Pianist Anna Shelest presents an album dedicated to her home city and the music of fellow Kharkiv-native Sergei Bortkiewicz (1877-1952). Anchored in a deep sense of nostalgia, Bortkiewicz’s works evoke a world imbued with dreams and elegance—a stark contrast to the chaos of the early 20th century that surrounded him (the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the unrelenting …

Alexandre Desplat, the Academy Award-winning modern master of the film score, presents a double-album souvenir of concert performed at the Philharmonie de Paris in January 2025. The concert program featured new arrangements from 15 of his best-known film scores including a suite from three Wes Anderson films (Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and The French Dispatch); a “Royal …

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s first album with Music Director Stéphane Denève comprises three world premiere recordings by native St. Louisan and Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy-winning composer Kevin Puts. Dedicated to this orchestra and conductor, Concerto for Orchestra was written in response to the school shooting that occurred in Uvalde in 2022. “Silent Night Elegy” is drawn from Put’s acclaimed opera, …

Navona Records continues its series of world premiere recordings of orchestral works by celebrated living composers from a wide variety of backgrounds and influences. Volume five includes Kim Diehnelt’s With Courage, Dear Heart. Diehnelt, currently a resident of Burlington, Vermont, was previously active in the Chicago scene leading such groups as Sounds of the South Loop, the South Loop Symphony, …

Daphnis et Chloé, Le Tombeau de Couperin, and Ma Mère l’Oye anchor this new three CD box set of orchestral works by Maurice Ravel, recorded by the Orchestre National de France and its Music Director, Cristian Măcelaru at the Ravel Festival in Paris earlier this year. The festival marked the 150th anniversary of the French composer’s birth and celebrated the …

Music director JoAnn Falletta leads the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in works by three French composers who saw Spain as a paradise of warmth, fragrance, and color, whether real or imagined. Debussy’s Images, Ibert’s Escales, and Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole show the considerable impact Spanish culture had on French composers in the early 20th century. “I have personally always been drawn to …

Edward Gardner’s series of Nielsen symphonies with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra continues with this recording of the Symphony No. 5 complemented by the overture Helios and the Clarinet Concerto, featuring Alessandro Carbonare as soloist. Composed in 1903 on a trip to Greece, Helios depicts sunrise, noontime, and sunset over the Aegean Sea. The Clarinet Concerto dates from 1928 and is …

A native of Los Angeles, Laurie Christman was raised in a musical home as her mother had been an opera singer. Her melodic compositional style has been influenced by the music of the Romantic and Impressionist eras. Christman’s compositions embody those musical aesthetics while directing the listener toward a future where concert music continues to be relevant, meaningful, accessible, and …

The Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo and its music director Kazuki Yamada — a great lover of the French symphonic repertoire  — present the first symphonies of three giants of French Romantic music. Camille Saint-Saëns was only fifteen years old when he composed his first symphony in 1850, which is known as his Symphony No. 0 — his official Symphony No. …

Rumon Gamba and Oulu Sinfonia present a fascinating picture of Finnish orchestral music, their second program of works from their native land. The album takes its title from Selim Palmgren’s four-movement suite, written in 1904, offering richly atmospheric character pieces celebrating the changing seasons. Several works take inspiration from the natural world, such as Kurkikohtaus (Scene with Cranes) which Sibelius …

The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra led by Johannes Fritzsch present the world premiere recordings of two concertos by Elena Kats-Chernin: Ancient Letters, inspired by 1700-year-old letters from the Silk Road, and her third piano concerto, Lebewohl, written expressly for acclaimed Australian pianist Tamara-Anna Cislowska. Kats-Chernin and Cislowska have worked together closely on many music projects and enjoy a rare level of …

Composer, cellist, and vocalist Able Selaocoe presents his genre-defying concerto Four Spirits, recorded live with the Aurora Orchestra conducted by Nicholas Collon. Commissioned by BBC Radio 3, Seattle Symphony and PhilZuid, Four Spirits reframes the concerto format through a rich tapestry of musical influences rooted in Selaocoe’s South African heritage. Singing in Sotho and Zulu, he interweaves ancestral melodies, improvisation, …

The Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Music & Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel, present a third installment of their multi-Grammy Award-winning Latin series with an album centering Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz. Inspired by a 16th century African prince who was enslaved in Mexico, Yanga is composed for choir, percussion quartet, and orchestra. Yanga uses African instruments that arrived in Latin America including …

The fifth installment of John Storgårds’s Shostakovich symphony cycle with the BBC Philharmonic contains works written primarily during Shostakovich’s student years. The two orchestral scherzos on the program share links with the later First Symphony, which was composed as a graduation test in composition from the Petrograd Conservatoire. Shostakovich spent two years working on it and the Symphony he eventually …

Max Reger’s 150th anniversary was celebrated in 2023, but his music is not often programmed. During his own lifetime, however, he was much esteemed. Paul Hindemith described him as “the last giant of music,” and Schoenberg promoted his music because “he still remains unfamiliar” and “I consider him a genius.” Written towards the end of his life, Max Reger’s Four …

Marking 70 years since George Enescu’s death, celebrated violinist Charlie Siem and the Philharmonia Orchestra present two of the Romanian composer’s concertante works (Aria and Scherzino and Ballade, Op. 4a) as companion pieces to Brahms’s Violin Concerto conducted by Oleg Caetani. Charlie Siem is one of today’s foremost young violinists with wide-ranging cross-cultural appeal. Siem has appeared with many of …

Creative collaboration is a fundamental aspect of American composer Joel Puckett. The three works receiving their premiere recording here exemplify this spirit, each reflecting synergy between Puckett’s dynamic creative vision and the musicians for whom he composes. Puckett’s new Trumpet Concerto was written for the distinguished jazz trumpeter Sean Jones as an homage to Aaron Copland’s Clarinet Concerto, commissioned and …

This album comprises three works by three composers of three different nationalities performed by Finland’s Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra led by artistic director Malin Broman (who is also an accomplished violinist). The Sea Sketches by Welsh composer Grace Williams opens the program, inspired by the beaches of Glamorganshire and by its seascape. Grażyna Bacewicz’s Fourth String Quartet is played here in …

Telemann remains a paradox: the deeper one delves into his oeuvre, the more boundless his legacy seems. The sheer abundance of his orchestral works and concertos seems to grow exponentially with each new publication. Six previously lost overtures from 1736, of which only a single printed copy survives, have unexpectedly resurfaced and are presented here by L’Orfeo Barockorchester. The collection …

The Rheinland-Pfalz State Philharmonic led by Antoni Wit music by the Polish conductor’s countryman Zygmunt Noskowski (1846–1909). Although Noskowski is less well known than his teacher Stanisław Moniuszko or his students Karol Szymanowski and Mieczysław Karłowicz, he was nonetheless the primary exponent of modern symphonic music in Poland for most of the 19th century. He also introduced the idea of …

Sir Andrew Davis was a talented keyboard player as a child and teenager, and after study with Peter Hurford at St Albans he spent four years at the University of Cambridge as organ scholar at King’s College, under Sir David Willcocks. It was this period of his life that sparked his love for the organ works of J.S. Bach, which …

The mother-daughter team of violinist Zina Schiff and conductor Avlana Eisenberg present the music of Alan Hovhaness, one of America’s most prolific composers, with music characterized by a signature synthesis of East and West. Influenced by his Armenian heritage and a fascination with nature and spirituality, he sought to create music “for all people, music which is beautiful and healing.” …

Michael Repper leads the National Philharmonic in a celebration of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor – an album of world-premiere recordings commemorating the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth.. The program features new performance editions of Toussaint L’Ouverture, Ballade in D minor, Op. 4, and the Suite from 24 Negro Melodies. Grammy-nominated violinist Curtis Stewart is featured in the Ballade and in his …

The current volume in this series showcases a vibrant pairing of young soloists with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra in concertos by Mozart. The Piano Concerto No. 9 in E flat, K. 271 has long been known as the ‘Jeunehomme’ — but it was discovered in 2004 that it was actually composed for Louise Victoire Jenamy. Mozart misspelled her name …

Valentin Silvestrov was forced to leave his native Ukraine after the Russian invasion of 2022, and his earlier music has an almost prescient quality that seems to express the fate of his homeland. The intimate Violin Concerto and the heartfelt, one-movement Eighth Symphony are notable for their economy of expression and emphasis on beauty, depth and harmony. Silvestorv’s “metaphorical style,” …