand our attention: here is an understated pianist with much to say.

Virtuoso piano transcriptions of Russian Ballet Suites by Tchaikovsky & Stravinsky take the listener on a thrilling ride through four nineteenth- and twentieth-century favourite ballet scores. The suites in question are drawn from The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, Petrushka and The Firebird, and were written for—or by—three of the great pianists of the day, from Arthur Rubinstein and Guido Agosti in the 1920s to Mikhail Pletnev in 1978. All make formidable technical demands of the player, demands which are easily met by Andrey Gugnin (of whose piano-playing, Gramophone magazine wrote, ‘it’s all but impossible to get enough’) in this, his fifth Hyperion album and October’s Record of the Month.

Any choral album conducted by David Hill is likely to prove irresistible, and especially so when the choir is constituted of some of the finest professional singers in the UK. For its Hyperion debut Ikon has devised an unusual yet rewarding programme of Herbert Howells’s Sine nomine & other secular choral works. Poems from around the British Isles, set to Howells’s typically rhapsodic melodic lines, reflect on the changing seasons and the passage of time, while reminding us of a neglected side to the composer. Iain Farrington makes a twofold contribution to some, as pianist, arranger, or both.

In the Poet’s Garden is a treat of a new album from Sir John Rutter and The Cambridge Singers. Their all-Rutter programme opens with I’ll make me a world, an extended setting of James Weldon Johnson’s whimsical Creation narrative, 1920s Americana fantastically rendered with top-notch soloists Melanie Marshall and Roderick Williams. Three further works are included—a choral celebration of London among them—and the album comes to us from the Collegium label.

Llŷr Williams has returned to the studio for Signum Classics, and behind the unassuming title of Schumann: Piano Works, Vol. 2 lie some of the composer’s greatest works for the instrument: the first and third sonatas, Kreisleriana, Blumenstück, the Arabeske and the Études symphoniques. Performances and recorded sound immediately demand our attention: here is an understated pianist with much to say.