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 …

Baritone Kenneth Overton won a GRAMMY Award for his performance in the title role of Richard Danielpour’s The Passion of Yeshua with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by JoAnn Falletta; and can be heard as soloist on Chamber Works of Adolphus Hailstork with The Harlem Chamber Players. In addition to his international career in opera and concert, Overton …

The ARC Ensemble’s “Music in Exile” series continues with an exploration of chamber works by Ernest Kanitz. Born into a wealthy Viennese family in 1894, he was encouraged in music by his mother and started composing at a young age. Though his parents persuaded him to study for a degree in Law, he also studied piano, music theory, and composition …

Cellist Louise Dubin is a renowned performer and champion of the music of cellist-composer Auguste Franchomme (1808-1884). Following her acclaimed album The Franchomme, which included world premiere recordings of works by Franchomme and Chopin that she discovered in archives in France, Dubin presents her new album featuring cello duos by Franchomme, Fauré, and contemporary composer Philippe Hersant with Julia Bruskin …

Cellist Gleb Pyšniak and pianist Rokas Zubovas present works by Lithuanian composer, choirmaster, painter, author, and cultural figure Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (arranged for cello and piano by Lithuanian cellist Juozas Čelkauskas). Čiurlionis composed in a style that blended late Romanticism with early modernism, incorporating Lithuanian folk music into his works and foreshadowing atonal techniques like serialism. His music is often …

A celebration of nature and renewal, cellist Gautier Capuçon’s new album brings together works that reflect the beauty and resilience of our world. With his signature warmth and intensity, Capuçon invites listeners on a journey that is both intimate and universal: music that resonates deeply with today’s need for harmony and hope. The album features 17 works from 16 contemporary …

Gail Gillispie is one of the pioneers of Chicago’s burgeoning Early Music scene. She founded the Renaissance vocal ensemble The Scholars of Cambrai and has been a member of the Venere Lute Quartet, one of the nations few professional lute ensembles. She has also performed with the Hueglas Ensemble, American Medieval Players, and the Newberry Consort. In her first solo …