Lebrecht’s Album of the Week

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

Brahms: Clarinet sonatas (BIS), French clarinet music (Delphian)

Three sonatas by Brahms? The clarinet adaptation, to no surprise, doesn’t work

Mieczyslaw Weinberg: Chamber symphonies 2&4

Weinberg is an absolute master of intimated emotion