This brilliantly devised CD from Gerard McChrystal is a deeply personal album; at times mystical, the music is always beautiful and captivating. Indeed 'Aria' has similar qualities to Jan Gabarek's 'Officium' (which sold 1.4 million copies) and will appeal to this fan-base. Featuring soprano and alto saxophone with a colourful array of different ensemble accompaniments — string orchestra, choir, guitar, piano, solo, string quartet and electronics. Baroque music blends seamlessly with contemporary; Handel resolves into Michael Nyman, Debussy's Syrinx morphs into Ravel's Piece en forme de habanera. All the tracks lead to the next by key or by starting and ending on the same note. Other works include Philip Glass Façades, Faure Les Berceaux, Bozza Aria, as well as original works by Billy Cowie, Karen Tanaka, Andy Scott and Michael McGlynn (from the vocal group Anúna who featured in Riverdance). Accompanying Gerard on this album are some of the UK's finest classical musicians including the Smith Quartet and the No. 1 best-selling classical artist, guitarist Craig Ogden. Gerard McChrystal is a multi-award winning saxophonist who has performed as a soloist in over 30 countries with many of the World's leading orchestras and ensembles.

This recording presents an unusual pairing of the complete string quartets by Szymanowski and Debussy. Szymanowksi is one of Poland’s most famous composers. Influences on his style are many (Bartók’s percussive and motoric drive, Ravel’s coloristic sonorities) but he found his own personal language, lush, opulent, rich and sometimes exotic, always expressing a deep emotional content. Debussy’s string quartet dates from his early years, a beautiful and romantic work, the French answer to Wagner’s richly chromatic language.

'Lumieres' marks the first UK release for this critically acclaimed performer, exclusively signed to Decca. The album showcases Muraji's distinct guitar arrangements of magnificent piano standards such as Erik Satie's Gymnopédie No.1 and Gymnopédie No.3, Ravel's Pavane Pour Une Infante Défunte and The Summer Knows by the famous film composer Michel Legrand, all of which convey themselves as original guitar repertoire. Muraji's core repertoire is reflected with the inclusion of Pierre de Breville's Fantaisie Pour Guitare, and the prolific Japanese composer Takashi Yoshimatsu's Water Color Scalor. She also plays homage to one of the guiding lights of the guitar, Roland Dyens, with her version of Suade No.3. The result is an album of imagination and originality- an innovator interpreting innovators.

Lilya Zilberstein has already taken on some of the virtuoso pillars of the repertoire for DG—Brahms's Paganini Variations, the Mussorgsky Pictures, Rachmaninov's Third Concerto and so it is fascinating to hear her in music of a more subtle evocation and delicacy. And although her Debussy and Ravel are hardly consistent or to the manner born, they are rarely less than individual or distinguished. Like other Russian pianists before her she places greater emphasis on the music's sensuous and expressive warmth than on its formal clarity. Her response to say, ''Le soiree dans Grenade'' (from Estampes) is richly coloured and inflected (a reminder, perhaps, of Falla's awe of Debussy's Hispanicism) and in ''Jardins sous la pluie'' her virtuosity evokes a coldly drenched and windswept garden its flowers momentarily bejewelled by passing sunlight. She is also highly successful in the more objective patterning of Pour le piano, making the opening Prelude's fortissimo chording and shooting-star glissandos resonate with unusual power.

This stunning and generous collection belongs right at the top of the heap in its respective repertoire. The Debussy is still a comparative rarity in concert if not on disc, a remarkable fact given that it's wholly gorgeous from first note to last. Jean-Efflam Bavouzet's excellence as a Debussy pianist already has been acknowledged by just about everyone who has heard him, and needs no further advertisement here. The performance is outstanding, sensitive to every nuance, but also very French in its clear-eyed sensibility and understanding that focused rhythm and supple tempos prevent the music from turning excessively sentimental or blandly pretty. And in Tortelier, Bavouzet has a conductor who seconds him every step of the way. A similar sensibility informs these swift, razor-sharp, and utterly thrilling accounts of the two Ravel concertos. That for the left hand seldom has sounded so exciting, or in its jazzy central march section, so sinister. Listen to the bite that both soloist and orchestra bring to that descending scale theme, and notice the way Bavouzet shapes his cadenza so as to preserve the illusion of multiple parts played by multiple hands–all without slowing down at the tough passages. It's really an amazing performance by any standard. Even the dark opening, often merely murky on other recordings, has shape and urgency, the buildup to the initial entry of the piano creating incredible tension.

The great recordings of the "Nordic choral marvel": Swedish choral conductor Eric Ericson was one of the true legends in his field. When he died in 2013 at the age of 94, he had spent decades working to place his two Stockholm choirs among the international musical elite. His recordings from the 1970's enjoy real cult status – unique interpretations of a cappella works from the Renaissance to the 20th century, from Gesualdo to Penderecki, released here for the first time in a single box.

This marks the first release with Robin Ticciati leading the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, and it makes the requisite splash. There's a world premiere: even if you're not on board with the trend of enlarging the repertory through arrangements of works that are perfectly good in their original form, you will likely be seduced by mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozená's ravishing reading of Debussy's voice-and-piano Ariettes oubliées, inventively arranged by Brett Dean. There's a little-known work: the opening one, Fauré's Prelude to Pénélope (a sparsely performed opera, with a slightly less sparsely performed prelude) is a lush and beautifully controlled arc. Controlled and detailed are two words that come to mind for Ticciati's interpretation of La mer, the warhorse work on the program; it may seem a bit deliberate, but there are many hues in his performance. The two Debussy works are balanced by two of Fauré's: the fourth work is the suite from Fauré's incidental music to Pélleas et Mélisande (in Charles Koechlin's version), also deliberate and lush. Linn recorded the performance in Berlin's Jesus Christus Kirche, which allows the full spectrum of orchestral colors to come through. Worth the money for Kozená fans for her turn alone, and a fine French program for all.

