Life is a scramble most of the year, so when summer arrives we like to slow down and catch up on our listening, especially to music on the margins of the mainstream classical music that occupies so much of our time.

With that in mind, here's a roundup of some noteworthy albums from Canadian classical musicians — some brand new, others released during the past year — that have captured our attention. Whether they offer recent, ancient or neglected works, what unifies these records are the outstanding performances. Take time during the upcoming dog days to acquaint yourself with them.

Album: Goodyear: Gershwin
Artists: Stewart Goodyear, Chineke! Orchestra, Wayne Marshall

Perfect for summer, Stewart Goodyear's latest record offers music at the intersection of classical, jazz and Caribbean forms such as Calypso, Mento and Soca. It begins with his own composition, Callaloo, a concerto for piano and orchestra that Goodyear wrote in 2016 following his first experience at Carnival in Trinidad. Its five contrasting movements are evocative in their use of dance rhythms, without veering into questionable crossover territory. Scored for a nearly identical ensemble, Rhapsody in Blue was Goodyear's inspiration for Callaloo, and his performance of the Gershwin chestnut with Chineke! Orchestra and conductor Wayne Marshall is robust and soulful. Rounding out the album is Goodyear's three-movement Piano Sonata, which he composed when he was 18 and describes as "a combination of piano virtuosity, teenage hubris, and the popular music I heard in 1996." The full album is streaming here. Watch them perform a movement from Callaloo:

Album: Skye Consort & Emma Björling
Artists: Skye Consort, Emma Björling

Montreal's Skye Consort is a group of early music specialists who apply their expertise to folk and Celtic music, often with breathtaking results. Their new album finds them with soprano Emma Björling, giving the folk music of Sweden, Norway and Quebec the Celtic treatment. Arrangements are masterful and varied, from the arresting "Om Berg och Dalar" ("Of Mountain and Valley") in which Björling's pure voice rides atop a meditative drone before the tune morphs into a lilting reel; to "Cast Iron Stove," a sea shanty with vocals by Skye Consort's Sean Dagher that somehow invokes both Mumford & Sons and Philip Glass; to "The Skunk/Thick as Thieves," whose wordless vocals meld beautifully with the instrumental texture. If you're lucky enough to have a cottage to escape to when the warm weather hits, take this album with you.

Album: Britten: Suites pour Violoncelle
Artist: Cameron Crozman

Awarded five out of five by French magazine Diapason, Cameron Crozman's latest album — his second of 2019 — presents the three suites for cello by Benjamin Britten. He recorded them last December at the Philharmonie in Paris, familiar territory for Crozman, who's spent much of the past decade studying in the French capital. These modern, abstract works by Britten can sometimes seem impenetrable to the listener, but Crozman makes beautiful sense of them, revealing the particular structure of each movement with precise articulation while always employing an attractive, limpid tone. This is not music to accompany your next sangria party, but listen to it on headsets when you take a solo hike or canoe ride, and you'll be absorbed.

Album: No Time for Chamber Music
Artists: Collectif9

This tribute to Gustav Mahler, released last November, comes to us via Montreal's Collectif9, a self-described "cutting-edge string band" that specializes in re-imagining the classics. Listeners familiar with Mahler's symphonies will be astonished by Collectif9's daring: to take music written for a symphony of 100 musicians and capture its essence employing only nine string instruments is no small feat. Pay special attention to the sense of foreboding they achieve in the funeral march from Mahler's Resurrection Symphony, the cinematic storytelling in "I Have a Gleaming Knife" from Songs of a Wayfarer, and the birdsong effects they employ in the following section from Mahler's Symphony No. 1 before they turn it into a klezmer romp. Genius!

Album: Beethoven's Cellists
Artists: VC2

VC2 is the duo of cellists Amahl Arulanandam and Bryan Holt whose September 2018 release, Beethoven's Cellists, is a tribute to the lasting relevance of Beethoven's five cello sonatas. Arulanandam and Holt commissioned five cellist-composers (Andrew Downing, Raphael Weinroth-Browne, Fjóla Evans, Matt Brubeck and Hunter Coblentz) to each write a new work based on one of the Beethoven originals.

The results are as varied and interesting as you would expect — when cellists compose music for cello duo, you get some truly amazing effects for the instrument. VC2 is a tight unit, with excellent intonation and expression, and the recorded sound is first-rate. The album begins with a nifty arrangement for two cellos of a sonata by Bernhard Romberg, a cellist for whom Beethoven wrote a number of works. You can stream the full album here. This is one of the more striking works, Ridge & Furrow by Evans:

Album: Inspirations
Artist: Mélisande McNabney

It's no wonder Mélisande McNabney is a whiz on the harpsichord: her aunt is Geneviève Soly (Les Idées Heureuses) and her grandparents are Bernard and Mireille Lagacé — all virtuoso harpsichordists based in Montreal. Now McNabney is carrying the torch and her debut solo album takes you back in time to the courts of Louis XIV and Louis XV with opulently ornamented suites by d'Anglebert, Forqueray and Rameau. You can get lost in the halting rhythms of Forqueray's music, which seems to follow speech patterns more than any discernible time signature. And the baroque temperaments employed on the 1981 Keith Hill harpsichord add to the intriguingly disorienting sound world presented here. McNabney herself arranged the excerpts from Rameau's operas Les Indes Galantes and Platée for harpsichord and she plays them with dramatic flair.