The new album from star cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason features Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 2, performed with John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London, alongside the cello sonatas of Shostakovich and Britten with his sister, pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason. This deeply personal recording pays tribute to cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, the towering figure who inspired both composers and Kanneh-Mason himself. Sheku Kanneh-Mason has …

Quartetto Vanvitelli is an Italian ensemble (violinist Gian Andrea Guerra, lutenist Mauro Pinciaroli, cellist Nicola Brovelli, and keyboardist Luigi Accardo) specializing in baroque repertoire with a particular focus on Handel’s works. In Se in fiorito ameno prato, the period instrument ensemble explores Handel’s violin sonatas, connecting them to other pieces, including misattributions, opera excerpts, and keyboard pieces. The program invites …

The youngest cellist ever to win the International Tchaikovsky Competition, Zlatomir Fung presents his solo debut album with pianist Richard Fu featuring six fantasies on themes from opera, including fantasies on melodies from Donizetti’s The Daughter of the Regiment, Rossini’s William Tell, Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. Additionally, the album features Fantasy on Jenůfa which Fung …

Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective continues its series with this recording of Johannes Brahms’s Third Piano Quartet, alongside Piano Quartet No. 1 of Louise Héritte-Viardot. The Third Piano Quartet gestated for a long time – the first sketches were made in 1855, whilst the work was not completed until 1875. Numerous commentators tie the work to the composer’s infatuation with Clara Schumann, …

The Black Oak Ensemble (violinist Desirée Ruhstrat, violist Aurélien Fort Pederzoli, and cellist David Cunliffe) continues to push the boundaries of the string trio repertoire with their third album on Cedille Records. The idea for the album was born out of a mistaken Google search. During the 2022 World Cup, with Switzerland, Germany, France, and England all in the running—all …

The Transylvanian-based Arcadia Quartet reaches the fifth volume in its acclaimed series of recordings of the complete string quartets of Mieczysław Weinberg with this release featuring Quartets Nos 3, 9, and 14. As in previous volumes, the varied program features quartets from contrasting periods of Weinberg’s compositional development. Quartet No. 3, composed in 1944, could be considered as the first …

French gambist Mathilde Vialle leads an ensemble featuring early plucked instrument specialist Thibaut Roussel. It was love at first sight when Vialle and Roussel first encountered the English bass viol and Venetian archlute preserved at the Museum of Music at the Philharmonie de Paris which inspried this program of English music from the second half of the seventeenth century, much …

Polish conductor and pianist Krystian Zimerman is joined by violinist Maria Nowak (co-leader of his Polish Festival Orchestra), violist Katarzyna Budnik (principal viola of the Sinfonia Varsovia), and cellist Yuya Okamoto (newly appointed cellist of the Ébène Quartet) to perform two piano quartets by Johannes Brahms. In an interview with Presto Music, Zimerman is disarmingly honest about the foursome having …

Following the release of her debut album Wings, composer Rami Levin returns with a second album of chamber music featuring some of the most celebrated Chicago-based musicians. Cavatina Duo performs the title track, where Levin draws on the Brazilian choro, characterized by fast tempi, syncopation, and counterpoint. The cross-cultural infusion continues with the Brazilian rhythms of Danças brasileiras performed by …

In their fifth album together on Hyperion records, the extraordinary virtuoso pianist Marc-André Hamelin and the superb Takács Quartet explore two piano quintets linked by American heritage; one by Florence Price, the first African American woman to have a composition played by a major orchestra, and the other by Antonín Dvorák, whose residency in America during the 1890s made a …

Third Coast Percussion’s 20th anniversary album celebrates ensemble’s legacy of musical collaboration and artistic growth since its founding in 2005. The program of world premiere recordings explores the passage of time, both through the eyes of percussionists charged with “keeping time” for an ensemble, and on the grander scale of time elapsed over decades. The album opens with Jlin’s Please …

Award-winning violin-piano duo, Opus Two (violinist William Terwilliger and pianist Andrew Cooperstock) presents world-premiere recordings of highlights from Stephen Sondheim’s exceptional Broadway shows in arrangements by Eric Stern, a longtime collaborator of the late composer. These include “Broadway Baby” from Follies, “Every Day a Little Death” from A Little Night Music with cellist Beth Vanderborgh, “Finishing the Hat” from Sunday …

