Our September Recording of the Month is Stephen Hough’s Piano Postcards, a typical charmer of a program full of melodic wit and wisdom (Hyperion CDA68469). In his own inimitable way, the British-Australian pianist lets his imagination roam the globe, including music by Rachmaninov, Granados and Handel, as well as Hough’s own nifty arrangements of Chim chim cher-ee from Mary Poppins, Remember Me from Coco and Do You Want to Build a Snowman? from Frozen, both by Robert Lopez.

“Musical standards here are sky-high,” writes Phillip Scott in a five-star review, “as you can tell instantly from the Debussyan soundworld of Feed the Birds, while Hough’s tongue remains firmly in his cheek when Rimsky-Korsakov’s bumblebee flies through the busy texture of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Later, we get The Flight of the Bumblebee in full, in the Rachmaninov transcription, played with genuine character and not simply at warp speed.”

Elsewhere, Hough wrings every drop of old-world nostalgia from his arrangement of Cielito Lindo and there are two gems from Malcolm Williamson’s Travel Diaries: the languidly waltzing Flower Sellers –...