Monteverdi’s Vespro della beata Vergine is a landmark work of the early Baroque, sitting at the crossroads of Renaissance polyphony and the novel use of basso continuo heard in his first opera, L’Orfeo. The “1610 Vespers” redefined what sacred music could sound like — emotionally immediate, virtuosic, both looking back to the past and driving forward into the future. Monteverdi …

In advance of the Metropolitan Opera’s season opening with Lise Davidsen starring as Verdi’s Lady Macbeth, Decca Classics presents the star soprano’s new album of Verdi arias. Recorded with Edward Gardner and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the album marks the Norwegian soprano’s first recording devoted entirely to Verdi, bringing together scenes from five of the composer’s greatest operas: Macbeth, Un …

Kent Nagano and the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra complete their Brahms symphony cycle with this landmark recording of the first two symphonies. Recorded in concert, Nagano brings unrivalled authority to this music having won the prestigious 2024 Prize of the Schleswig-Holstein Brahms Society. With this new album, Nagano crowns his decade leading the orchestra in Hamburg where was principal conductor …

Joshua Bell leads the Academy of St Martin in the Fields — where he is about to embark on his fifteenth season as Music Director — in Niccolò Paganini’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with a new cadenza by Bell. The Grammy Award-winner and honorary Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to Music …

Eldbjørg Hemsing and Oslo Philharmonic under the direction of Gergely Madaras present Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26. The recording reflects Hemsing’s long-standing engagement with one of the major works of the Romantic violin repertoire. She first performed the concerto with the Oslo Philharmonic as a child; now she considers her interpretation ready to be …

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 …

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 …

Canadian-American cellist Elinor Frey performs and conducts Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s three cello concertos with the Accademia de’ Dissonanti. These dramatic works, rich in turbulent exchanges yet also in tender moments, bear witness to CPE Bach’s fiery imagination, where emotion and melody take precedence. In Bach’s time, personalizing a performance was both common and expected. The question of “how a …

As an admirer of Luigi Cherubini, an attentive follower of Gaspare Spontini’s dramatic daring, and a critical but deeply fascinated witness of Gioachino Rossini’s public success, Beethoven was shaping his language in a musical landscape in which the symphony was in constant dialogue with the opera. This fertile state of tension has been newly uncovered by Enrico Onofri and the …

Tucson, Arizona-based True Concord Voices and Orchestra present two works by the pioneering American composer Jocelyn Hagen. Based in Minnesota, Hagen composes primarily for voice — solo, chamber and choral — and has explored large-scale multimedia works, electro-acoustic music, dance, and opera. The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci has been performed more than 50 times around the world since 2019, …

The Oulu Sinfonia led by Rumon Gamba explore music by Selim Palmgren, Einar Englund, Kalervo Tuukkanen, and Jean Sibelius in this survey of under-preformed Finnish music focusing on works composed for the stage and screen. Scenes From Finland is the third instalment in a trilogy exploring the richness and diversity of Finnish symphonic music, placing lesser-known masterpieces by contemporaries of …

With this album, the Neues Bachisches Collegium Musicum and its artistic director Reinhard Goebel launch a new series offering a vivid glimpse into Leipzig’s rich musical life at the beginning of the eighteenth century. At the time, the city was home to numerous Collegia Musica – academic ensembles dedicated to the performance of the latest vocal and instrumental works – …

Continuing in its aim to fill overlooked niches in the recorded classical repertory, the CPO record label presents three symphonies by Paul Wranitzky performed by the Munich Radio Orchestra under the direction of Howard Griffiths. Born in 1756 in Neureisch, Moravia, Paul Wranitzky was almost exactly eleven months younger than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whom he survived by seventeen years. Unlike …

Japanese composer and conductor Joe Hisaishi leads the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, with celebrated harpist Emmanuel Ceysson, in a major world premiere recording that pairs his Symphony No. 3, “Metaphysica” with his new harp concerto. The virtuosic, genre-defying concerto received its world premiere in 2024 performed by Ceysson and the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the composer’s direction. Drawing on his decades …

The program America in Weimar: On the Margins was part of Carnegie Hall’s Fall of the Weimar Republic: Dancing on the Precipice, a citywide festival in 2024 exploring the thriving creative period in Germany between World War I and World War II. Led by conductor and pianist Rei Hotoda, the American Composers Orchestra (ACO) present a recording of that program …

Conductor Dalia Stasevska leads the BBC Symphony Orchestra in rarely heard works by Ukrainian composers Mykola Lysenko, Levko Kolodub, Borys Liatoshynsky, and Fedir Yakymenko. The music on Ukrainian Mixtape reflects different voices and generations of Ukrainian composers, each of them contributing a distinct perspective to the country’s unique cultural landscape. “The motivation to create this album, my Ukrainian Mixtape, was …

The Kansas City Symphony under the direction of Michael Stern joined by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, and the Sphinx Organization’s vocal ensemble EXIGENCE (Dr. Eugene Rogers, director) present a landmark recording—the first commercial release devoted exclusively to the music of Joel Thompson.  The career of composer Joel Thompson has risen rapidly since the premiere of his breakthrough choral …

Led by music director Nathalie Stutzmann, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra presents Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony recorded in November 2025. One of the few women conductors to record the work, Stutzmann describes the great Austrian late-Romantic as one of her favorite composers. In a feature in The New York Times marking the composer’s 200th birthday, Stutzmann said: “I always was fascinated by …

Sony Classical presents the Vienna Philharmonic’s 2026 Summer Night Concert recorded June 19, 2026 before an audience of 50,000 enthusiastic fans. This open-air concert has been held annually since 2008 on the grounds of the UNESCO World Heritage Site at Schönbrunn Palace. Lorenzo Viotti led a varied program featured music from Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé,Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, …

Over the past few years, conductor Douglas Bostock has prepared and recorded an unrivalled selection of British works for string orchestra in which international luminaries (Edward Elgar, Hubert Parry, Ethel Smyth) and lesser-known national figures join together in an enlightening and uplifting way. The fifth volume marks not only the conclusion of the series, but also the end of an …

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra and its music director Jader Bignamini present Carl Orff’s monumental scenic cantata Carmina Burana for soloists, chorus and children’s chorus, and orchestra. Recorded live in concert, DSO is joined by the vocal ensemble Audivi and the Detroit Opera Youth Chorus. Orff tasks the baritone with the majority of the solos — an athletic, high-lying, and lusty …

These new recordings of the Requiem and the Mass in C minor featuring Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the RIAS Chamber Choir, and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe boast two of the brightest young stars of opera. Soprano Ying Fang, considered to be one of her generations great Mozartians, takes the Soprano I solos of the “Great” Mass in C minor, originally premiered …

Conducted by Andrew Sewell, Endeavor is the third installment in the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra’s Musical Landscapes in Color project featuring works by diverse, living composers. The program includes Regina Harris Baiocchi’s Muse for Orchestra, the world premiere of Madison local Autumn Maria Reed’s Mental Health Suite, Eric Gould’s An American City, Omar Thomas’s Of Our New Day Begun, and Xavier Foley’s Soul …