For her new recording, entitled Or (light), Franco-American cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton presents arrangements of works by Couperin and Vivaldi. The album begins with the first and third of Couperin’s Leçons de ténèbres — the Lamentations of Jeremiah, originally scored for soprano and continuo. Wieder-Atherton says, “I had long been looking for an instrument that could accompany my cello in the …

Critically acclaimed harpist Ashley Jackson presents an EP of artistic arrangements of music by four icons of popular music: Whitney Houston, Nina Simone, Dolores O’Riordan (the late lead singer of The Cranberries), and Pakistani singer-composer Arooj Aftab. Cover Girl celebrates the fearless women who have shaped the popular music landscape. With brand new arrangements, Ashley Jackson pays homage to those …

The Grammy-winning Los Angeles-based chorus Tonality presents the world-premiere recording of Running From, Running To, an eight-part suite reflecting on the life and death of Ahmaud Arbery, the young Black man whose killing on February 23, 2020 while jogging sparked a national outcry. Composed by Founding Artistic Director Alexander Lloyd Blake, Running From, Running To is scored for chorus, soloists, …

Pianist Orli Shaham has been the curator, host, and pianist of Pacific Symphony’s “Cafe Ludwig” chamber music series for nearly two decades. This new album of contemporary chamber music is the product of her long relationship with the musicians of the symphony, which is based in Southern California. The program demonstrates the diversity of chamber works by leading American composers …

The latest album by the Calidore String Quartet weaves together a panoramic portrait of American musical expression across the 20th and 21st centuries spanning Samuel Barber’s lyrical String Quartet No. 1 (famous for its iconic Adagio movement), Wynton Marsalis’s jazz-inflected At the Octoroon Balls, and John Williams’s With Malice Toward None — here in its world premiere string quartet version. …

The Piatti Quartet present a new album on the theme of “phantasies,” featuring music by Ina Boyle, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Herbert Howells, and Malcolm Arnold. The program is inspired by the vision of one extraordinary patron of chamber music: Walter Cobbett (1847–1937), who created a competition for British composers in 1905, and singlehandedly created the ‘Phantasy’ (his spelling), taking inspiration …

Michael Stephen Brown is a composer and pianist hailed by The New York Times as “one of the leading figures in the current renaissance of performer-composers.” Brown performs internationally and receives commissions from orchestras, soloists, and festivals around the world. Recent highlights include a recital at Alice Tully Hall for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and a performance …

Neave Trio presents a program of piano trios celebrating three women composers in the early modern era. The album continues the Trio’s longstanding commitment to uplifting historically underrepresented voices in the chamber music repertoire. Written in 1846, Clara Schumann’s Piano Trio Op. 17 in G minor, is widely recognized as one of her finest chamber works, despite the composer’s characteristic …

Romanian pianist Alexandra Dariescu’s new album is a personal reflection of her journey in the music world, from some of the very first pieces she played as a child to significant milestones such as her concerto debut at age 9. The repertoire centers Mozart’s Rondo in D, K. 382, performed with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. The …

Over several decades, Pascal Rogé has gained the reputation as one the greatest interpreters of the French piano repertoire with his recordings of Satie and Debussy regarded as benchmark performances. On his latest release, Rogé is collaborator in a charming program of superbly crafted, elegant, and often witty music by the 20th century French master Francis Poulenc. Rogé is joined …

In a program teeming with contrasts and discoveries, Trio Wanderer (violinist Jean-Marc Phillips-Varjabédian, cellist Raphaël Pidoux, and pianist Vincent Coq) explores French chamber music around the year 1900. The ardent lyricism of Édouard Lalo is represented by his Piano Trio No. 3. Maurice Ravel’s shimmering can be heard in his Piano Trio and his Sonata for Violin and Cello. The …

Emily — No Prisoner Be is a 24-part song cycle by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Kevin Puts, setting the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Written for Grammy Award-winning artists Joyce DiDonato and genre-defying ensemble Time for Three. Emily is a powerful meeting of voices across centuries—each one distinct, yet in perfect harmony. With music which feels at once familiar and new, brimming …

Two of the world’s leading string quartets, the Ebène and the Belcea, come together to perform octets written 75 years apart by two phenomenally gifted teenage composers: Felix Mendelssohn and George Enescu. Of the concert of the Mendelssohn and Enescu octets in Philadelphia in November 2024, The Strad said: “The phrase ‘luxury casting’ gets tossed around a lot, but seemed …

