Stephen Hough’s Piano Postcards is the latest fruit born of Sir Stephen Hough’s lifelong passion for ‘those encores which showcase the great pianists of the Golden Age … the miniature masterpieces which say much in a few notes’. Here we have everything from Sibelius, Schumann and Sinding through to the Mary Poppins encore with which Stephen delighted his 2025 Proms audience. It’s our Record of the Month for July and—for the full Golden Age experience—it’s also available on 180g vinyl.

Mahan Esfahani continues his mission to bring contemporary dazzle to the most seminal of repertoire, unleashing his turbo-charged harpsichord on the The Complete Keyboard Concertos of Johann Sebastian Bach. For this eighth instalment of his cycle, Mahan is joined by a team from the Britten Sinfonia, a deliberate choice to employ modern instruments for this most ground-breaking of repertoire.

Alban Gerhardt has joined forces with the WDR Sinfonieorchester and conductor Andrew Manze to record the Elgar & Dvořák Cello Concertos, two stalwarts of the repertoire. The album benefits from the gorgeous acoustic of the Cologne Philharmonie, and performances from both cellist and orchestra are of the highest order.

New releases from Signum Classics this month bring us a second instalment from Peter Donohoe in his Haydn Keyboard Works series: two discs with nine Sonatas, the G major Partita and more. And Nigel Short and Tenebrae have recorded In between & other choral works by Jessica Ulusoy-Horsley, vibrant new compositions which effortlessly reach across different musical traditions and cultures.

Naruhiko Kawaguchi has recorded a programme quietly entitled A journey with Beethoven, deliberately eschewing the canonic sonatas in favour of the wealth of shorter character pieces Beethoven wrote throughout his life. These then become the showcase for three remarkable fortepianos, the Signum engineers travelling with Kawaguchi down to the Finchcocks Collection in Kent for the privilege.

A second instalment in Marios Papadopoulos’s re-issue cycle on Signum Classics brings us Beethoven Piano Sonatas Op 2: three sonatas published in 1796, and Beethoven’s first official foray into the genre he was to make his own.

Performing on a 1750 violin by Guadagnini and an 1805 Viennese fortepiano replica, Viktoria Mullova and Alasdair Beatson continue their refreshing series on Signum with Beethoven Violin Sonatas Nos 4, 5 & 7.