Internationally acclaimed for her emotionally charged performances, technical command, and interpretative depth, Canellakis has become one of the most in-demand conductors of her generation. As Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Canellakis and the orchestra are joined by the Netherlands Radio Choir with soloists tenor Dmytro Popov, soprano Kristina Mkhitaryan, and bass Alexander Vinogradov, for an all-Rachmaninoff program. …

Pianist Jaeden Izik-Dzurko made history as the first Canadian to win the Grand Prize at the Concours musical international de Montréal in 2024, the same year he was named Gold Medalist at the 2024 Leeds International Piano Competition. His second solo album for Naxos is a souvenir of his recital from the 20th Paloma O’Shea Santander International Piano Competition (2022), …

Cellist Seth Parker Woods, Artist-in-Residence at the University of Chicago, presents a new album exploring identity, intimacy, and human connection with music by André Previn, George Walker, Tania León, and Sergei Rachmaninoff. The album’s title is drawn from Toni Morrison’s poetry – setting the tone for a program that elevates the everyday into something resonant and revelatory. “I’m still on …

Born in Moscow in 2001, Alexander Malofeev has already become one of the most captivating pianists of his generation thanks to his phenomenal technique and the remarkable expressiveness of his playing. In 2014, at just thirteen, he won first prize at the junior edition of the prestigious International Tchaikovsky Competition. For his debut solo album, Malofeev has selected four composers …

Boris Giltburg, widely recognized as a leading interpreter of Rachmaninoff, continues his ongoing series for Naxos dedicated to the composer. Composed at the age of 19, Rachmaninoff’s earliest published cycle of piano pieces, the Morceaux de Fantaisie, contains the Prélude in C sharp minor, destined to become a signature work, and the Mélodie in E major, much loved by Tchaikovsky. …

Nobuyuki Tsujii has performed Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto the world over, from London to Australia, where Limelight Magazine deemed his performance “flawless” and “second to none.” On this new recording of “Rach 3” with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Domingo Hindoyan, Tsujii also presents solo transcriptions of songs by Rachmaninoff and Mikhail Pletnev’s suite of transcriptions of Tchaikovsky’s The …

Lang Lang’s highly anticipated new album Piano Book 2 brings together iconic classical works, new contemporary pieces, and themes from film and TV scores, anime, and video games. It offers 32 miniature gems for all generations — spanning composers such as Bach, Chopin, Liszt, and Rachmaninoff to Tony Ann, Yu-Peng Chen, Ludovico Einaudi, and Joe Hisaishi. Also including music from …

Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “brilliant” and “superb,” SAKURA Cello Quintet (Stella Cho, Michael Kaufman, Yoshika Masuda, Zachary Mowitz, and Peter Myers) explores great music of the past through dazzling arrangements on familiar works, and continually expands the five-cello repertoire through commissioning new works. The group’s name, SAKURA, is a tribute to their mentor, cellist Ralph Kirshbaum, whose …

Pianist Alexander Melnikov new album is dedicated to music of Sergei Rachmaninoff, centering his Variations on a Theme by Chopin. Melkinov traveled to Villa Senar, Rachmaninoff’s Bauhaus summer home on Lake Lucerne in Switzerland, to record on the composers’s own grand piano, a birthday gift from Frederik Steinway. The album also features the luminous soprano Julia Lezhneva who joins Melkinov …

German cellist Marie-Elisabeth Hecker caused a sensation by winning both the First Prize and two Special Prizes at the eighth Rostropovich Competition twenty years ago, while her duo partner Martin Helmchen has also been performing on the most prestigious international stages for two decades. Partners both on and off the concert platform, the two artists are passionate advocates of chamber …

Andreas Ottensamer, who recently announced he will step down as principal clarinet of the Berlin Philharmonic to focus on conducting, presents his latest album with pianist José Gallardo. Romanza features select movements from clarinet sonatas by Brahms, Poulenc, Saint-Saëns, Rota, and Joseph Horovitz. The album also includes Ottensamer’s own transcriptions of beloved classical melodies such as Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1, …

Yunchan Lim’s electrifying interpretation of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 at the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition at the age of 18 is one of the most talked-about performances in recent classical music history. Lim, now 21, first gained international recognition with this very performance, which conductor Marin Alsop described as showing “an old soul, rather than a young …

John Wilson and Sinfonia of London complete their cycle of Rachmaninoff symphonies with this recording of the First Symphony and the Symphonic Dances. The 1897 premiere of the First Symphony in St. Petersburg was a disaster. Rumor had it that the conductor was drunk; in any case he seems to have had little interest in the piece, and the performance …

On his new album Canadian virtuoso pianist Jan Lisiecki brings the diverse sounds of the prelude to life, illustrating the genre’s potential to be more than just a curtain-raiser to something else. Frédéric Chopin’s extraordinary 24 Preludes Op. 28 are inspiration and centerpiece of this recording. For Lisiecki, Chopin was a “master of the short form” who “brought the prelude …

Pianist Dmitry Masleev, who took first prize in the 2015 Tchaikovsky International Competition, leads the Svetlanov Symphony Orchestra (a.k.a. Russian State Symphony Orchestra) from the piano in a program that centers two piano concertantes utilizing the chant melody Dies irae: Liszt’s Totentanz, and Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. The program also includes Liszt’s Rhapsodie espagnole in a version …

The new album from British virtuoso trumpeter Matilda Lloyd with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Lee Reynolds explores the many meanings of the word “resonance.” The two featured concertos echo music of the past, with Mieczysław Weinberg’s containing fanfares harking back to the trumpet’s military beginnings, as well as snippets of music by other composers, including Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, …