Lebrecht’s Album of the Week

Gustav Mahler: 4th symphony (Pentatone)

A new recording of Mahler’s smallest symphony is “indispensable” to connoisseurs of his music

British piano concertos (Lyrita); British music for strings #3 (CPO)

A prawn cocktail of exceptionally competent music to enjoy on Easter Sunday

Rachmaninov: Piano Sonata No 1 / Moments Musicaux

A new release of Rachmaninov’s first piano sonata deserves more than five stars

Mieczyslaw Weinberg: Cello Works and Piano Sonatas

If you want an entry point to Weinberg, this is it

Metamorphosen (Chandos)

John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London reinterpret Metamorphosen chillingly as elegy

Ligeti and Kodaly: Lux Aeterna (OUR Recordings)

The otherworldly and the down-to-earth

Harrison Birtwistle: Chamber works (BIS)

The British composer — still writing at 87 years of age — is an acquired taste

Schulhoff, Popov: String quartets (QBT)

A Baedeker tour of Europe’s miseries, amidst the outrage in Ukraine

Joyce DiDonato: Eden (Erato); Asmik Grigorian: Rachmaninov (Alpha)

This is singing as mildly polemical conversation, from her to us

Grazyna Bacewicz: Piano works (Ondine)

One would never imagine Stalinist oppression was raging all around her