• The slow movement of Lennox Berkeley’s Sonatina Op 17 from 1942 is a mere 37 bars in length and yet contains a whole universe of emotion, brilliantly captured by the violinist Fenella Humphreys and pianist Nicola Eimer in a hugely rewarding new recording entitled So Many Stars – not a reference to these undoubtedly stellar performers, but a quote from Sibelius: “My childhood sky is full of stars – so many stars.”

The composer’s 1915 Sonatina is delightfully lighthearted, evoking a happy childhood that sparkled in his memory like a twinkling galaxy. It’s one of six sonatinas in this highly recommended collection on the Stone label, with beguiling examples from Jean Françaix, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Gordon Crosse and William Alwyn, each played with intense commitment by these two outstanding players, their love for this music evident in every bar.

• A new release on the Hallé label from Mark Elder and the Hallé orchestra underlines one theory on the enigmas that run through Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, a work written in 1937 after the composer was denounced in Pravda at the height of Stalin’s “Great Terror”. This “Soviet artist’s creative reply to just criticism”, as it was subtitled, is pertinently coupled with the composer’s Four Romances on Poems by Pushkin, sung by the bass James Platt. In weaving themes from the first of these romances into his symphony – a song that expresses faith in art surviving brutal suppression and desecration – Shostakovich was quite probably sending a defiant signal that he would not buckle in the face of threats from the state. Whatever the theories, the Hallé’s playing in this live recording is magnificent, with Elder alert to all the nuances of this chilling, triumphant riddle of a score.

• Still available on BBC Sounds, just, is a superb Hallé concert from the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, featuring a brilliant reading of Saint-Saëns’s “Egyptian” concerto by the pianist Stephen Hough. Find it. It’s electrifying.