Patricia Barber: Monday Night

Barber’s moody contralto is at its most seductive on the ballad Narcissus and at its most mysterious on The Moon

Leonidas Kavakos: Mendelssohn

The quality of this serious artist is immediately on show in his finely spun tone and scrupulously enunciated rhythms

Vivaldi: The French Connection - La Serenissima, dir Adrian Chandler

Throughout, Chandler directs the concertos in precise but excitingly spontaneous performances of unfailingly imaginative music

Britten: Before Life & After - Mark Padmore and Roger Vignoles

Padmore's distinctive timbre and his colouring of words make him an ideal exponent of the Holy Sonnets of John Donne

Billy Childish: Archive from 1959

Irresistible pop hooks are stuttered and spat over serrated guitars and train-wreck rhythms in a stew of approved influences

Various Artists: Otro Mundo (Another World)

Fans of Afro-Peruvian music will be glad to see that Novalima and the electronica outfit Radiokijada have made the cut

Gavin Osborn: Meeting Your Heroes

The artist sings his bittersweet story-songs with a comic timing usually absent from the works of his anti-folk contemporaries

Michael J Sheehy and the Hired Mourners: With These Hands

With guest spots from Sandy Dillon and Gemma Ray, this is the musician’s most satisfying album since 2000's Sweet Blue Gene

Bowerbirds: Upper Air

Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon asked the band to support him on tour, and life on the road has changed the duo’s songs

Bach: B Minor Mass, Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble, conductor Marc Minkowski

Minkowski follows the Rifkin/Parrott line of performing Bach’s 'great Catholic Mass' with a single voice to each part

Schubert: Piano Sonata in G, D894, Four Impromptus, D935 Andreas Staier

The clarity and brilliance of the scale passages in the fourth Impromptu and in variation five of the third are simply dazzling

Johnny Dankworth: Let's Slip Away

Spanning a decade and a half, this overview delves back as far as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Servant

Florence and the Machine: Lungs

The feather-light mandolin that introduces the opening track is a sound so beautiful that the album never quite recovers

Bombay Bicycle Club: I Had the Blues but I Shook Them Loose

Jack Steadman’s tremulous vocals soar over Jamie MacColl’s guitar on a succession of songs that bear the imprint of Arcade Fire

Engineers: Three Fact Fader

The band transcend the shoegazing tag and approach the heights of Spiritualized at their space-rocking best

Janacek and Others: Europa - violinist David Grimal and pianist Georges Pludermacher

The idea behind this beautifully executed disc is to link 'East European' composers with the development of musical language

Florence and the Machine: Lungs

These songs draws comparisons with Kate Bush - you’ll struggle to recall the last time retribution sounded so divine

Quatuor Mosaiques: Alexandre Pierre François

Outer movements sparkle brightly; slow movements are deliciously wistful, especially as played by the superb Mosaiques

Bombay Bicycle Club: I Had the Blues but I Shook them Loose

Melodic fireballs such as Ghost marry Jack Steadman’s burnished growl with vibrant chords and swirling harmonies

Partisans: By Proxy

Partisans’ electric bass riffs and rock/jazz crossovers also hark back to 1970s bands such as Soft Machine and Nucleus