Capuçon, with pianist Jérôme Ducros, also his partner for a Virgin Classics Schubert recital released in 2006, has selected favourite encore pieces such as Kreisler’s mercurial Liebesleid and Dvorák's lilting Humoreske (arranged by Heifetz), tender episodes like Debussy's Clair de lune and Tchaikovsky's Valse sentimentale, works by the Romantics – Schubert (with the Ave Maria arranged by Capuçon himself), Mendelssohn and Schumann (transcriptions of numbers from the song cycle Frauenliebe und –Leben), and by composers of the 20th century – Strauss, Prokofiev, Szymanowski, Stravinsky, Korngold and the Romanian Grigoras Dinicu (reputedly judged by Heifetz as the greatest violinist he had ever heard).

This is one of the greatest chamber CDs, bringing together Chausson's timeless Concert with his elusive String Quartet in the most beautiful, idiomatic performances imaginable. Augustin Dumay and Jean-Philippe Collard have never been bettered as a duo, but they particularly are in their element in this music, given its full expression by their passion and strength, which combines with a sense of style that is as natural as speech.

Of all the composers whose names are far better known than their music, Czerny must be the most famous. Czerny? Oh yes, he was the chap who wrote those 'velocity exercises', the medicine pianists must take if they are to get better. True, but that wasn't all, his opus numbers leave little change out of 850! So why the neglect? Maybe there are two reasons. First, as a pupil of Beethoven, a teacher of Liszt and a contemporary of Schubert, he was born at the wrong time, surrounded by compositional giants. Second, it was his large output of didactic works and his eminence as a teacher that shaped his image, and his emphasis on technical brilliance was not always helpful to the balance of his music.

The intervening dozen years since I reviewed Hyperion’s initial release of four English Violin Concertos (66865, 20:2) may not have witnessed a surge of interest in these works; nevertheless, the panache that Elizabeth Wallfisch brought to them in her recording sessions in January 1996 has hardly paled with the passage of time. These violinist-composers, contemporaries of Viotti and Mozart, wrote in an Italianate style, with woodwind splashes (all four concertos include oboes and horns, and Linley’s adds flutes as well) that enhance the kind of concertante symphonic sound which Paul Stoeving noted in Viotti’s concertos.

It would be unkind to point out that Lorrie Morgan looks a little the worse for wear on the cover of Show Me How – if she didn't do a song on that very subject on the album ("Now my idea of letting it all hang out/Sure has changed with time/And that's hard on a bombshell"), and if she didn't have a perfect right. So it's doubly a pleasure to find that Morgan sounds, at an age that usually takes its toll on the tight throats of female country vocalists, better than ever.

Re-released on Capriccio this month is a disc of Italian Concertos performed by the Concerto Köln. Alongside masterpieces by Vivaldi and Pergolesi, this 2 CD set contains some rarities of Neapolitan composers such as Francesco Durante and Leonardo Leo.

Alexander Tcherepnin was a very good composer, and his six piano concertos, licensed from BIS for this Brilliant Classics release, constitute an impressive body of work, full of color, variety, and contrast. The first two are single-movement pieces, while in the third Tcherepnin expands the formal layout to two movements without exceeding the very modest length of his first two concertos. In the Fourth Concerto things get really interesting: it consists of three short tone poems based on Chinese stories and melodies. Now admit it, who can resist a slow movement called “Yan Kuei's Love Sacrifice”?

In 2001 this young British tenor became an international phenomenon with his platinum-plus debut album THE VOICE. With that blockbuster recording, he defined himself as the pop-opera crossover sensation of the 21st century. The appropriately titled follow-up ENCORE will likely be regarded with suspicion by those with their feet planted firmly in either the pop or operatic world. Those whose tastes fall somewhere in between are exactly the folks who've already made him a superstar, and it is for them that ENCORE was made.

If you might be interested in Early Music, you cannot go wrong with any CD's from David Monroe. These are historically accurate performances by one of the pre-emminent musicians of the early historical instrument repertoire. Unfortunately there is a somewhat limited number of his CD's available from the 1963-76. There are still ongoing professional discussions on what may be considered as an "historical performance" for this period music.

Here are some prime works by Vivaldi that are not hot from a recording studio, but bring a new Nibiru title to our catalogue. They feature Ensemble Inegal and Prague Baroque Soloists conducted by Adam Viktora, who are legendary for their performances of music by Zelenka. We know lots about him, but it is unclear if Antonio Vivaldi ever actually visited the Czech lands - Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia. Certainly his music was circulating there, as some of his operas appeared in Prague.

Featuring Handel's substantial Neun Deutsche Arien (Nine German Arias), HWV 202-210, this engaging late-'80s Bis recording gives the composer's relatively neglected vocal chamber music the royal treatment. It is masterfully produced by the label's founder, Robert von Bahr, and realized with utmost love and expertise by soprano Christina Högman and I Quattro Temperamenti.

On two previous discs, London Baroque has explored the genre of the trio sonatas as it unfolded in 17th Century France and England. Both these issues have met with great acclaim: the English volume being described in Goldberg Magazine as ‘A programme of outstanding music … A gem of a disc’, while the French issue received top marks on German website Klassik Heute, with the following words: ‘Everything that one might possibly wish for in a performance of this music is present here: charm, elegance, eloquence, force, flexibility, fire, intimacy, and the most important: soul.’ The ensemble has now arrived in Germany, or more correctly: the German-speaking world of the time, as the programme also features works from the Low Countries and Austria.

Playlist: The Very Best of Laura Nyro gathers 14 tracks recorded during the singer/songwriter's tenure with Columbia. Included are the original versions of "And When I Die," "Stoney End," and "Flim Flam Man [aka Hands Off the Man]." While this budget-priced compilation should please most casual listeners, it does leave off "Eli's Coming," one of her essential songs.

After his Bach concertos, a classical bestseller in both France and Germany, the young French pianist David Fray brings his unique sensibilities to Schubert. David Fray has already declared his particular affinity with Austro-German music, and after two CDs featuring Bach (and a DVD featuring him in Bach concertos) he now turns to the early Romantic era and Schubert, with a programme of the six Moments musicaux D780, the four Impromptus D899 and the Allegretto in C minor D915, recorded in Berlin.

There are curiously few complete cycles of Beethoven's five sonatas for cello and piano, given that the five, unlike the violin sonatas, were almost equally distributed among the composer's early, middle, and late periods, and that each one was in its way a formally daring work. The last two sonatas in particular, with their mysteriously lyrical third relations and compact finales, fugal in the case of the Cello Sonata No. 5 in D major, Op. 102/2, might be regarded as having inaugurated Beethoven's late period. Cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras and pianist Alexander Melnikov (here playing a modern piano unlike on the trio recording the pair made with violinist Isabelle Faust) have an efficient, quick, tough style that beautifully fits these late sonatas.