Pianist Lucy Parham picks through the greatest recordings of Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Sonata.

Sergei Rachmaninov's Piano Sonata No. 2, Op. 36, in B-flat minor was composed in 1913 and revised it in 1931. Three years after his third piano concerto was finished, he moved with his family to Rome and started working on his second piano sonata. It is a mighty but technically challenging piece. Rachmaninov himself was not satisfied with the work and revised it in 1931. In 1940, the pianist Vladimir Horowitz created his own edition which combined elements of both previous versions.

Building a Library: Emily MacGregor recommends a her favourite recording of Béla Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra.

For Bartók, the circumstances surrounding the composition of his Concerto for Orchestra could hardly have been more miserable. In 1940 he fled his native Hungary to escape the Nazis and spent the remaining five years of his life in the United States, those years blighted by despair, painful illness and abject poverty. But unknown to Bartók, two fellow Hungarians, violinist Joseph Szigeti and conductor Fritz Reiner, conspired to persuade Serge Koussevitzky to offer a generous commission. In 1943, the glamorous conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra visited Bartók in his New York hospital, and flamboyantly presented the composer, not only with a commission for an orchestral work but also a $500 down payment. Bartók began work in August and finished the Concerto for Orchestra just under three moths later. It spotlights, often with brilliance and playfulness, all the sections of the orchestra and perhaps only its central Elegy, which Bartók called a 'lugubrious death-song', reflects the circumstances of its composition. The work's recorded history begins at the beginning in 1944 with Koussevitzky and the Boston SO and has been much recorded ever since, a 20th-century classic by one of the century's greatest composers.

Katy Hamilton surveys the key works and recordings of American composer Amy Beach and chooses her favourite.

Born in 1867 in New Hampshire, Amy Beach became the first successful American female composer, and her 'Gaelic' Symphony was the first symphony to be composed by an American woman. Despite great success during her lifetime, Amy Beach's music was neglected after her death in 1944, but enjoyed a renaissance in the late 20th century.

Marina Frolova-Walker recommends a version of Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony in Building a Library.

Sergei Prokofiev wrote his Symphony No 5 in B-flat major in just a month in the summer of 1944 during World War II. He intended it as "a hymn to free and happy Man, to his mighty powers, his pure and noble spirit." The 1945 premiere was conducted by Prokofiev himself and the symphony has remained one of the composer's most popular works.

Perhaps the first of Mozart's extraordinary sequence of 'late' piano concertos, the D minor, K466, has attracted pianists as varied as Edwin Fischer and Mitsuko Uchida, many directing the orchestra from the keyboard. Tom Service guides us through a selection of the finest of these, with a recommendation for the essential recording to buy, download or stream.

Pianist Iain Burnside with a recommendation of the ultimate recording of the third, and arguably greatest, of Beethoven's five sonatas for cello and piano.

Edward Seckerson recommends a version of Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony.

Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 in C major was at first dedicated to Lenin. But eventually the composer dedicated it to the besieged city of Leningrad, where it was first played in 1942, during the siege by German and Finnish forces. It soon became popular in both the Soviet Union and the West as a symbol of resistance to fascism and totalitarianism. The work is still regarded as an important musical testament to the 27 million Soviet people who lost their lives in World War II.

Natasha Loges compares recordings of Brahms's String Quintet No 1 in F major, Op 88, and chooses her favourite.

Brahms composed his String Quintet No 1 in F major in 1882 during a summer sojourn in the Austrian Spa town of Bad Ischl. Like the Mozart string quintets, it is written for two violins, two violas and one cello and Brahms intimated to his friend Clara Schumann that it is one of his finest works. To his publisher, Simrock, he said 'that you have never before had such a beautiful work from me'.

The Quintet comprises three movements: a glowing Allegro non troppo ma con brio and an exuberant fugal finale bookend an expansive and passionate slow movement.

Roger Parker talks to Andrew about the wide range of approaches to one of Mozart's masterpieces, the Divertimento in E flat, K563, from classic recordings from the 60s and 70s to young ensembles' recent additions to the catalogue.

Mark Simpson compares recordings of Richard Strauss's Eine Alpensinfonie and chooses his favourite. The epic Alpine Symphony is Strauss's vivid evocation of the thrills and spills of a day out in his beloved Bavarian Alps, including dangerous moments and a glacier on the way up to a spectacular view from the summit. On the way down there's a violent thunderstorm and at the end, as the sun sets and night falls, the deep, emotional satisfaction of having completed an arduous and exhausting journey. The 1915 tone poem thrillingly tests an orchestra, at once collectively, its individual sections and its principal players. And it also tests a conductor who has to convincingly marshal a score calling for 130-plus musicians including 34 brass players (with 12 offstage horns) and a percussion section stocked with, among other things, wind machine, thunder machine and cowbells. Spare a thought, too, for the recording engineers... Presented by Andrew McGregor.