A new recording from Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien sees the pair working rare musical alchemy on the three Brahms Violin Sonatas, as once more they transmute mere notes into pure gold. These works can seldom have sounded so radiant, making September's Record of the Month a very special event indeed. There's something of a Hyperion BrahmsFest this month, with the young soprano Harriet Burns presenting the eighth volume in our Complete Brahms Songs series. A fine recital comprising twenty-six lustrous miniatures on the eternal dilemmas of life, love and loss, the programme—as always—is accompanied and expertly curated by Graham Johnson.

Nearly half a century after Brahms, the turbulent waters of German late Romanticism could still produce such un-ironic masterpieces as the Pfitzner & Braunfels Piano Concertos. Markus Becker is fully alive to their nostalgic undertow and has all the necessary pianistic firepower to meet both works' considerable demands; he is joined by Constantin Trinks conducting the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin in this 79th instalment of Romantic Piano Concertos. In complete contrast, listeners seeking something rather less Teutonic will delight in Machaut The single rose, an exploration of that flower's association with true love—profane and (just occasionally) sacred—from The Orlando Consort, in whose voices this extraordinary music from the fourteenth century again sounds newly minted.

Evensong Live 2019 is a new collection of anthems and canticles from King's College Choir Cambridge. These live recordings once more stand testimony to the unwavering abilities of this most august of choirs to 'deliver' day in day out. Stephen Cleobury shares the privilege of conducting with Ben Parry and Christopher Robinson.

Richard Blackford's Kalon is a challenging work, as string quartet and orchestra—here the Albion Quartet and Czech Philharmonic—push the Ives-ian possibilities offered by simultaneous tempi (conductor Jiří Rožeň issuing the unusual instruction that the two groups 'must on no account listen to each other') to the limit. The resulting album explores a strangely perfect physical beauty (in Greek, Kalon) that can emerge from apparent chaos. Also on Signum Classics this month is a welcome return to the catalogue of The Silken Tent, a 2009 recording by Fretwork and soprano Clare Wilkinson which eloquently charts the viol as a living force in 'real' music-making from its Elizabethan heyday right through to modern fabrications of compelling power.

Newly available on the Mariinsky label are the emotionally charged final three symphonies of a Russian great in performances from 2010 by the Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev. Tchaikovsky Symphony No 4 dates from 1877/8 and is perhaps the composer's most resignedly fatalistic work. Symphony No 5, a decade later, opens in equally sombre mood, but moves inexorably into the blazing light of its triumphant concluding march. Optimism was not to win. Tchaikovsky died just nine days after conducting the premiere of his Symphony No 6, the 'Pathétique'. The work remains an acknowledged masterpiece, the composer's farewell to life.

The north wind was a woman & other chamber music by David Bruce is a new album from Signum Classics featuring the Dover Quartet, Camerata Pacifica and soloists Nora Fischer (soprano) and Avi Avital (mandolin). These works respond engagingly to the natural world in its various guises, further illustrating the appeal of this successful new composer.