The audio companion to David Toop's excellent book advances the case he made, that Les Baxter, Aphex Twin, The Beach Boys, Herbie Hancock, King Tubby and My Bloody Valentine are all related by their effect on sound pioneering. A double-disc set, Ocean of Sound impresses not only with its incredible diversity of musical styles, but with how easily these artists work next to each other. The second disc includes consecutive contributions by Paul Schütze, the Velvet Undergound, Holger Czukay of Can, The Beach Boys, African Headcharge and Sun Ra. Besides illustrating Toop's point beautifully, the album is an excellent addition to the collection of any wide-ranging ambient fan.

Three 20th-century orchestral scores, Bartók’s Two Pictures, Debussy’s Jeux and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, all dating from 1910-13 and all linked (as the detailed CD booklet explains), are brought to life in the hands of two exceptional French pianists. The central interest is the ballet Jeux. One of the world’s outstanding Debussy interpreters, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet has added to his complete Chandos recordings with his own transcription for two pianos. Written late in Debussy’s life for Nijinsky, Jeux involves an emotionally erotic and harmonically daring game of tennis. Bavouzet and his well-matched partner, François-Fréderic Guy, play with nimble grace, capturing the works wit and mystery. This gripping album is dedicated to Pierre Boulez, guru and enabler, for his 90th birthday.

This compilation features recordings made between 1950 and 1959 and proves the outstanding pianist to be an equally brilliant and exciting performer of the works of Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Chopin, Debussy, Ravel and Strauss. In addition the compilation boasts highlights from the legendary 1956 Birdland sessions.

Described by The Telegraph as "the crème de la crème of young British-based musical talent", and praised in BBC Music Magazine for their "irresistible combination of arresting programing and vocal flair assembled around pianist Joseph Middleton", the newly formed Myrthen Ensemble brings together rising stars in the world of art-song and Lieder. This disc features performances by founder members Mary Bevan, Clara Mouriz, Allan Clayton, Marcus Farnsworth and Joseph Middleton. Joseph Middleton writes to introduce the recording: "The moon has, since antiquity, inspired artists, musicians and wordsmiths. The programme on this disc looks to its many characteristics for inspiration. The songs are at turns consoling, sometimes seductive in serenades and occasionally paint the moon as a threatening force through its extinguishing of the sun's rays. The moon’s silver beams cast their magic in music by Brahms and Schumann in the first of these CDs, and in the second, inspire the exquisite treatment of 'Clair de lune' by a selection of the finest French song composers. Short English nocturnal overtures begin each disc".

Études are primarily intended as exercises to train musicians in specific techniques, but since the Romantic era they have become associated with other miniature forms, such as the prelude and the intermezzo, and frequently regarded as evocative character pieces or tonal pictures. Garrick Ohlsson's album of piano études by Claude Debussy, Sergey Prokofiev, and Béla Bartók offers a brief survey of the genre in modern practice, and demonstrates the blending of pedagogy and poetry in these works. Ohlsson has become internationally known as an exquisite interpreter of the music of Frédéric Chopin, and much of the subtlety and atmosphere found in his previous recordings is present here. Ohlsson's finesse and humor are perhaps most evident in Debussy's Études, L. 143, which have a lighter character than Prokofiev's Études, Op. 2, which tend toward the sardonic side, and Bartók's Études, Op. 18, which are intensely virtuosic and mysterious. Hyperion's recording captures the nuances of Ohlsson's playing, and the piano is close enough to hear every detail, while the acoustics lend it a pleasant natural aura.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s vivid and personal interpretations of Debussy’s complete works for piano are available for the first time in an attractive five-volume set, this is the series that put Bavouzet on the map, and established him firmly as a leading and internationally acclaimed pianist.

With this disc, Vladimir Ashkenazy, celebrated for his readings of Rachmaninoff and Chopin, and his son, Vovka, take on music by Debussy and Ravel for two pianos, and the results, utterly unlike virtually anything Ashkenazy père has ever recorded before, make it a real winner. From the electric excitement of the opening En blanc et noir, through the hazy mysteries of Jeux, and the luminous colors of the Rapsodie espagnole, to the inexorable hysteria of La Valse, Ashkenazy père and fils turn in performances that match the music for poise, drive, and technical brilliance. Some might find their sonorities a bit hard-edged at points – should the opening of En blanc et noir and the close of La Valse really be hit so strongly? – but the results are so consistently thrilling that most listeners are likely to be swept away. Recorded in close but clear and vivid digital sound, this disc may not be for every Debussy and Ravel fan, but it should certainly appeal to fans of Ashkenazy.

This Pierian CD, advertised in the May 2012 Naxos catalog as an “also available” disc, is the label’s first issue from 2000 featuring the complete recordings of Debussy as pianist. All of his records were made in two sessions, a series of four short 78-rpm sides with soprano Mary Garden (his first Mélisande) at the Paris G&T studio in 1904 and 14 Welte-Mignon piano rolls recorded on November 11, 1913. Both are famous groups of recordings, restored and reissued over the decades, but this release is the best I’ve ever heard them.