The four-disc re-release of York Bowen’s Works for Piano is performed by the Dutch pianist Joop Celis. Gramophone Magazine described Volume II as “triumphant… not a single piece on this excellently recorded disc could be in more sensitive hands.”

The Philadelphia-based baroque orchestra Tempesta di Mare here reveals an unparalleled musical legacy, presenting long forgotten works by the German baroque composer Johann Gottlieb Janitsch, confined for centuries to unexamined archives. The works formed part of an enormous music collection which belonged to Sara Levy, the great-aunt of Felix Mendelssohn. She was a distinguished harpsichordist, collector, and influential figure in the musical life of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Berlin. Removed from the Berlin Sing-Akademie towards the end of World War II, her musical library was for many decades considered lost or destroyed. It was unearthed in Kiev only in 1999 and returned to Germany in 2001, where it is now again accessible to the public. While there can be no doubt that the instrumental oeuvre of Janitsch matched the diversity of that of some of his more prominent Berlin colleagues, the emphasis of his compositional output lay on chamber music, especially Quadros, four of which are featured here. The typical, prevailing dialogic structure of the Ouverture grosso highlights the influence which thematic play had on the rest of his work.

The Brodsky Quartet here turns to the sunshine, bright colors, and deep passions of the South, performing Latin-inspired music for string quartet by composers who all possessed a strong connection to the “South” -- whether the Mediterranean or South America. Favorites and rarities are arm-in-arm, from Paganini’s famed Capricci to chamber gems from composers we think of today only in regard to operatic works. The expert and passionate ministrations of the Brodsky Quartet bring these works to dazzling life.

Montreal-based since 1998, Airat Ichmouratov (b. 1973) traces his musical roots back to the dominant culture in his native Tatarstan in Soviet times: ‘It was definitely the Russian school of composers’, he says, without rancour. ‘I’m influenced to this day by Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Mussorgsky, Rachmaninoff, and Tchaikovsky. My own musical style has evolved out of this rich heritage.’ There’s more. The Volga Tatar-born Russian-Canadian composer learned to play klezmer music while busking, together with his viola-playing wife, as new immigrants on the streets and Métro of Montreal. ‘I’ve been touring the world for twenty years as a clarinettist with the Montreal band Kleztory and find myself, a Muslim-born musician, playing klezmer. This, too, is now a distinctive part of my musical language.’

• On this Chaconne release, The Music Collection bring their expertise to Hummel’s E flat major Piano Quintet and Schubert’s famous ‘Trout’ Quintet.
• The members of The Music Collection, founded by fortepianist Susan Alexander-Max, are world-leading specialists in late-Classical, early-Romantic period performance practice.

This re-release of Herbert Howells’ Hymnus Paradisi and A Kent Yeoman’s Wooing Song forms part of the new Hickox Legacy series commemorating the life and career of that great conductor. Mestro Richard Hickox’s lifelong commitment to British music in general is well-known, as is his work with the challenging, intricate music of Howells. This disc displays extremes of Howells’ emotional language - from the intense and powerful Hymnus to the sprightly and rather flirtatious Wooing Song – communicated masterfully by Hickox and his associates.

Another re-release from Hickox’s classic recordings finds us knee-deep in lesser-known and widely varied works of Gustav Holst. The Suite de Ballet is one of Holst’s lighter orchestral pieces, worked colorfully with a slightly French flair. Song of the Night for solo violin shows the composer in a confident and imaginative Romantic frame of mind. Finally, the comic chamber opera The Wandering Scholar was one of Holst’s latest works, stripped down to only the barest necessities. Hickox’s lively performance was hailed as inspiring “full-blooded music-making” throughout.

The Central Band of the RAF perform works by and under the baton of Nigel Hess. The works include “New London Pictures,” “The Old Man of Lochnager” based on a children’s book by Charles, Prince of Wales, and “Shakespeare Pictures” which originates in incidental music composed for productions of Much Ado About Nothing, The Winter’s Tale and Julius Caesar.

Ivan Ilic came across these transcriptions, scarcely known at all, through the most unlikely and serendipitous sequence of events. Carl David Stegmann (1751 – 1826) was a tenor, keyboard player, conductor, and composer, who worked mostly in the field of opera. Employed by the Court Theatre in Mainz (where he sang in the first German-language production of Don Giovanni), he also gave a number of acclaimed performances in Frankfurt. Trained as an organist, he made transcriptions of string quintets by Mozart and Beethoven’s Trios, Op. 9 as well as keyboard transcriptions of twenty-five of Haydn’s symphonies. Ivan Ilic writes: ‘It is unclear to me whether these transcriptions were ever meant to be played as concert repertoire, in public. Nevertheless, the enthusiasm I have encountered wherever I have played them has persuaded me to make this recording, to allow more people to hear Stegmann’s idiomatic arrangements.’