Two album-length surveys of music by Chopin, plus unsung Shostakovich, and rep by two lesser-known composers: Emilie Mayer and George Frederick McKay. And an album of double bass repertoire.
New Releases Jun. 10: Chopin, Shostakovich, Mayer, McKay
Justin Taylor (Photo: Sandrine Expilly)
French harpsichordist and fortepianist Justin Taylor is celebrated for his stylish interpretations of early music. Keen to match the works he tackles with the most appropriate historical instruments, Taylor presents a program of intimate Chopin miniatures on a Pleyel pianino. The pianino, a small upright piano of six and a half octaves that was only made between 1835 and 1842, is the instrument on which Chopin composed some of his preludes during his stay with George Sand in Mallorca. Showcasing the instrument’s natural resonance and velvety timbre, Taylor has recorded the preludes composed on this Pleyel pianino along with a selection of etudes, nocturnes, and mazurkas as well as his own transcription of Bellini’s “Casta diva,” an aria that Chopin much admired.
On his ninth album on the Decca label, internationally renowned British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor celebrates Chopin’s genius with two of his most profound and contrasting works: the Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor and the Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor. Composed five years apart, these masterpieces showcase the range of Chopin’s emotional and musical brilliance.
Grosvenor comments, “The brooding Second Sonata is widely known for its Funeral March, but it also shows Chopin as a trailblazer, with the Finale: Presto hinting at modernism. It stands out in Chopin’s work as something truly unique.” By contrast, the Third Sonata, written at the height of Chopin’s career in 1844, blends dazzling piano technique with beautiful, flowing melodies, showing the composer at his most refined and expressive. Four shorter works round out the album: the Ballade No. 1, the Berceuse in D-flat major, and two Nocturnes written shortly before the Third Sonata — Nocturne No. 1 in F Minor and No. 2 in E-flat Major.
To mark the 50th anniversary of Shostakovich’s death, DG has released an album of world premiere recordings and rarities featuring violinist Gidon Kremer, violist Nils Mönkemeyer, pianists Daniil Trifonov and Yulianna Avdeeva, Kremerata Baltica, the Dresden Staatskapelle conducted by Thomas Sanderling, and others. Most of the pieces were recorded at the International Shostakovich Festival in Gohrisch, the world’s only annual Shostakovich festival.
Highlights include three instrumental fragments from the opera The Nose; Anti-Formalist Rayok, a satirical cantata written as a response to the composer’s public condemnation by the Soviet regime; the Impromptu for viola and piano, and various solo works for solo piano.
“I’m very grateful to the organisers of the International Shostakovich Festival Gohrisch for premiering previously unperformed music by Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich,” says Irina Shostakovich. “I’m sure [the album] will be hugely and deservedly popular with all those who love his music.”
The internationally acclaimed German label CPO has been enthusiastically filling the niches that larger companies in the industry have sometimes overlooked. The latest release is the label’s sixth album dedicated to the music of Emilie Mayer, and their third in a series presenting the composer’s symphonies with the NDR Radio Philharmonic. Orchestrator Andreas N. Tarkmann reconstructed the lost score of the Symphony No. 4 in B minor from the piano reduction for this recording. The other featured work is the Symphony No. 6 in E major, written two years later.
The album’s liner notes comment “[CPO’s] ultimate aim is to do ‘appropriate justice’ to this music, leading it step by step to its justified inclusion in music history textbooks devoted to symphonic works, finally achieving its place alongside the works of other great symphonic masters.”
The boundary pushing Formosa Quartet continues its commitment to unexplored repertoire with their latest album featuring the first commercial recordings of string quartets by American composer George Frederick McKay (June 11, 1899-October 4, 1970). McKay was a prolific composer and author, born a year after Gershwin, whose music evokes “…a vigorous blend of influences, including Civil War Era folksongs sung to him by his grandparents; old Fiddlers’ Tunes handed down in the family; Northwest Native American Songs and Dances, and Avant-Garde satire from the Seattle urban scene” (George Frederick McKay Estate). The string quartet is said to be McKay’s favorite compositional form. Formosa Quartet’s release celebrates the 125th anniversary of his birth.
Named “Instrumental Soloist Revelation” at the 2025 Victoires de la Musique awards, Lorraine Campet has been principal solo double bassist with the Paris Opera Orchestra since 2024. In her debut solo album with pianist Nathanaël Gouin, Campet explores German Romanticism with works by Schubert, Robert Schumann, Beethoven, and Josephine Lang arranged for the double bass. Under the deep and warm timbre of the double bass, Schubert’s Arpeggione sonata, Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, and Beethoven’s Variations on “Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen” from The Magic Flute, are revealed in a new light. Five lieder of Josephine Lang, a little-known composer and friend of the Schumanns, are little gems separating the larger works on the program, each arrangement being new to the WFMT library.
