‘Music of the Angels’ is absolutely irresistible. A delicious programme of Cello Concertos, Sonatas and Quintets by Luigi Boccherini, the title is taken from a contemporary description of the composer's work, and never has it been more aptly applied than here. Dispensing the celestial nectar is the peerless Steven Isserlis, with a stellar line-up of colleagues including the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, harpsichordist Maggie Cole and fellow cellist Luise Buchberger. And the only possible way to end such a perfect album as November's Record of the Month? How else but the world's best-loved Minuet, stripped of all inauthentic accretions and sounding newly minted.

A monk's life charts the progress of a young man joining a Benedictine or Augustinian monastery in the late sixteenth century, from entering the monastery and celebrating his first Mass through to his election as Abbot, eventual death and presumed entry into heaven. Music would have been an essential component of the monastic life, and Stephen Rice and The Brabant Ensemble present examples of repertoire which our music- and wine-loving monk might have heard, with motets by Clemens non Papa, Cipriano de Rore and others (including several lesser-known composer-monks) framing an account of Lassus's Missa super Veni in hortum meum. It is perhaps unlikely that many religious institutions of the time would have boasted such flawless singing.

For her second album on Signum Classics, 2015 Leeds-winner Anna Tsybuleva has recorded the Complete Debussy Préludes—to this day landmarks of the keyboard repertoire. This is music Tsybuleva first experienced aged just five—played to her by her 'flaxen-haired' mother—and there's a resulting tenderness to these new performances which is rather special. Light Stories is an altogether more viscerally autobiographical revelation from Matthew Barley: solo cello (with occasional accompaniment both electronic and avian) and a tale of hope.

Close Harmony from The King's Singers is a new collection of—mainly—old favourites from this group's more than illustrious first half century. All newly recorded over the last few years, these tracks—and the entertaining accompanying booklet notes—tell the story of how nothing and no one from Gioachino Rossini to Ed Sheeran is safe from 'getting the treatment' …