Violinist Eldbjørg Hemsing reimagines 20 of J.S. Bach’s most beloved melodies in playful, yet intricate arrangements for chamber ensemble with piano or harpsichord. At the core of this project lies a shared artistic philosophy: to expand, rethink, and reshape Bach’s music without ever diminishing it. The arrangers draw strength from the positive and universal nature of his themes and harmonies, …

The Swedish duo of trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger and pianist-composer Roland Pontinen, longtime collaborators, present a program of recently composed works, arrangements, favorites of both musicians and standards from the Great American Songbook. The centerpiece of the program is Three Autumns by Staffan Storm, a reflection on elegiac autumn moods. Among contemporary composers, Mark-Anthony Turnage and HK Gruber, who have provided …

The debut album by violinist sisters Hina & Fiona showcases two rising stars of the classical music world. Born in New York, these gifted sisters have already achieved remarkable milestones individually: Hina recently won first prize at the 2023 Elmar Oliveira International Violin Competition, while Fiona debuted with the New York Philharmonic at 16, and respectively embarked on illustrious solo …

Rolando Villazón has joins forces with period instrument ensemble L’Arpeggiata and its founder-director Christina Pluhar to present an album inspired by the myth of Orpheus. The recording is based on a conceptual program devised by Pluhar which the artists have also performed live to great acclaim. Villazón sings excerpts from Monteverdi’s Orfeo and operas on the same subject by Gluck, …

The recording of Dobrinka Tabakova’s Concerto for Cello and Strings on String Paths, her debut album for ECM New Series, brought international acclaim to the Bulgarian British composer. Her follow-up ECM album brings back some of the String Paths ensemble, including violist Maxim Rysanov, violinist Roman Mints, and cellist Kristine Blaumane. Friends and colleagues since conservatory days at the Guildhall …

A Chinese-German-Finnish trio comprising sheng virtuoso Wu Wei, violist Martin Stegner, and double bass player Janne Saksala perform arrangements of works by Claudio Monteverdi, J. S. Bach, and Antonio Vivaldi with an additional non-Baroque bonus: “Buremarsj frå Beiarn,” a bridal march from Norwegian folk tradition. The sheng, whose history goes back three thousand years, is a free reed polyphonic instrument, …

Legendary bass trombonist Randall Hawes (35 years with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra; four years as guest with The Cleveland Symphony Orchestra; and eight years as a member of the Saito Kinen Orhcestra) and his longtime collaborator, pianist Kathryn Goodson present a new album featuring 15 works that span the history of their musical relationship. The title work, David Biedenbender’s Liquid …

Skylark Vocal Ensemble’s A Christmas Carol represents the culmination of nearly a decade of innovative storytelling concerts that began in 2016. The original concept for this musical interpretation of A Christmas Carol was developed during the COVID-19 pandemic and first recorded in 2021. Working from Dickens’s original 30,000-word manuscript, Artistic Director Matthew Guard carefully abridged the text to preserve its …

The Miró Quartet’s first holiday album is an assemblage of classical music’s top living composers, each of them contributing an original arrangement of a beloved holiday song. Drawing from diverse traditions and memories of holidays past, the recording also brings together new arrangements of “In Dulci Jubilo” by Clarice Assad; “The First Noël” by Kevin Puts, “Jingle Bells” by Michi …

Nicola Benedetti’s new album brings together music that represents the different musical strands of the Scottish violinist’s career, from virtuosic showpieces to French romance, contemporary favorites, and Scottish folk, freshly arranged for a mixed chamber group (violin, guitar, accordion, cello, and small pipes). “This inventive new line-up of instruments delivers a communal, conversational ‘evening cafe appropriate’ sound,” says Benedetti. “A …

The latest album from the prolific American composer Michael Torke’s features violinist Siwoo Kim and the East Coast Chamber Orchestra performing Torke’s violin concerto Last. Torke describes the work as “twelve slow, moody compositions for solo violin and strings, that are almost like 2nd movements of violin concertos.” Each movement – with names such as “Last Night”, “Last Month”, “Last …

GRAMMY Award-winning Pacifica Quartet presents a landmark recording featuring the Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s complete string quartets and rarely heard chamber works. The album traces the composer’s remarkable evolution from a prodigy of post-imperial Vienna to a pioneering film composer in Hollywood. “It’s amazing to see how well the music is written,” says Pacifica Quartet cellist Brandon Vamos. “It has emotion …