Very special repertoire demands equally select artistry, and May's Record of the Month offers a tantalizing prospect on both counts. Steven Osborne brings all his formidable musical intelligence to bear on Beethoven Piano Sonatas Opp 109, 110 & 111 and the music-making is everything that could and should be expected: here is a pianist completely attuned to, and at the service of, the composer's profoundest thoughts. A deliciously Francophile confection of Saint-Saëns Symphony No 2, Danse macabre & Urbs Roma comes courtesy of Thierry Fischer and the Utah Symphony, who return with a second instalment in Hyperion's mini-series featuring some seriously neglected, and hugely enjoyable, orchestral works.

The music may have been written six centuries ago, but the perennial problems of existence addressed by Dufay Lament for Constantinople & other songs may strike the listener as (strangely?) familiar, as The Orlando Consort deplore their various woes: principally love, drink and lack of money. Happily, these haven't affected their singing and the fifteenth century springs vividly to life in an extraordinary recital of secular songs. Very different voices are raised in Choral works by Bairstow, Harris & Stanford; all figures central to the Anglican choral tradition of the past hundred years, and the same might be said of the performers here. Westminster Abbey Choir—conducted by James O'Donnell—is steeped in the performance history of this music and brings to it a natural and persuasive authority.

From Signum Classics this month we have Supersize Polyphony by Striggio & Tallis, which includes not just Ecce beatam lucem and Spem in alium (both for forty voice parts) but also the Italian's Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno with its sixty-voice Agnus Dei. Christopher Monks directs his Armonico Consort and Geoffrey Webber the Choir of Gonville and Caius College Cambridge.

Paul McCreesh marshals nigh-on apocalyptic forces—Gabrielis Consort, Players & Roar—for An English Coronation 1902-1953, this new Signum album a summation of this most spectacular of ceremonies. The Albion Quartet makes its recording debut, and auspiciously launches a new cycle, with Dvořák String Quartets Nos 5 & 12, here coupled with Suk's perennially popular Meditation on 'St Wenceslas'.