Sviatoslav Richter

It’s hard to know where to start – or finish – when explaining the formidable Lilian Hochhauser, due her centenary birthday card from the King next month. Over more than 75 years, she and her husband Victor, who died in 2019, were Britain’s most respected musical impresarios. Their net ranged wide – from Gracie Fields and Mario Lanza in the 1950s to Chinese acrobats in the Noughties – but they will undoubtedly be best remembered for a unique ability to negotiate with stonewalling Russian bureaucracy and winkle out some of the Soviet Union’s greatest talents. ‘I worked hard, I loved music and I loved what I was doing.

These days the heart sinks when Deutsche Grammophon announces its new releases. I still shudder at the memory of Lang Lang’s 2024 French album, in which he drooled over Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte; when I reviewed it I suggested that if the poor girl wasn’t dead when he started, then she certainly was by the time he’d finished. Now she’s been killed again, this time by the guitarist Robin Scherpen, whose Ravel Reimagined offers us ‘a peaceful and serene soundscape’. Then there’s Rêverie from Nemo Filou, a trio whose cocktail-lounge noodling allows ‘the listener to drift off into bliss’, and Sleep Circle, a ‘re-recorded version of the 2012 project Sleep’ by DG’s in-house snoozemeister Max Richter.