This week’s selection of new releases delves into the compositions of two historical women composers: Clara Schumann and Ruth Gipps. Mirrors embarks on a survey of 20th century works on a recording by WFMT-favorite violinist Paul Huang, and dazzling male vocal ensemble Cantus shares an eclectic album on the theme of connection. Plus, a reissue of a live recording featuring Leonard Bernstein and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.
New Releases Jan. 14: 20th Century Deep Dive, Connection, and Clara Schumann

Recent guests on Live from WFMT, violinist Paul Huang and pianist Helen Huang (no relation) present their second album as a duo. Following the critical praise for Kaleidoscope, the duo’s 2023 release featuring sumptuous Romantic Era works by Respighi and Saint-Saëns, Mirrors centers two violin sonatas composed during the Second World War.
Paul Huang explains that both the Prokofiev Violin Sonata No. 1 and the Poulenc Sonata act like program music: “[Poulenc] wrote his Sonata as a response to fascism and dedicated it to the memory of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, who was shot by fascists during the Spanish Civil War… Prokofiev did not specifically call his Sonata a response to War, but from his description of the muted whispering scale at the end of the first and last movements as like ‘wind passing through a graveyard,’ it is not difficult to see where this work is coming from.”
Between these two emotional pieces, the duo has programmed Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel (1978) to offer a moment of introspection and reflection.
For their third installment of orchestral works by Ruth Gipps, Rumon Gamba and the BBC Philharmonic center the 20th century composer’s Symphony No. 1 and Horn Concerto with soloist Martin Owen. Dated September 1942, the First Symphony is a direct reflection of the horrors of war. The work demonstrates Gipps’s personal voice and features some wonderful writing for winds. Gipps wrote the Horn Concerto in 1968 for her son, Lance Baker. The piece was later championed by the English virtuoso hornist Frank Lloyd, who gave a BBC broadcast in 1982. The program is complimented by three short works: Ambarvalia, a memorial tribute to the composer and colleague Adrian Cruft; Cringlemire Garden, a pastoral miniature for string orchestra; and the Coronation Procession depicting the journey of the Crown(s) entering Westminster Abbey.
All works, save for Ambarvalia, are new to the WFMT library, with the Symphony and Coronation Procession receiving their premiere recordings.
A reissue of a live recording made at an acclaimed concert in Munich on October 17, 1976, featuring the Fifth Symphony and Leonore Overture No. 3, new to the WFMT library. Following this all-Beethoven program with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein returned to Munich to conduct regularly, beginning an annual series with the orchestra in 1983. Joachim Kaiser, Munich’s leading music critic at the time, said, “Bernstein demonstrated to a spellbound Munich audience how much he is filled with Beethoven, the man is full of a freedom and fire that can be produced and reproduced. Even if Bernstein’s leaps, crouches and crescendos may seem violent to anxious listeners, the inner rightness of the music – which sounds natural, powerful, wonderful and relaxed – is overwhelming.”
Recent guests in the WFMT studios, Cantus presents a collection of songs that what it means to connect in the modern world on their fourth release on Signum Classics. The program reflects upon the tension between technology and human longing for genuine in-person interaction. Citing the documentary Social Dilemma as an inspiration, ensemble bass Chris Foss says “the digital revolution has come with unforeseen consequences … the easier it becomes to communicate with everyone on earth, the increasingly isolated we feel.” With music spanning Beethoven to Arcade Fire, the album includes premiere recordings of works by Libby Larsen, Gabriel Kahane, and Rosephayne Powell.
Pianist Jean-Pierre Armengaud is considered a leading interpreter of French music and a specialist in Impressionist and Expressionist repertoire. He has been director for musical programming at Radio France and is associate professor at the Paris-Sorbonne University. Following his acclaimed recordings of the complete piano works of Debussy, Armengaud embarks on a project to record all of Clara Schumann’s solo piano music.
Volume 1 includes the Romances Op. 11 and Op. 21, Three Preludes and Fugues, Op. 16, Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, Op. 20, and other works by the most famous of all 19th-century piano virtuosos.