Classical

Britten at Aldeburgh (Decca)

Piano duets and duos are rare in the concert hall. So it's extraordinary that some of the legendary performances of the last century were given by two men at one and two keyboards. It was at the Aldeburgh Festival in the 1960s that Benjamin Britten, a composer who never practised, and Sviatoslav Richter, a pianist for whom practice was an obsession, collaborated in one of the most unlikely but most illuminating of musical partnerships. Their miraculously attuned playing of Mozart (including the Sonata for two pianos), Debussy (En blanc et noir) and the greatest duets of Schubert takes up the first two CDs in Decca's new mid-price Britten at Aldeburgh series. Unmissable stuff. Also in the series' first releases you'll find Britten conducting (Mozart, Haydn, Bach, Purcell) and in concert with Rostropovich, Vishnevskaya and the Amadeus Quartet.

Villa-Lobos: Piano Music. Marc-Andre Hamelin (Hyperion)

For 80 years or so, the prolific Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) has been the name most closely associated with Brazilian music. He's best known for bringing Bach to Brazilian music and Brazilian music to Bach in his series of Bachianas brasileiras. The piano music here is mostly from the 1920s. The two A Prole do Bebe (Baby's Family) suites are intended for young ears - though not young fingers. Foot-tappingly catchy, or moody, their appeal is immediate, as is that of the nightsky influenced As Tres Marias (Three Marys) of 1939. Altogether different is Rudepoema, a crunchily dissonant exercise that was dedicated to Arthur Rubinstein. Hamelin grasps its sprawl clearly and delivers it with unrivalled perfection of pianistic mechanism. He relishes the delights of the lighter pieces with equal virtuosity.

Georg Muffat: Organ Works Vol 1. Martin Haselbock (Naxos)

Although Georg Muffat (1653-1704) was born in Savoy of Scottish ancestry, he always regarded himself as German. And there's a trans-national slant to his musical significance, too. He prided himself on bringing French and Italian influences to bear on German music, claiming that "as I mix the French style with the German and Italian, I do not stir up any conflict, but rather perhaps give a foretaste of the desired harmony among the people, for beloved peace". Muffat is now best known through his Apparatus musico-organisticus, published in 1690. Martin Haselbock plays the first eight of its richly varied Toccatas on the important 17th-century organ of Klosterneuburg Abbey. It's a wonderfully characterful instrument, whose mean-tone tuning adds greatly to the tension of his stylish performances.