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Apart from the Roman trilogy – ‘Pines’, ‘Fountains’ and ‘Festivals’ – The Birds and the Ancient Airs And Dances arrangements (these two popular Dorati/Mercury recordings), Respighi’s music is pretty much a closed book to most collectors. This fourth Neschling/BIS programme brings a late-romantic, shrewdly orchestrated symphony, seen as too Germanic when premiered in 1915, and a characterful overture derived from music for an unsuccessful opera (although recorded by Hungaroton). Although overwrought in parts and certainly overlong for what it has to say, Sinfonia Drammatica proves a likeable piece and it certainly sounds lush in the spacious Liège concert hall. About 8m into (ii) you get a foretaste of ‘Pines Of Rome’.

Don’t panic: this may be Euro-jazz – how else do you explain a lineup of trumpet, piano and accordians? – but it’s both persuasive and highly approachable, at least when you acclimatise to the slightly unfamiliar tonalities here. Yes, there are times when a conventional rhythm section wouldn’t go amiss, for example in the take on Erik Satie’s Gnossienne No 1, but it’s clear how well the three musicians work together on this, their second Mare Nostrum outing, recorded some seven years after the original. It’s an interesting mix of Northern and Southern European styles – trumpeter Fresu is from Sardinia, Galliano is French and pianist Lundgren Swedish – but the light and shade work well together, whether in the original tunes or the trio’s take on a Monteverdi madrigal, and is well served by a fine recording. AE Sound Quality: 85% Hi-Fi News Lab Report All the tracks here have a spurious tone at ~19.

Kopatchinskaja is a ‘Marmite’ violinist, as anyone who has loved/suffered her Bartók and Prokofiev recordings will attest. And when you read the booklet at HRA and see its (in part informative) notes are couched in the form of artful love letters between soloist and conductor you might fear the worst from this 2014/13 Moscow/Madrid theatres coupling. All the singers in Les Noces are native and MusicAeterna uses period instruments. The authenticity tells in their marvellously sung, energetic Les Noces, and unusual timbres add to the concerto performance.

Although the last two Schubert sonatas are reissues from 2002, Paul Lewis has re-recorded the A-minor and C-minor (D784/958), again at the Teldex Studios Berlin, last spring. And in any case we haven’t had the higher resolution until now. There’s very little difference in sound: perhaps the new recordings are in tighter focus with less ambient sound, but it’s marginal. No-one I have heard makes more sense of the central outburst in the Andantino of the Sonata in A (D959); and Lewis’s Schubert suggests more affinity with Beethoven in its overtness – it’s a very different approach from that of the ‘reverent’ Mitsuko Uchida or even Paul Lewis’s mentor Alfred Brendel (whose example he followed in 2002 by omitting the exposition repeat in D960(i) – perhaps one day he’ll be persuaded otherwise).

The French violinist, now 64, has appeared on various record labels since his Erato debut in 1973; in 2002 he founded – and leads – the Camerata de Lausanne. Co-soloists here are viola player Yuko Shimizu (K364) and Ami Oike in the unfairly neglected Concertone for two violins (which also has important solo oboe and cello parts). These partnering string soloists are spaced not too far in from Amoyal: not in the right channel, thank goodness! The sound is generally vibrant and clear with plenty of ambience around the orchestra. One jarring entry, 2m 09s into track 2 warranted re-editing; and cadenzas were, I suspect, pasted in separately.

This is either the long-awaited 15th and final album from Pink Floyd, or a collection of edit-suite sweepings lashed together with some new material and, given the variable sound-quality on offer here, the latter description isn’t without justification. Based on recordings for The Division Bell in 1993/4 (and already rejected for release back in 1994 as The Big Spliff), it’s intended as both a tribute to Richard Wright and what Dave Gilmour calls ‘a 21st-century Pink Floyd album’, and while it has delighted Floyd fanatics, it adds little to the collection of the casual listener. In fact, it’s more a case of ‘spot the source’ if you’re familiar with the back catalogue, and comparing this 96kHz/24-bit version with the standard CD-quality release, there’s not much gained, and arguably the slightly rag-bag nature of the content is more obviously revealed. AE Sound Quality: 70% Hi-Fi News Lab Report Tracks 19-21 are upsamples of 44.

In a lengthy booklet essay Manfred Honeck explains all his interpretative decisions: live recording, a large orchestra with divided violins, pizzicati continued right to the end of 7(ii) – as suggested to him by Kleiber when Honeck was an orchestral violinist – and various minutiae, with timing/bar reference details. He writes about changing styles since the very first recordings of No 5 in 1910/13. But – oh dear! – the motto theme in the first movement is slowed for every appearance: that’s a write-off for me, I’m afraid. There is also a distracting rhythmic pattern unearthed in the finale, 9m10s-9m 19s.