The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra led by Rumon Gamba join the very welcome trend of recording Mel Bonis’s orchestral works, composed between 1891 and 1912. Their program features the three-part Les Femmes de Légende, the Suite en forme de valses, the Suite Orientale, Three Dances, Danse sacrée, and Les Gitanos. Soprano Elizabeth Watts is soloist for Noël de la Vierge …

Violinist Miclen LaiPang presents his debut solo album with pianist Nigel Yandell. The program is a deeply personal recital of repertoire representing styles and places that have played meaningful roles in LaiPang’s own life, featuring American spirituals and works by Amy Beach, Clarence Cameron White, Fritz Kreisler, Richard Strauss, Robert Schumann, Maurice Ravel, Franz Liszt, Felix Borowski, and Peter Tchaikovsky. …

Decca Classics presents a recital by soprano Lise Davidsen and pianist James Baillieu recorded at the Metropolitan Opera in September 2023. Their program reflects the full spectrum of Davidsen’s range, moving effortlessly between opera, song and musical theatre. Davidsen demonstrates her mastery of the music of Richard Strauss with four songs: “Allerseelen,” “Befreit,” “Zueignung,” and “Morgen.” Opera highlights include  “Dich, …

Founded in 2016, ensemble minui comprises five string and our wind players) active in the Carinthian Symphony Orchestra, the Slovenian National- and the Vienna State Opera orchestras who perform reduced versions of works from the symphonic and operatic repertoire. While simple reductions of large orchestral works were initially on the program, opera music gradually became the great passion of ensemble …

A souvenir of the famed Vienna Philharmonic’s 2026 New Year’s Day concert, an offering “a greeting of hope, friendship, and peace,” broadcast live around the world from the lavish Golden Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna. A tradition since 1939, this year’s program included beloved Viennese favorites Roses from the South and the Egyptian March along with lesser known but …

The Bamberg Symphony and their chief conductor Jakub Hrůša present a multifaceted meditation on heroism — from the swaggering self-portrait of Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben, to the spiritual resilience of Antonin Dvořák’s A Hero’s Song, Op. 111, to the tender remembrance in Aleksandr Glazunov’s To the Memory of a Hero. Each of the three works engages with the idea of …

The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Nicholas Collon present a new album of orchestral works by Richard Strauss. The program includes Strauss’s longest and final major orchestral work, the Alpine Symphony together with Four Songs, Op. 27 sung by Louise Alder, the star British soprano who made her Met debut this fall in Strauss’s Arabella. Strauss composed more than …

Themes of art song, poetry and spirituality run throughout the second album by Korean-American violinist Danbi Um, performed with Finnish pianist Juho Pohjonen. Poème Mystique centers Richard Strauss’s intimate Violin Sonata, written in the year he met his future wife, and Ernest Bloch’s Second Violin Sonata, the title work of the album. By turns ecstatic, spiritual, and fantasy-like, in his …

Violinist Renaud Capuçon pays homage to Richard Strauss with a 3 CD compilation of chamber and orchestral works. The album is bookended by a new recording of the youthful Violin Concerto with the Wiener Symphoniker led by Petr Popelka, and an archival reading of Ein Heldenleben. Recorded in 2000, “A Hero’s Life” comes from Capuçon’s days as leader of the …