Ehnes adds his splendid account to the ranks of the great.

The Queen of the Violin delivers warm, brilliant performances with plenty of personality.

Keen for his instrument to boldly go where no oud has gone before, Joseph Tawadros has looked to Egypt for his new concerto

Hyperion continue their excellent work in unearthing rare concerti, giving the lie to the cliché that interest in classical music, especially non-mainstream works, is in decline. Music by two Polish composers from the late 1800s is under the microscope on this occasion, wonderfully played by violinist Eugene Ugorski and the Scottish Orchestra conducted by Michał Dworzyński. Emil Młynarski studied composition with Liadov and orchestration with Rimsky-Korsakov. The brilliance of the latter’s instruction is clear in Młynarski’s work. He was a conductor of opera and orchestras, working across the musical spectrum in Poland all his life. His two concertos are fine, romantic works, so good as to wonder at their eclipse over the last century. Twenty years separate the two concerti, the second emerging as the more subtle of the two. The Ukrainian, Aleksander Zarzycki, studied in Berlin before settling in Warsaw in 1871. A popluar dance at the time known in Paris as the cracovienne and in Vienna as the krakauer, emerges here as the attractive two-part Introduction et Cracovienne. The Mazurka is dedicated to the Spanish composer, Sarasate. For me, it is the most familiar piece on the disc; a delightful work. These are all very attractive compositions, and I…

Chandos’s second collection of Beethoven Sonatas from Bavouzet contains the two Op. 27 Sonatas (the second of which is the Moonlight), the three Op. 31 Sonatas (the second of which is the Tempest), Sonatas Op. 28 (Pastoral), Op. 53 (Waldstein), and the unnamed Sonatas Op. 22, 26 and 49. Written between 1795 and 1805, they represent the composer’s middle period. The earlier works retain a classical elegance, but this disappears in the Op. 31 set. By the time of the Waldstein (and its rejected slow movement, recycled separately as the Andante Favori), the composer has decided to use the piano sonata as a platform for making some big statements. Unlike some pianists, Bavouzet recognises that a different approach, even a different touch, is required from one work to the next. The accents in Op. 22 for example are sharp and briskly classical, whereas the accents in the finale of the Moonlight Sonata and the first movement of the Tempest are fuller, more in keeping with sturm und drang. His pedaling in the first movement of the Moonlight (the trickiest aspect of that music) is perfectly judged, and he finds a tender quality in a slower than usual rendition of the Allegretto. Overall,…

The third volume of Paul and Huw Watkins’ survey of British cello music turns to sonatas written after 1945 by Edmund Rubbra, Alan Rawsthorne, and EJ Moeran. All three are works that haven’t entered mainstream repertoire, but this CD makes a compelling argument that they should. Rubbra’s Sonata in G Minor shows his preoccupation with counterpoint and the music of the 16th century, even extending to authoring a short but fascinating book entitled Counterpoint – A Survey (now, disappointingly, out of print). Cello and piano work together in a way that’s reminiscent of the Renaissance masters of polyphony, but with a piquant 20th-century touch. By contrast, Rawsthorne’s work is highly chromatic and passionate, with moments of crystalline delicacy as well as shattering power. Similarly, Moeran’s Sonata is a stirring piece, sounding at times like a more chromatically dense Brahms. There are hints at his interest in folk music, particularly in the dark and roiling first movement. All three works are finely played and recorded but I have reservations about programming. Rawsthorne and Moeran back-to-back results in a solid 35 minutes of similar weight; both Rubbra and Moeran wrote short works that could have been added to cleanse the palate. A…