‘This is the best of me … this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory.’ Despite the inadequacies of its 1900 premiere, the stature of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius was never seriously doubted, not least by its composer who fully recognized the work’s claims on posterity. This new account features Martyn Brabbins—a noted exponent of Elgar, as of so much else—conducting the forces of the Huddersfield Choral Society and Orchestra of Opera North, and marks another highlight in this choir’s long and fruitful association with the work, from a wartime performance under Elgar’s baton in 1917, through the first complete recording (made in April 1945—eighty years before this one, virtually to the day), to a fictionalized account of the story behind that 1917 performance in the recent Nicholas Hytner/Alan Bennett film The Choral. An impressive line-up of soloists—Karen Cargill, David Butt Philip and Roland Wood—caps Hyperion’s Record of the Month for February.

Allusions to the year and its history are never far away in Steven Isserlis’s new recital, 1851: Sonatas by Robert Schumann & Ignaz Moscheles. Whether in the date of composition of the principal works recorded (the Schumann being the second violin sonata in Isserlis’s own arrangement), or the close-knit musical world of the Leipzig which produced them, or the Great Exhibition which took place in London’s Hyde Park in 1851 and at which the Érard piano played by Connie Shih may well have been on display; this is an album which delights in uncovering coincidences and correspondences. And don’t overlook the (irresistible) encore … unmissable.

The piano works of Georges Bizet will come as an agreeable discovery to many listeners—here is a body of work by a major composer which has never established itself on record or in the concert hall. Who knew that the twelve- and thirteen-year-old Bizet won prizes for his piano playing from the Paris Conservatoire? Or that composing for the piano only ceased to be a concern following his success in winning the Prix de Rome in 1857? Roberto Prosseda guides us through an hour and a half of piano music which sheds new light on its composer.