Following his breakout moment as the first black musician to win BBC's Young Musician of the Year Award in 2016 and a "standout" (NPR) performance at TRH the Duke & Duchess of Sussex's wedding, 20-year-old Sheku Kanneh-Mason releases a new album featuring Elgar's Cello Concerto. Performed with Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios, it is complemented by a collection of pieces from Elgar's time, chosen by Sheku as a reflection of different moods and influences.

This version of Brahms's massive First Concerto was an instant classic when released in 1962 and recommending it now is still a no-brainer, especially in this effective remastering. Curzon gets to the heart of the music. He captures the high drama of the symphonic opening movement, and his rapt concentration makes a profound effect in the Adagio, famous for his controversially slow tempo. Szell is his equal here, conducting with passion. The way he screws up the tension in the orchestra's opening statement and then, through judicious rubato and a warming of the string tone, makes the second subject come alive is a mini-lesson in great conducting. With Boult, Curzon's Franck is on a similarly lofty plane, and the Litolff is a worthy filler.

Krystian Zimerman, Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra present Ludwig van Beethoven's 5 piano concertos. The exceptional Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman, together with Leonard Bernstein, presented an outstanding reference recording of Beethoven's Piano Concertos Nos 3, 4 and 5 more than 30 years ago (1989). At the time, both agreed on their commitment to music - in mind, heart and soul - which led to an extraordinary recording. Unfortunately, Bernstein died before the cycle was completed.

This excellent recording was originally issued by Chandos in 1991… The terrific London Symphony Chorus is a real show-stopper. They sing with absolute clarity of texture and with amazing vocal effects. The tenor part was written for the idiosyncratic tone and agility of Peter Pears. Martyn Hill more than lives up to the challenge; he is absolutely perfect… Hodgson’s mezzo is rich ripe and mellow… Hickox moves the music along with a light-hearted drive, stressing the happy bucolic qualities.

Though there are many recordings of the popular Symphony No. 7: 'Leningrad' (for good reason, as this is one of the finest of Shostakovich's glowing works), the catalogue listing for recordings of the Symphony No. 12: The Year 1917 is less lengthy. This would probably come as no surprise to Shostakovich himself, as this particular work represented inner conflicts in his own view of his homeland political milieu, views more nebulous on the surface but suggested in the context.

André Previn's 1975 EMI recording of Carmina Burana sounds better than ever in this new transfer. The analog tape hiss has been tamed, yet there's more "air" between the notes and a greater sense of dynamic and timbral definition. Engineering-wise, the mid-70s were golden years for EMI, and the rhythmic verve, dramatic momentum, and unbuttoned joy that Previn and his brilliant forces project still pack a sonic wallop. The soloists especially are outstanding. Thomas Allen navigates Orff's cruelly high tessitura with no effort, and Sheila Armstrong wraps her warm, flexible pipes around "In trutina mentis dubia" to moving effect.

A 1996 Academy Award nominee for Best Dramatic Score, Braveheart is one of composer James (Titanic) Horner's most accomplished works. Utilizing the full range of the London Symphony Orchestra, the Choristers of Westminster Abbey, and a small ensemble of traditional folk instrumentalists, Horner largely eschews the bombast typical of the genre and cuts a more emotionally complex–and satisfying–musical course through this 14th-century tale of betrayal and rebellion. This album presents ample evidence of why Horner is currently at the peak of his profession.

Roger Norrington's starrily cast Serenade to Music remains just as potently beautiful as it did on its initial appearance in 1997 while his clear-headed, defiantly dry-eyed conducting of the timeless Tallis Fantasia certainly offers plenty of food for thought. Nor can there be any grumbles about the startling range and fidelity of Decca's engineering throughout. It's the main item on the menu, however, which may well sharply divide opinion. Although the LPO responds in impressively clean-heeled fashion, Norrington rather fights shy of the London Symphony's breathtakingly varied range of emotions, and anyone familiar with, say, Boult's classic mono recording will surely crave far more in the way of passionate fervour and symphonic thrust.

This 1966 recording, billed as the first complete Semiramide on disc, with Joan Sutherland singing Semiramide and Marilyn Horne singing the trouser role Arsace, has long been considered the standard by which all other Semiramide's are measured. Although subsequently there have been more complete recordings, this remains among the best recorded performance and is a recommendation for every opera collection.

The 14-song set features the world-renowned singer-songwriter’s new performances of many of his best-loved hits, accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra.

Elgar's violin concerto - distinctively passionate and nostalgic - is one of the great late-Romantic concertos. "It is a huge piece," says Renaud Capuçon "both in terms of it's length and it's romantic and noble nature." This is Capuçon's first recording with Sir Simon Rattle, here conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. When Rattle chose Elgar's Enigma Variations for his inaugural concert as the LSO's music director in 2017, he was celebrating the close historic links between the composer and the orchestra. Not only did the LSO accompany Fritz Kreisler in the premiere of the violin concerto in 1910, Elgar became it's Principal Conductor the following year.

"Bernstein stamps his outsize personality on every bar and regularly has you convinced it is Mahler's own" (Gramophone). Beginning with the First Symphony, Bernstein reveals Mahler's position at the hinge of modernism, while emphasizing his emotional extremism. The uplifting Second "Resurrection" Symphony, with which Bernstein had an especially long and close association, is recorded here in a historic performance from 1973, set in the Romanesque splendour of Ely Cathedral. In the Third, Bernstein encompasses the symphony's spiritual panorama like no other conductor - with the Vienna Philharmonic players alive to every nuance.

A ground-breaking new collaboration for fans of African music (Ali Farka Touré, Oumou Sangaré) as well as contemporary orchestral music (Max Richter, Olafur Arnalds, the London Symphony Orchestra) Kôrôlén is a very special collaboration between two titans in music: Toumani Diabaté, the Grammy-winning Malian kora virtuoso, and the London Symphony Orchestra, renowned worldwide for their performances of orchestral music on record, film and stage.

On this, the largest set ever compiled of one of the last century's most popular composers, we may not only renew our familiarity with the Concierto de Aranjuez, or perhaps with one of the other ever-melodious guitar concertos that sustain his reputation with audiences, but also discover chamber, instrumental, choral and especially vocal works which testify to a creative imagination confident in the formation of its style but never satisfied with repetition, one which responded directly to poetic and lyric inspiration, and transformed its ideas with unfailing skill and respect for the idiom under consideration.

Elgar’s Violin Concerto has a certain mystique about it independent of the knee-jerk obeisance it has received in the British press. It probably is the longest and most difficult of all Romantic violin concertos, requiring not just great technical facility but great concentration from the soloist and a real partnership of equals with the orchestra. And like all of Elgar’s large orchestral works, it is extremely episodic in construction and liable to fall apart if not handled with a compelling sense of the long line. In reviewing the score while listening to this excellent performance, I was struck by just how fussy Elgar’s indications often are: the constant accelerandos and ritards, and the minute (and impractical) dynamic indications that ask more questions than they sometimes answer. No version, least of all the composer’s own, even attempts to realize them all: it would be impossible without italicizing and sectionalizing the work to death.