Found Objects / Sound Objects—Marc-André Hamelin’s latest solo album and November’s Record of the Month—promises a rollercoaster ride through works by some of the twentieth century’s great musical mavericks. Built around The perilous night (John Cage’s first major piece for prepared piano, a piano which has had nuts, bolts, screws and similar inserted between its strings), the programme begins with Frank Zappa and ends in the only way imaginable: with a work by Hamelin himself, the fast and furious Hexensabbat. En route are contributions by John Oswald—whose eclectic Tip is an assemblage of fragments taken from a wide range of classical, jazz and pop favourites—Salvatore Martirano, Stefan Wolpe and Yehudi Wyner. Not for the faint-hearted.

A programme of choral anthems from The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge and Stephen Layton, its distinguished former Director of Music, takes its name from one of them—Kenneth Leighton’s Let all the world in every corner sing. A number of predominantly early twentieth-century favourites are on the menu, including Basil Harwood’s O how glorious is the kingdom (written in 1899), while Jonathan Dove’s Seek him that maketh the seven stars (1995) and Matthew Martin’s virtuosic St Albans triptych for solo organ (expertly dispatched by Harrison Cole from the console of Ely Cathedral where this album was recorded) provide textural contrast and the album’s most recent music.

“Among the speeding plinks and plonks a spell was being cast … the most obvious lure was the skill of the pianist, the magisterially wonderful Marc-André Hamelin, famous for tackling the piano repertoire’s most formidable creations and making them seem what is technically known as a piece of cake …” So writes The Times of Marc-André’s latest album Found Objects / Sound Objects. But these are words which could equally have been applied to any of this pianist’s extraordinary catalogue, and we’re pleased to be able to offer a diverse array of these treasurable albums at a reduced price until the end of November: CDs are just £10.00 each, with download prices reducing correspondingly, and we hope you will find albums to whet your interest. Some highlights are listed below and are included on Vol. 2 of our November sampler (free to download), and you can also » Click here for a full listing.

All the stars looked down is an immaculate new album from the true home of Christmas: King’s College Cambridge. Here, on the choir’s own label, we have a celebration Sir John Rutter, treasured carol arrangements by Sir David Willcocks and more, all presented against a lush orchestral backdrop courtesy of the Britten Sinfonia. Daniel Hyde conducts an album to remember.

For her latest album on Decca Classics, ever-popular violinist Nicola Benedetti invites the guitar of Plínio Fernandes, accordion of Samuele Telari, cello of Thomas Carroll and Scottish smallpipes of Brìghde Chaimbeul into her Violin Café—an inventive instrumental line-up revelling in a programme seamlessly blending virtuosic showpieces and French romance with contemporary classics and Scottish folk. A sound world like no other!

Acclaimed pianist Ivana Gavrić makes her debut on Signum Classics with a vivacious recital entitled Throwback to dance, a programme which traces the influence of dance forms old and new on a dazzling array of composers from Grieg and Ravel through to Dora Pejačević and Cheryl Frances-Hoad. And the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and conductor Kenneth Woods have recorded Symphonies Nos 8 & 9 by Christopher Gunning, the latest instalment in a cycle of this composer’s mature classical works.

Alchemists of the Italian Baroque La Serenissima have returned to the studios of Signum Classics to record Vivaldi Opus 8 Vol. 2 (or, more properly, Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione—libro secondo): six concertos for violin, strings and continuo. With two additional concertos filling out the programme, this is Vivaldi at his vivacious best. Adrian Chandler directs from the violin.

A new set from historical piano label APR brings us The complete solo piano recordings of Nicolas Medtner. The composer first entered the Columbia studios in 1930/1 at a time of such fevered experimentation in recording technology that the masters were scrapped, surviving only as test pressings (now in the hands of no less a Medtnerite than Marc-André Hamelin). Alongside these near-miraculous survivals, we have further sessions from 1936 and 1946/7—definitive performances of many of the composer’s most important works.

It is a rare treat to find The Complete Songs of Rebecca Clarke as a set. Here we have over fifty songs—settings of Blake, Yeats, Rossetti and the like, plus a number of texts by Richard Dehmel—in lustrous performances from (primarily) soprano Kitty Whately, tenor Nicholas Phan and pianist Anna Tilbrook. Also on Signum Classics we have Eleanor Daley’s Requiem and other choral works. The Requiem stands out as a distillation of melodic gift, poignant and rich in harmony, and is here performed by the Royal Holloway Choir and their conductor Rupert Gough.

Two new recordings from LSO Live this month bring us three symphonies from the middle decades of the twentieth century. First up we have Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Symphonies Nos 5 & 9, a second RVW instalment from Chief Conductor Sir Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra and featuring two of the composer’s most moving contributions to the genre. And then Gianandrea Noseda takes to the podium for Prokofiev’s Symphony No 4, a work whose troubled gestation reached its final form only a few years after RVW’s No 5.

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.