For his second album for Chandos, the flute virtuoso Adam Walker explores the music of British composers with pianist Huw Watkins. Vaughan Williams’s Suite de ballet was commissioned by the French flute virtuoso Louis Fleury (who had given the première of Debussy’s Syrinx). The work uses eighteenth-century French dance forms, a common practice in ‘neo-classical’ composition. Bax’s Four Pieces rescue music from an abandoned ballet originally conceived for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Sir Lennox Berkeley’s Sonatina was originally written for treble recorder; James Galway’s championship of the piece made it a staple of the flute repertoire. Howard Fergusson’s Three Sketches were composed intermittently over a period of twenty years. The theme of the third piece is a Hindu melody, ‘Koyalinya bole ambuvan’ (Cuckoos sing in the mango tree). Sonatas by York Bowen and William Alwyn complete this varied and engaging programme.

Four years ago, just after the birth of their first daughter, Sheila Jaffé’s husband, pianist Peter Longworth, passed away. This album is a deeply personal reflection on the experience of grief that followed. The Franck sonata was a regular in Sheila’s home - and Sheila and Peter played it together in lieu of a ‘first dance’ at their wedding. Recording at Potton Hall in Suffolk, with the Welsh pianist Huw Watkins, the album includes Benjamin Britten’s Lachrymae (recorded after a field trip to the Britten library at the Red House and fish and chips on the Aldeburgh coast) and concludes with Elgar’s vast and expressive Sonata for Violin and Piano.

Brothers Paul and Huw Watkins British Works for Cello and Piano, a series remain[ing] by far the best recorded guides to this powerful and enjoyable repertoire according to BBC Music, reaches its fourth volume. Following Kenneth Leightons three-movement Partita, op. 35 comes Elisabeth Lutyens Constants, op. 110, whose four melodic and harmonic intervallic constants are used exclusively throughout the work. Alun Hoddinotts Sonata, op. 96/1 is notable for its clear, open textures, often of two-part counterpoint. Richard Rodney Bennetts four-movement Sonata ends the program.

Signum’s first album with Rodrigo Ruiz highlights the Mexican composer’s musical and literary passions, in performances by world-class soloists Kerenza Peacock, Huw Watkins and Laura van der Heijden.