Emilie Mayer (1812-83) had eight symphonies to her name but, after finding that her gender hampered her orchestral music gaining public performances, she turned to chamber music. The string quartet offered, perhaps, a place for her to forget the restrictions of 19th-century society. Mayer proves herself a masterful exponent of classical forms with subtle plays of musical lines and delicate …

Grammy-winning flutist Brandon Patrick George and pianist Bryan Wagorn present an album inspired by the myth of Undine – her emergence from the depths, her experience of love, and her transformation into human form. Franz Schubert’s Introduction, Theme, and Variations on “Trockne Blumen,” D. 802 and Carl Reinecke “Undine” Sonata form the album’s foundation. Additional music by Lili Boulanger, Florence …

Catalyst Quartet presents the fourth and final release of a multi-volume anthology highlighting string quartet works by historically important Black composers. Volume 4 profiles French composer Joseph Bologne Chevalier de Saint-Georges and features three distinct sets of six quartets, each composed at different times in Bologne’s musical career. This marks the first-ever commercial recording of all 18 works together. The …

The Orchestre de l’Opéra Royal led by violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte offer a unique survey of the music of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, drawn from varied performance contexts:  sonatas for piano and violin, string quartets, concertos, opéras-comiques, concert arias, and symphonies. “His music — that of a performer-composer, as it was the case for most musicians of the …

Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective concludes their series of pairing Brahms’s three piano quartets with lesser known contemporaries. The final installment features the Quartet No. 1 paired with Dora Pejačević’s Piano Quartet in D Minor, Op. 25 and her Impromptu for Piano Quartet, Op. 9b. “We can imagine some eyebrows being raised at the description of Dora Pejačević as a contemporary of …

Spanish violinist Cristina Prats Costa presents her debut solo debut album, a vibrant portrait of the sound world of 17th and early 18th century music shaped by the cultures of the Mediterranean. Inspired by Andrea Falconieri’s Il Spiritillo Brando, the album takes the spiritillo – a mischievous, animating sprite – as a metaphor for the Baroque imagination: a realm of …

Clarinetist Chen Halevi and the Arethusa Quartet bring together two towering works of contemporary chamber music from profoundly different traditions: Osvaldo Golijov’s The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind and Pēteris Vasks’ String Quartet No. 6. Golijov’s ecstatic, ritual-like score finds the composer returning to Jewish mysticism, while Vasks’ Sixth Quartet references Baltic spirituality, tracing a life’s arc from …

Violist Timothy Ridout and pianist Jonathan Ware present works by friends and colleagues working side by side in the musical melting pot of fin de siècle Paris. The centerpiece of the album is César Franck’s Violin Sonata of 1886 performed in Paul-Louis Neuberth’s 1919 arrangement for viola. The program also features Léon Honnoré’s Morceau de concert, premiered in 1904 by viola …

The latest release from tenor Nicholas Phan features his regular collaborator, the outstanding pianist Myra Huang, and The Jasper Quartet in world premiere recordings of works by Vivian Fung and Patrick Castillo alongside songs by Schubert, Ives, and Vaughan Williams. Timed to coincide with World Earth Day, the program explores humanity’s interaction with nature. Franz Schubert’s songs evoke images of …

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 …

Vienna was in the grip of serious political unrest that forced many Jewish artists into exile when Erich Wolfgang Korngold composed his Second String Quartet in 1933, first performed the following year in the Austrian capital. In it he celebrated, before it faded away, the vitality of a musical school of which Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had been one of the …

Composed during Antonio Vivaldi’s stay in Prague in 1729–30, the Concerto for Lute RV 93 is the most celebrated example of a repertoire almost totally neglected today, but once extremely popular in the German-speaking world, particularly in the Habsburg lands of Austria and Bohemia. In her new album. lutenist Evangelina Mascardi illuminates a fundamental chapter in the history of the …

Winner of the 2019 St Martin-in-the-Fields Chamber Music Competition, the Brompton Quartet was formed in 2018 at the Royal College of Music and has performed extensively around the UK, making debuts at major London concert venues including the Wigmore Hall, Kings Place, and the Southbank Centre. The string quartet’s debut album traces a musical journey through almost a millennium of …

Soprano Hannah De Priest, who is on an upward trajectory as a leading interpreter of 17th and 18th century repertoire, caps a breakout season (including performances with Haymarket Opera and Bella Voce, leading roles with Boston Early Music Festival, and debuts with Music of the Baroque and Bach in the City) with her debut solo album. Referencing both Greek mythology …

Established in 2016, Trio Sypniewski comprises violinist Magdalena, violist Anna, and cellist Caroline Sypniewski. For their debut album, the three sisters return both to the birth of the string trio and to the origins of their own ensemble. The program includes Purcell’s fantasias for viols – intimate pieces enriched by the musicians’ historically informed performance practice – alongside trios by …

WindSync’s new album pays homage to the French composer, conductor, music theorist, and legendary composition pedagogue Nadia Boulanger, who wielded immense influence over American music and musicians. Boulanger found a way to nurture each composer’s individual voice, and in doing so sowed the seeds of the kaleidoscopic breadth of styles that emerged in American music in the 20th century. The …

Cedille Records marks the 93rd anniversary of the birth of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (b. March 15, 1933) with the digital single release of Patrice Michaels’s “On the Joys of Recorded Music.” Performed by soprano Alisa Jordheim and pianist Kuang-Hao Huang, the previously unreleased song was originally intended for Michaels’s cycle The Long View, featured on the album Notorious RBG …

Comprising violinist Olivia De Prato, cellist Ashley Bathgate, clarinetist Ken Thomson, and pianist Karl Larson on piano, the Anzû Quartet brings to the table a vast collective experience with groups like Bang on a Can All-Stars, Mivos Quartet, Eighth Blackbird, Ensemble Signal, and Bearthoven. For their second album in as many years, this new-music supergroup presents the work that inspired …

Cuban-American cellist Dr. Tommy Mesa second solo album features works for cello and piano by Saint-Saëns, Jocelyn Morlock, Jules Massenet, Ernesto Lecuona, Florence Price, Francisco Braga, Andrea Casarrubios, Marlos Nobre, Jennifer Higdon, Ernest Bloch, and Kinan Azmeh. The album title draws its meaning from two worlds: 1767, the birth year of the Nicolò Gagliano cello Mesa plays throughout the album, …

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 …