Pianist, composer, and producer Max Richter presents new music drawn from his original score for MADDADDAM, a three-act post-apocalyptic ballet epic choreographed by Wayne McGregor inspired by Margaret Atwood’s acclaimed dystopian novel trilogy: Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam. Collaborating with the 12 Ensemble string orchestra, Tenebrae (choir led by Nigel Short), and guitarist John Parricelli, …

Tenor Travon D. Walker and pianist Michael Banwarth – both recent alums of the Ryan Opera Center – jointly present their debut album featuring three song cycles, recorded at Nichols Concert Hall in Evanston, Illinois, with engineering by WFMT’s own Sam Genualdi. In the album liner notes, the artists say that while discussing the repertoire for the album, “there was …

Formed from twenty-four meticulously crafted piano pieces and intended as a musical companion to the clockwork of everyday life, 24 unveils as an intimate and immersive snapshot of a singular day. Pioneering pianist, composer, and chart-topping classical soul artist Alexis Ffrench gently guides listeners from dawn to dusk – through the quiet of early morning into the busy heart of …

Of her latest album, saxophonist and BBC Radio 3 broadcaster Jess Gillam says, “I had one ambition with this project: to make an album that would make people smile. I wrote down an album manifesto about a year ago and it simply said: BIG ENERGY. BEAUTY. MUSIC TO MAKE PEOPLE SMILE. MUSIC TO LIFT PEOPLE UP.” Spanning 900 years of …

The final album in Pacifica Quartet’s three-part The American Collection series brings together touchstones of the American repertoire. The release features some of the most canonical American chamber works, including Samuel Barber’s String Quartet, Op. 11 with its beloved Adagio movement; George Walker’s Lyric for Strings; and George Crumb’s Black Angels; plus, world-premiere recordings of newly commissioned works by Gabriela …

The Ariel Quartet (Alexandra Kazovsky, violin; Gershon Gerchikov, violin; Jan Grüning, viola; and Amit Even-Tov, cello) presents the third and final volume of their acclaimed complete Beethoven String Quartets series. The 3-CD album features the “Late” quartets: String Quartet in E-flat major, Op.127; String Quartet in C-sharp minor, Op.131; String Quartet in A minor, Op.132; String Quartet in F major, …

Fuga Latina, a branch of the Fuga Libera label, is a new series launched by the independent classical music group Outhere Music to celebrate the music, composers, and performers of Latin America. The series’ inaugural album, recorded live at the 2023 Festival PAAX GNP in Mexico’s Mayan Riviera, brings together three concertos under the baton of conductor Alondra de la …

Despite having languished for so long in the shadow of her male peers, Emilie Mayer’s compositions bear witness to an indomitable personality. The musicians of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin have resolved to do her justice by presenting a series of recordings dedicated to her symphonic works. Performed on period instruments, volume one features the Overture in D minor, …

Cellist Sol Gabetta and the period instrument orchestra Les Siècles led by François-Xavier Roth present Camille Saint-Saëns’s two Cello Concertos alongside Édouard Lalo’s Cello Concerto in D minor — three cornerstone works of the Romantic cello repertoire. Saint-Saëns’s First Concerto and Lalo’s concerto, composed within a span of just a few years, both place a strong emphasis on the orchestra, …

Clarinetist Mariam Adam and flutist and composer Valerie Coleman, co-founders of the Imani Winds, celebrate their 30-year partnership with an album comprising chamber works by Coleman. The program includes Rubispheres, a set of wind trios; Maombi Asante, an African dance-inspired prayer of thanks for flute, violin, and cello; Portraits of Langston for flute, clarinet, piano, and narrator, in tribute to …

Cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han — artistic directors of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (CMS), founders and directors of Music@Menlo festival, and founders of the classical record label ArtistLed — present Beethoven’s six Piano Trios in a landmark new recording project bringing together six of today’s leading violinists: Benjamin Beilman, Chad Hoopes, Paul Huang, Kristin Lee, …

Violinist Midori and the chamber orchestra A Far Cry present Derek Bermel’s violin concerto Spring Cadenzas. The concerto was commissioned by Midori during the pandemic for her Orchestra Residencies Program to bring young musicians together despite the challenges of remote performance. What emerged is a vivid and deeply personal concerto built around a sequence of interconnected cadenzas, with the solo violin …

María Dueñas pays tribute to Jascha Heifetz, whose recordings have shaped the Spanish violinist since childhood. The album pairs – as Heifetz once did – Korngold’s Violin Concerto with Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole, and was recorded at London’s Abbey Road Studios with Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela. The program also features Debussy’s La fille aux cheveux …

