Benchmark recordings of music by Samuel and Avril Coleridge-Taylor; plus other important women in classical music, the American winner of the 2025 Chopin Competition, and one more album for the growing list for Christmas.
New Releases Dec 2: International Chopin Festival Winner
Eric Lu at the piano during the 2025 International Piano Competition (Photo: Bartosz Seifert)
Deutsche Grammophon presents a live album by Eric Lu, winner of this year’s 19th International Chopin Piano Competition, recorded earlier this year. The album captures highlights from Lu’s performances in various rounds of one of the most prestigious competitions in the world. A graduate of Curtis Institute, Eric Lu became the first pianist to win the International Chopin Piano Competition on his second try, ten years after first winning fourth prize. The American’s victory cemented his status as a top-tier pianist, having already won the Leeds International Piano Competition in 2018, which made his re-entry into the Chopin competition a significant and surprising event. Eric Lu’s program features the Waltz No. 7 in C-sharp minor, the Nocturne No. 7 on C-sharp minor, Mazurkas No’s. 33–35, the Barcarolle in F-sharp major, the Polonaise No. 9 in B-flat major, and the Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor.
The BBC Philharmonic led by John Andrews present a landmark recording, the first album devoted entirely to the music of Avril Coleridge-Taylor (1903–1998), daughter of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. A composer, conductor, pianist, and singer of remarkable versatility, she long remained in the shadow of her father, but as the album reveals, she had a distinctive, eloquent, and assured musical voice. Her early works achieved some critical acclaim, as did her performances as a soprano. As she matured as a composer, her works were mostly positively received, and as a conductor she became the first woman to conduct H.M. Royal Marines, and to raise a baton on the bandstand in Hyde Park. The full range of her orchestral works is showcased on the album, ranging from her first major orchestral composition To April (1930), through to her 1967 In Memoriam. Apart from Sussex Landscape, every work on the program is a world premiere recording. Samantha Ege, one of the leading pianist-musicologists in the field of Black Women composers, is the featured soloist for Coleridge-Taylor’s Piano Concerto in F Minor.
The Ulster Orchestra conducted by Chales Peebles with violinist Ioana Petcu-Coland soprano Rebecca Murphy mark the 150th anniversary of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912) with a selection of his orchestral works, reflecting both his Afro-British parentage and a musical milieu that included Holst and Vaughan Williams. Five of the seven works presented here are first recordings including his first work for voice an orchestra, Zara’s Earrings, Op. 7. Other premiere recordings include Ethiopia Saluting the Colours, Op. 51 for orchestra and organ, Solemn Prelude, Op. 40 (revived in 2021), Ent’acte 1 from the Incidental Music to Nero, Op. 62 and the Romance in B (after the beloved Larghetto affettuoso movement of the Clarinet Quartet, Op. 10). The albums more familiar works are Coleridge-Taylor’s Idyll, Op. 44 and the Ballade for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 4.
The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge presents a new Christmas album with the Britten Sinfonia under the direction of Daniel Hyde recorded in the beloved Chapel of King’s College. The program features beautiful orchestral arrangements of carols by John Rutter alongside a selection of both well-loved and lesser-known carols by the great choral composers who have influenced him, including Philip Ledger, David Willcocks, and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Woven throughout the album are works that are especially meaningful to the Choir and its community. The album’s title track, Rutter’s “All the Stars Looked Down,” is dedicated to the late Sir Stephen Cleobury.
Nicola Benedetti’s new album brings together music that represents the different musical strands of the Scottish violinist’s career, from virtuosic showpieces to French romance, contemporary favorites, and Scottish folk, freshly arranged for a mixed chamber group (violin, guitar, accordion, cello, and small pipes). “This inventive new line-up of instruments delivers a communal, conversational ‘evening cafe appropriate’ sound,” says Benedetti. “A sound with the flexibility to work across genres, cultures and performance environments.” Collaborators Samuele Telari (accordion), Plínio Fernandes (guitar), Thomas Carrol (cello), Yume Fujise (violin) and Brìghde Chaimbeul (smallpipes) join Benedetti to share a mug of something hot and steamy in the company of favourites old and new arranged as never heard before.
The “American dream” is the thread that connects two works for two pianos and orchestra with a third piece for piano duo, presented by pianists Ludmilla Berlinskaya and Arthur Ancelle with the Victor Hugo Orchestra. Dana Suesse was born in Kansas City in 1909. She played her own compositions on the radio from the age of thirteen and composed hit songs, notably for Bing Crosby. She refused the attractions of Hollywood and studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Her works disappeared from the repertory after her death, although the Berlinskaya-Ancelle duo are keen to revive her music with this 1943 concerto, described as “romantic, but mixed with modern harmonies and chords straight from jazz.” Victor Babin was born in Moscow in 1908 and emigrated to the United States with his wife Viktoria Vronskaya in 1937. As a successful piano duo in the US, they gave the first performance of Babin’s virtuosic Concerto No. 2 for Two Pianos under the direction of George SzelI in Cleveland in 1957. The program is rounded out by Amy Beach’s monumental suite for two pianos inspired by the Romantic tradition and based on ancient Irish melodies.
Crossover classical pianist, arranger, and composer Chloe Flowers presents her first Christmas album. While planning this release, Flowers discovered that works by women composers represented less than 1% of the music performed during the holiday season. “There are just so many Christmas pieces that are known, which are stunning, but there’s actually so many women-composed holiday music out there that haven’t been given the opportunity to be performed,” says Flowers. She Composed: The Holidays is the first of its kind, an orchestral holiday album across all genres, entirely composed by women, featuring Chloe Flowers as soloist with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. The program includes works from American composers Betty Jackson King, Undine Smith Moore, Linda Kachelmeier, Florence Beatrice Price, Elizabeth Coatsworth, and Flower’s own original composition, as well as Byzantine Empire composer Kassiani and German Benedictine abbess Hildegard von Bingen. The English National Opera Chorus joins in on five of the album’s 13 selections.
![MOB_12.18.22_by_ElliotMandel-21[66]-169](https://www.wfmt.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/MOB_12.18.22_by_ElliotMandel-2166-169-600x338.jpg "Holiday Programming on WFMT 2024")
