Sorry, I sent you out on an unnecessary direction. I'd misread your original post yesterday and responded from (mis)memory.
The file list is ordered and group independently from the categories in the view, which are sorted by Name by default, and that is probably what you want at the top Artist level.
To sort at the Album level, you'll have to customize the view, and change the Album category instead to an expression:
[Date (year)] [Album]
This will now list your albums in chronological order, and when you hit play at the album category level, MC will play in this order.
However, as you've noted, when you attempt to play all albums at the Artist level, sorting has not occurred (since you haven't drilled down), so alphabetic sorting is used.
You could request an an enhancement to follow the lower category's sort order when you hit Play at the higher level.