With the attention given to Rameau’s harpsichord pieces and operas, we often forget that he was also an accomplished violinist. Théotime Langlois de Swarte and William Christie present an imaginary concert in which the violin and harpsichord or organ vie with each other in creative inventiveness. The program draws on the best-known opera scenes and arias by Rameau, but also …

Clarinetist Michael Collins and the Escher Quartet present one of the masterpieces of the clarinet chamber repertoire: Johannes Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet. Composed at the twilight of his career, Brahms’s quintet radiates aching nostalgia and a poignant sense of lost love, ultimately settling into a melancholy serenity. Modeled on those by Mozart and Brahms, Max Reger’s Clarinet Quintet complements the Brahms …

Cellist Julian Schwarz presents the complete cello works of Arthur Foote including the world premiere commercial recording of the Cello Concerto in G Minor, Op. 33 performed with Gerard Schwarz conducting the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. The recording represents the culmination of a remarkable father-and-son effort to bring Foote’s concerto back to life. Julian Schwarz first discovered a listing for the …

Anne-Sophie Mutter presents works by two composers close to her heart: André Previn (1929–2019) and Sebastian Currier (b.1959). Mutter was married to Previn for several years and remained close friends until his death. As a jazz pianist, conductor, and composer, Previn was a great and multifaceted talent who opened new musical worlds for her. The program features his Piano Trio …

Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos, and Yo-Yo Ma present the fifth album in their acclaimed Beethoven for Three series welcoming celebrated violist Antoine Tamestit into the ensemble for the first time. The program brings together two defining masterpieces from Beethoven’s heroic period: the Symphony No. 3,”Eroica,” illustrating a journey from struggle to triumph; and the Leonore Overture No. 3, capturing the …

Duo Dorado presents virtuoso violin music by Nicola Matteis and his son by the same name. It was Matteis’s playing that helped draw taste in restoration London from the French to the Italian style. The elder Matteis is thought to have arrived in London from Naples in the late 1660s, the first significant Italian violinist to arrive in England. As …

Cellist Nicolas Altstaedt presents the Cello Sonatina and Cello Sonata, Op. 4 by Zoltan Kodály paired with two works by the Finnish composer Olli Mustonen. Born 1967, Mustonen was a student of Einojuhani Rautavaara. Mustonen’s Heavenly Lights (Taivaanvalot) for tenor, cello, and piano is the centerpiece of the program, presented here by Ian Bostridge, Nicolas Altstaedt, and the composer at …

The Grammy-nominated duo of soprano Laura Strickling and pianist Joy Schreier present the first installment in a new series of recordings celebrating women as storytellers and bearers of cultural memory. LEGENDS: Rebellion comprises world-premiere recordings from composers Cecilia Livingston, Jens Ibsen, Jodi Goble, Jasmine Arielle Barnes, and Juhi Bansal on texts by Duncan McFarlane, Susan Bywaters, Caitlin Vincent, and Jocelyne …

Praised by The American Prize for their “careful choices, elegant phrasing and beauty of sound,” Luminae Trio (violinist Elizabeth Wright, cellist Jacob Nordlinger, and pianist Jestin Pieper) presents works by three American composers spanning nearly a century of chamber music. The program opens with Lowell Liebermann’s Piano Trio No. 1, a neo-Romantic single-movement work of searching intensity. Amy Beach’s Piano Trio in …

Winners of the 2025 Naumburg Chamber Music Competition and prizewinners at the 2025 Bordeaux and Wigmore Hall International Quartet Competitions, the Terra String Quartet presents three quartets by American composer Greg Sandow. The album heralds Sandow’s turn to full-time composing after a distinguished career as a critic, consultant, and teacher at Juilliard, Eastman, and Peabody. The Terra String Quartet comprises …

Imani Winds presents the second recording on their own record label featuring works that explore the juxtaposition of oppression and liberation, and which celebrates the resilience of persecuted peoples. The album opens with Pavel Haas’s virtuosic Wind Quintet, Op. 10; almost lost during World War II and Haas’s early death in Auschwitz. The album’s eponymous work was composed by Shawn …

Swiss-French cellist Christoph Croisé and Georgian pianist Ana Bakradze present a program of works united by the spirit of folk traditions and national character, as well as personal memories of the performers. Seven Popular Spanish Songs by Manuel de Falla is his most-arranged composition and among his most popular. Béla Bartók’s Six Romanian Folk Dances, originally composed for solo piano, …