Hyperion’s year gets off to an enticing start with Angela Hewitt – The Bach Recordings. This 27-CD set replaces an earlier, and rather less comprehensive, box which sold out many years ago. Included here are all ten double albums and all seven single albums recorded by Angela Hewitt from her debut on the label in 1994 through to the series’ triumphant conclusion in 2018.

A new album from Signum Classics brings us A House of Ghosts & other piano works by Francis Pott, one of today’s most challenging composers for the instrument. Pott describes the title work here as a set of twelve ‘stray thoughts and modest ideas … like an intermittent diary’, and it is performed by Duncan Honeybourne alongside a generous medley of other works which includes the multi-award-winning Toccata.

Recording for their own label, the National Symphony Orchestra have recorded Mahler’s Symphony No 7, fully capturing the power and depth of its enigmatic mystery and majesty. Gianandrea Noseda’s expertise in grand orchestral works brings Mahler’s vision to life, offering a compelling interpretation that unveils the emotional and musical complexity of the symphony.

Malcolm Binns – A 90th Birthday Tribute is a glorious new 4-CD box from APR—blistering concertos by Beethoven, Liszt, Prokofiev and Lyapunov (rare survivals from BBC broadcasts in the early 1960s), plus solo works by Rubinstein, Medtner and Alkan, and the complete Chopin Études. Malcolm Binns has been the source of so much material for the label in his capacity as a fanatical collector of the rarest of 78s (and indeed examples from his equally abundant foraging of photos and other memorabilia have also graced many APR and Hyperion booklets over the years), and so it is a particular pleasure to be reminded here of his own inimitable pianism.

Newly available from Signum Classics we have Beethoven Violin Sonatas Nos 3 & 9 in performances from Viktoria Mullova and Kristian Bezuidenhout, performances brought vividly to life on Gaudagni violin and a Walter & Sohn fortepiano from 1822. As Bezuidenhout convincingly argues in the accompanying booklet, tackling this music on instruments of Beethoven’s own day is no mere historical exercise, rather it brings to the fore the radical volatility and danger hard-wired into these ground-breaking compositions.

Contrasting vocal releases this month bring us—from Allan Clayton and the Aurora Orchestra—Hans Zender’s Schubert Winterreise, this ‘composed interpretation’ winning widepread plaudits over the years for its thought-provoking and respectful treatment of a masterpiece, and A thousand charms—songs and interludes by Purcell, Campion and more. Here (also on Signum), the pellucid soprano of Grace Davidson soars effortlessly around Julian Perkins’s ever-inventive harpsichord.