Taking its title from a thrilling new piece by Joby Talbot, Wishing Tree is the latest album from The Gesualdo Six. As ever, director Owain Park has put together a sequence of music which effortlessly juxtaposes familiar folksong arrangements with new works by a host of up-and-coming composers, creating a whole which has been a popular concert programme for the group over many years. It’s our Record of the Month for June.

A welcome new boxed-set from Hyperion brings us The Complete String Quartets of Joseph Haydn on 20 CDs. These acclaimed performances from The London Haydn Quartet combine historically informed performance practice with performing editions published during Haydn’s own lifetime:  ‘No one who loves this glorious music could have hoped for a better finish … the more I returned to these performances, the more I found myself warming to their fantasy, their disciplined spontaneity and their cumulative insights’ (Gramophone).

This month sees the release of a further three albums in Hyperion’s Vinyl Edition. All are new to vinyl and feature some of the artists with whom the label has enjoyed particularly close or long-standing associations over the years. They are released as limited-edition 180g LPs, presented in full-colour gatefolds and with sleeve notes included.

Sir Stephen Hough is represented by the LP release of his seminal recording of The Rachmaninov Piano Concertos, welcomed by Gramophone as a ‘mouth-watering prospect’ comprising ‘exhilarating performances … [which] demand to be heard’ (The Sunday Times). Andrew Litton conducts the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Hailed as ‘one of the most thoughtful and sensitive of British pianists’ (The Times), Mishka Rushdie Momen made her Hyperion debut with Reformation – Keyboard works by William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons & John Bull: ‘It’s beautifully done’, said The Guardian, and it’s now available on vinyl. Stephen Layton and The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge recorded Bach’s Mass in B minor with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment back in 2017. Now available as a 2-LP set, this is a version which stands the test of time: ‘Uplifting and invigorating. Iestyn Davies’s singing of “Qui sedes” takes this release into the realms of greatness’ (The Sunday Times).

On Signum Classics this month soprano Sarah Fox presents a rarely heard selection of Mozart Concert Arias. Recorded with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León under Roberto Forés Veses (and with Malcolm Martineau at the piano as required), this recording brings together Fox’s operatic experience and the orchestra’s distinctive sound in a focused exploration of these finely crafted concert works.

Studies in disappearing is a collection of experimental soundscapes put together by British composer Rebecca Dale. The predominant sounds on this album from Signum Classics are of voice and violin (both Dale), but we also have contributions from the Philharmonia Orchestra, Tenebrae and—in the utterly bizarre final track—Joby Burgess (percussion), Arcappellago and The Sardine Ensemble …

Troubled Times – Music & espionage in Renaissance England is a phenomenal new Signum album from The Queen’s Six, a masterclass in vocal control and blend. The programme explores the inestimable choral riches produced by the likes of Taverner, Morley, Byrd and Ferrabosco in an England torn apart by the successive zealotry of monarchs from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I. Performances are of the very highest order, with occasional accompaniment and interludes coming from The Rose Consort of Viols.

Marios Papadopoulos initiates a new compendium on Signum Classics with Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas Op 31. This is the first mainstream release of these highly regarded recordings, previously available via Oxford Philomusica: ‘Everything has time to breathe and tell; this is supremely civilized Beethoven … the reverse of the hardened virtuoso he makes you love and re-consider music you thought you had always known’ (Bryce Morrison).

Roderick Williams has teamed up with the Carducci Quartet to record his own new arrangement of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin, the familiar piano accompaniment intriguingly recast for the wide tonal palette of a string quartet. The result is a distinguished and insightful new version of this classic work. Also on Signum Classics we have Shostakovich: Symphony No 1 & Suite from Moscow, Cheryomushki. These ebullient works are the latest in Santtu-Matias Rouvali’s series at the helm of the Philharmonia Orchestra.