CLASSICAL: NEW RELEASES

Madame d'Amours: Music for the Six Wives of Henry VIII Musica Antiqua of London (Signum)

Henry VIII is well known as a composer in his own right, but this fascinating programme turns the focus on his consorts. In between divorces, beheadings, dying and surviving, his wives listened to, or were the subjects of, an enormous amount of court music. Musica Antiqua offer an engrossing - and often moving - window into this rarefied world. HHHH

Haydn: Piano Concertos Freiburger Barockorchester, Staier (Harmonia Mundi)

Such is the dominance of Mozart's piano concertos that those of Papa Haydn are all too easily overlooked. True, they don't have the same scope, there aren't nearly as many and they are early works from the 1770s, but they exude quality, style and wit. Andreas Staier, playing a copy of a Walter fortepiano, is superb here, receiving classy support from Gottfried von der Goltz's players. HHHH