Chicago has a rich classical music scene: from superstars who call the Windy City their home town, to world-class artists who regularly perform on the city’s stages. This week we round up new releases from musicians with Chicago ties.
Pianists Juho Pohjonen and Wu Qiuan – frequent performers with the Chamber Music Society at Harris Theater – release their highly-acclaimed album for piano four-hands. Cedille Records presents Mischa Zupko’s virtuosic three-movement Harpsichord Concerto performed by Grammy-nominated harpsichordist, and Chicago native, Jory Vinikour. The principal conductor of the Chicago’s Civic Orchestra releases a new recording of Brahms’ German Requiem featuring the Milwauke Symphony Chorus and Orchestra. Simone Dinnerstein frequents stages across Chicago, and returns with her ensemble Baroklyn to celebrate the 90th birthday of Philip Glass. Other albums this week include the latest recording by Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra, plus a 5 volume set from Korean-American pianist Min Kwon.
With a release timed to celebrate the United States Semiquincentennial, America/Beautiful is a five-volume collection conceived, commissioned, and performed by pianist and arts advocate Min Kwon, comprising 76 new piano works by American composers inspired by “America the Beautiful.” Kwon brings together a sweeping range of individual voices into a unified musical vision that invites listeners to experience the United States as a living, evolving cultural idea. The result is a deeply moving musical tapestry–a sonic portrait of the nation in all its complexity. Heard as a whole, the collection resists a single narrative, instead offering diverse perspectives that question and re-imagine the American experiment, bound together by the credo of E pluribus unum (out of many, one). As Kwon observes, “Inspite of all the difficulties we face, there is still profound beauty, humanity, and possibility in this country.”
Coinciding with the conclusion of Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra’s 50th anniversary season and the final performances with Ken-David Masur as music director, MSO Classics presents a live recording of Brahms’s German Requiem. The highly acclaimed performance conducted by Masur was recorded in spring of 2025 at the Bradley Symphony Center featuring the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus under the direction of Cheryl Frazes Hill with soloists Sonya Headlam, soprano, and Dashon Burton, bass-baritone.
Chief Conductor Sir Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra present two American masterworks recorded live in London’s Barbican Hall in 2025. Aaron Copland’s third symphony is a vast and beautiful work depicting sprawling landscapes, forceful intensity and the power of human resilience. Composed in the final days of World War II, it channels the spirit of a nation looking toward brighter horizons. The final movement features the composer’s inspirational Fanfare for the Common Man, culminating in a triumphant finale of hope for the future. George Walker’s Sinfonia No 5, “Visions” was the composer’s final work and stands as a protest against racial violence. Written as a tribute to the victims of the 2015 Charleston church shooting, this unrelentingly modernist piece is suffused with anger. Despite its restless energy and jagged harmonies, the music encourages reflection and captures Walker’s richly communicative musical language and groundbreaking legacy.
Although primarily known as a Bach interpreter, pianist Simone Dinnerstein and her string ensemble, Baroklyn, find a natural affinity for the music of Philip Glass, who celebrates his 90th birthday in January 2027. Their first recording for the Naïve label features Glass’s Suite from The Hours and his Tirol Concerto (Piano Concerto No. 1). “When I think about the music of Philip Glass, I think about time. The music is intricate and polyphonic. It’s layered, with patterns that keep shifting in the subtlest of ways,” says Dinnerstein. “Though the harmonies are clearly important in the musical narrative, Glass’s music is multi-linear in a way that evokes the music of Bach. It is music on the horizontal, as opposed to the vertical. If anything, it is circular music. . .”
Cedille Records presents Mischa Zupko’s virtuosic three-movement Harpsichord Concerto performed by Grammy-nominated American harpsichordist Jory Vinikour joined by violinists Desirée Ruhstrat and Charlene Kluegel, violist Margaret O’Malley, and cellist David Cunliffe. Originally written for American harpsichordist Bradley Brookshire, who premiered the work with the Corigliano String Quartet in 2003, Zupko’s Harpsichord Concerto draws on influences from J.S. Bach’s motor-rhythmic Prelude in C Minor, François Couperin’s French-style ornamentation, and Domenico Scarlatti’s bright and percussive keyboard writing. Traveling through three movements, the concerto is naturally propelled by writing that fits the harpsichord’s traditional format, and is brought into contemporary tonality through the reshaping of older musical styles into a modern expression.
The partnership of pianists Wu Qian and Juho Pohjonen began over a decade ago, having originally collaborated as artists in the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Since that first introduction, both soloists have returned to their duet to explore the piano duo repertoire — a most intimate form of chamber music – two musicians sharing a single instrument, breathing and moving in a shared space. After years of collaboration, their debut album of works for piano four hands features two major duets by Felix Mendelssohn, as well as works by Cécile Chaminade and Amy Beach, and a striking rediscovery: the Sonata in F major by Sophia Maria Westenholz (1759–1838).
