Lebrecht’s Album of the Week

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

Alexander Scriabin: Mazurkas (Hyperion)

Rediscovering the patriarch of Russian piano composition

Hans Werner Henze: Night pieces and arias (Naxos)

Why are so many in the dark about Germany’s leading musical light?

Nastasia Khrushcheva: Normal Music (Melodiya)

In troubled times for Russia, this album hints at the future of the country’s music