In her debut album on Decca, acclaimed harpist Ashley Jackson presents her own arrangements of spirituals and works by Margaret Bonds, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and Alice Coltrane. The album also includes Debussy’s “Danse Sacrée” and original compositions by contemporary composers Brandee Younger, João Luiz Rezende, and Jeromy Thomas. Jackson sings on a few selections and is supported by the Harlem Chamber …

Cavatina Duo (Bosnian guitarist Denis Azabagić and Spanish flutist Eugenia Moliner) presents five new works that draw inspiration from Romani culture and musical traditions written for them by Clarice Assad, Sergio Assad, Matthew Dunne, Stacy Garrop, and Atanas Ourkouzounov. The duo aims to break down inherited negative cultural stereotypes of the Romani people. Azabagić and Moliner believe that the artificial …

Julian Bliss is one of the world’s finest clarinetists, excelling as a concerto soloist, chamber musician, recitalist, and jazz artist. James Baillieu is one of the leading song and chamber music pianists of his generation. As a duo, they revel in the versatile chamber music delights of the husband-and-wife composers Robert and Clara Schumann. Selections include Robert Schuman’s Romances, Op. …

Owls is an inverted string quartet (two cellos instead of two violins) featuring an all-star lineup of renowned soloists: violinst Alexi Kenney, violist Ayane Kozasa, and cellists Gabriel Cabezas and Paul WIancko. Their debut album features six works by an eclectic range of composers, traditions, and eras including Owls’s own Paul Wiancko; Dan Trueman and Monica Mugan folk duo Trollstilt, …

The two-time Grammy Award-winning Attaccca Quartet commemorates the 150th anniversary of Ravel’s birth with a recording of Ravel’s String Quartet in F, an EP that also marks their debut in the Platoon record label. Celebrated for their versatility and ability to seamlessly navigate between traditional classical repertoire and contemporary collaborations, the ensemble continues to push the boundaries of the traditional …

Georg Philipp Telemann was—to characterize him in contemporary terms—a workaholic, thanks to which we have, amongst his 3,000-plus works, his two sets of marvelously rich Paris Quartets. The first set of quartets, or quadri, was published in Hamburg and such was their popularity that they were republished in Paris by Le Clerc in 1736 without Telemann’s permission. This prompted Telemann …

In his second album for Warner Classics, cellist, vocalist, and composer Abel Selaocoe celebrates his South African heritage with traditional Bantu music played alongside cello-centric “Western Classical” baroque or baroque-inspired works. Much of the album features Selaocoe original compositions or arrangements on which he sings and plays both percussion and cello with a full band that includes string ensemble (the …

The Dudok Quartet Amsterdam completes its two volume project of recording Tchaikovsky’s complete String Quartets on gut strings with this new release, featuring the posthumous Quartet Movement in B-flat and the Third String Quartet. When the artists told their coach Dmitri Ferschtman, a pioneer in historically informed performance practice, that they wanted to perform Tchaikovsky on gut strings, he asked: …

In their first full-length album, I Giardini, a collective of French chamber musicians, center the music of Ernest Chausson. The Concert in D major, Op. 21 for violin, piano, and string quartet is a masterly work on the borderline between chamber music and orchestra, featuring violinist Pierre Fouchenneret and I Giardini’s co-artistic director, pianist David Violi. I Giardini also deliver …

French composer Clémence de Grandval (1828–1907), born Marie Félicie Clémence de Reiset and known as Vicomtesse de Grandval and Marie Grandval, studied composition with Friedrich Flotow, composer and family friend, and later with Frédéric Chopin and Camille Saint-Saëns, the latter dedicating his Oratorio de Noel to her. A prolific composer, Grandval’s output includes a mass, 50 songs with piano accompaniment, …

The latest album from popular classical composer Ludovico Einaudi is as a song cycle in thirteen tracks. The Summer Portraits is inspired by a series of striking oil paintings adorning an Italian villa Einaudi and his family rented last year. Einaudi discovered that the paintings were produced over many summers by a woman from Rome who owned the house for …

What can our ears really perceive when music deviates from a norm whose codes are no longer our own? Geoffroy Jourdain leads Les Cris de Paris in an exploration of the “strange harmonies” characteristic of the late Renaissance, as in the microtonal works of Nicola Vicentino (1511-1575), which divides the octave into 31 notes in a nod to Ancient Greek …

Trio Gaspard continues its acclaimed series of Haydn Piano Trios with this collection of later works. As in the case of the previous volumes, the album includes the world premiere recording of a piece commissioned to complement Haydn’s works – in this instance Sally Beamish’s Trance. The British composer says of her trio: “The melancholic nature of Haydn’s [F sharp …