In the course of their career, the Gryphon Trio has firmly established itself as one of the world's preeminent piano trios.The Los Angeles Times wrote This is a piano trio that plays with strength and unanimity… big, bold, almost orchestral performances. To celebrate their 25th anniversary, the trio offers one of their career's best recordings, the mesmerizing album The End of Flowers, which features works by the great composers Rebecca Clarke and Maurice Ravel, written at a time when World War I was on everyone's mind.

This recording of chamber works by Ravel performed by Renaud and Gautier Capuçon and Frank Braley may not be the most electrifying, but it has a richness of feeling and movement that draws the listener along for a thoroughly enjoyable ride. The opening of the Piano Trio is delicately ethereal and atmospheric, but then it builds to grand heights. The second movement sways and flows in continuous waves, and the third arcs in a way similar to the first movement.

In this Carus release, Frieder Bernius leads soloists from Kammerchor Stuttgart in a selection of transcriptions by Clytus Gottwald and original compositions for chorus subdivided into multiple parts, in this case, up to 16 parts. The arrangements, here of songs originally for solo voice and piano, demonstrate Gottwald's mastery of this niche genre; he has also made remarkably effective choral transcriptions of chamber music and work for full orchestra. The arrangements, of songs by Ravel, Debussy, and Schumann, work beautifully as choral music, even as independent compositions, considered apart from their sources.

Lilya Zilberstein has already taken on some of the virtuoso pillars of the repertoire for DG—Brahms's Paganini Variations, the Mussorgsky Pictures, Rachmaninov's Third Concerto and so it is fascinating to hear her in music of a more subtle evocation and delicacy. And although her Debussy and Ravel are hardly consistent or to the manner born, they are rarely less than individual or distinguished. Like other Russian pianists before her she places greater emphasis on the music's sensuous and expressive warmth than on its formal clarity. Her response to say, ''Le soiree dans Grenade'' (from Estampes) is richly coloured and inflected (a reminder, perhaps, of Falla's awe of Debussy's Hispanicism) and in ''Jardins sous la pluie'' her virtuosity evokes a coldly drenched and windswept garden its flowers momentarily bejewelled by passing sunlight. She is also highly successful in the more objective patterning of Pour le piano, making the opening Prelude's fortissimo chording and shooting-star glissandos resonate with unusual power.

When Andreas Haefliger conceived this unusual combination of concertos it was with the aim of putting into perspective three pieces, each a unique and highly expressive highlight from the composers’ output. That Maurice Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand and Béla Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto fulfilled the requirements was a given: towards the end of his life Bartók wrote his most lyrically expressive concerto while Ravel, inspired by the qualities of the left hand register, wrote a piece full of dark yearning and grotesquely fauvistic dances.

A tribute to Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, a veritable mythic and unpredictable Italian pianist,; a perfectionist with a carefully chosen repertory in which Scarlatti's works joined those of Debussy and Ravel, while the great German romantics, from Beethoven to Brahms, were magnified and exalted, showing the soundness of their construction. The number of his recordings is limited, with mostly works by Debussy and Ravel and a few by Beethoven. He used to buy pirate live discs of his concerts as presents for his friends instead of his 'official' recordings! Here is a French anthology collecting legendary renderings of his inimitable touch easy to recognise by its ductile nature and the purity of his style. A revived masterpiece.

This is Alison Balsom's first CD recital with piano – here played by her long-standing recital partner, Tom Poster. Balsom describes the programme as embracing “the most important repertoire for trumpet and piano” – taking a fascinating journey through 20th century works by such composers as Enescu, Hindemith, Martinů, Françaix, Bernstein and Maxwell Davies. That being said, the final piece on the official programme – preceding ‘American Songbook’ encores by George Gershwin and Jerome Kern – dates from the 21st century and was composed by the team of Balsom and Poster themselves. Called The Thoughts of Dr. May, it is inspired by another British musician: Brian May, lead guitarist of the rock band Queen – and also, as it happens, an astrophysicist.

This enticing album of sonatas by Ravel, Enescu, Ysaÿe and Prokofiev emerged from violinist Diana Tishchenko’s victory at the 2018 Long-Thibaud-Crespin Competition. Born in Ukraine, and trained in Kiev and Berlin, she has been noted by The Strad for her "power to mesmerize the audience with her large gesture and strong personality”. Her musical partnership with the Hungarian pianist Zoltán Fejérvári is extraordinarily close and potent. In the words of the French online journal Toute la musique, they are “not two interpreters playing together, but a true musical entity, an artistic fusion … They played as if each note were being created in real time … deploying an infinitely large palette of colours and nuance – the possibilities were inexhaustible.”

Pianists Martha Argerich and Nelson Freire are stupendous virtuosos, and there's nothing in this recording of their 2009 Salzburg recital of staggeringly difficult works they cannot play. They know each other so well as old duo piano partners that their playing is stunning in its unity, but their distinctive individuality also comes across. What's most impressive about this recital is how completely Argerich and Freire have made this music their own. Brahms' Haydn Variations sound freer and fresher, more playful, and more profound than ever. Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances are thrillingly rhapsodic, rapturous, and dramatic. Schubert's Grand Rondeau is more lyrical, intimate, and graceful than usual, and Ravel's La Valse more ecstatic and apocalyptically over-the-top frightening than in any comparable recordings, including Argerich's own earlier releases. Captured in wonderfully clear yet wholly present digital sound, the performances on this disc will be compulsory listening for anyone who loves music, any music.

By now, fans of this mezzo probably have realized that she could sing the telephone directory and make it sound both beautiful and meaningful. This CD is made up of music by Respighi, Ravel, Britten, Schulhoff and Shostakovich: in other words, songs in five languages from five countries. Unlike most song recital CDs, variety is also supplied by the accompaniments. The Ravel songs are backed up by flute, cello and piano, while the Schulhoff selections feature violin and piano, the Shostakovich and Britten are for piano alone, and the Respighi includes a string quartet. The whole CD is fascinating, but the lengthy Respighi cantata "Il tramonto" ("The Sunset," to a poem by Shelly) is a sensational centerpiece: just lovely, with hints of Straussian and Wagnerian harmonies.

Magdalena Kozená's silken mezzo delivers definitive interpretations of this luscious and enchanting orchestral-song repertoire. Magdalena Kozená, Sir Simon Rattle, and the Berliner Philharmoniker seduce in Ravel's Shéhérazade, stir and awe in Dvořák's austere Biblische Lieder, and render to the fullest the bittersweet potency of Mahler's intricately orchestrated Rückert Lieder. Recorded live at the Berlin Philharmonie, these performances excite with the intense musical understanding shared by this husband and wife musical dream team. This release is destined to rival the popularity of Kozená and Rattle's enthralling Mozart collaboration. This is the first in a new series of recording projects reviving the legendary partnership between DG and the Berliner Philharmoniker.

The conducting of Simon Rattle is the most compelling element in this recording of Ravel's L'Enfant et les Sortilèges with the Berlin Philharmonic. Rattle draws playing of great delicacy and nuance from the orchestra, and the many sections that are scored as lightly as chamber music are played with especially loving attention to shaping the elegant and expressive phrases; the beginning of the second part of the opera is especially magical.