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Highlights from the May 2017 issue of Gramophone include:

• As we celebrate 450 years since the birth of Claudio Monteverdi, David Vickers speaks to today’s key performers and interpreters about what the composer’s music means to a modern-day audience. 
• Pianist Lars Vogt always had a yearning to conduct, so being appointed the Royal Northern Sinfonia’s music director in 2015 was a dream come true. Now, he tells Lindsay Kemp, he’s conducting the complete Beethoven concertos from the keyboard for Ondine.
• When violinist Isabelle Faust first played the Franck sonata on gut strings, accompanied by regular duo partner Alexander Melnikov on a historical piano, it was a revelation, she tells Charlotte Gardner. They have now recorded the result for Harmonia Mundi.
• For this month’s Icons, Philip Clark celebrates the artistry of conductor Eugene Ormandy, whose big break came when he deputised for a sick Toscanini at the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1931.
• In Contemporary Composer, Arnold Whittall explores the music of Toshio Hosokawa, which fuses Eastern circularity and Western linearity with great originality. 
• Johannes Moser used the original version of Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations for his new recording and made his own corrections along the way, he tells Hugo Shirley. 
• In Collection, Andrew Farach-Colton surveys recordings of Brahms’s Serenade and recommends the ones to own.
• As always, Gramophone brings you the latest classical news and our expert critics review the newest releases, with the best of the month being named Editor’s Choice.