Albums of the week: three new releases

György Ligeti – The 18 Études: Danny Driver Hyperion £13

György Ligeti’s cycle of 18 Études are among the very few collections of late 20th century piano music to bear comparison with the great studies of Chopin, Liszt and Debussy, said Richard Fairman in the FT. They are jaw-droppingly difficult to play, but having spent three years working on them, the British virtuoso Danny Driver does the pieces full justice on this album. He draws out the impressionistic beauty in the slower ones, and reminds us that Ligeti, who died in 2006, left “not just keyboard finger-twisters, but poetry in music”.

The challenge, writes Driver in his sleeve notes, is “putting the emotional and evocative power of these pieces centre stage despite their intransigent virtuosity”. And he rises to it remarkably effectively, said Andrew Clements in The Guardian. Of all the complete surveys of the works I have heard, only Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s, which is split across two separate discs, matches and sometimes surpasses Driver’s insights. But this is a superb achievement, which really demonstrates the music’s “dazzling originality and enduring importance”.

Loretta Lynn: Still Woman Enough Legacy Recordings £10

In the 1960s, Loretta Lynn permanently changed country and western music, said Leonie Cooper on NME. Whereas earlier female country stars sang of “lovesick blues and wanting to be a cowboy’s sweetheart”, Lynn, now 88, wrote and sang about cheating husbands, strong women, the birth control revolution, sexual harassment and everyday discrimination. On Still Woman Enough, her 50th album, she reimagines some of her biggest hits with an “all-star 21st century cast” – and shows that her iconic status is deserved and undiminished.

On I Wanna Be Free, Lynn has a “slightly flintier tone” than when she first recorded it 50 years ago, said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian. But there’s no “diminution in clout”. The likes of Reba McEntire, Carrie Underwood, Tanya Tucker and Margo Price “never feel like they’re there to do the heavy lifting vocally, or bolster a waning talent; they sound like they’re sparring with her”. And there’s still a “toughness that doubtless accounts” for the album’s “very existence. Long may she decline to budge.”

Ben Howard: Collections from the Whiteout Island £11

Ben Howard started out as a “cheerful acoustic songwriter” in the Mumford & Sons/George Ezra vein, said Will Hodgkinson in The Times. He then shed his “barbecue-on-the-beach-friendly image” by launching into experimentalism. Now, on his fourth album, he has “found the sweet spot between the two”. This is an “original and intriguing” collection, filled with “strange ideas that unfold organically”, with strong melodies and complex arrangements.

The album has been overseen by The National’s Aaron Dessner, who produced Taylor Swift’s Folklore and Evermore, said Rachel Brodsky in The Independent. And Howard has attracted other impressive collaborators besides. They include jazz drummer Yussef Dayes, the pianist Thomas Bartlett (aka Doveman), and Rob Moose, who is best known for his string compositions for Bon Iver, Laura Marling and Phoebe Bridgers. This could have been a “too-many-cooks situation”, but somehow Dessner and Howard “find cosy nooks for everyone”. The result is a terrific album – “sprawling yet intimate”.