Pioneering twentieth-century Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz’s vibrant and dynamic musical language bridges the gap between neoclassicism and modernism. This second volume of conductor Sakari Oramo’s Bacewicz series features three rarely recorded works. The Concerto for Piano and Orchestra was written in 1949 for the Frédéric Chopin Composers’ Competition, organized by the Polish Composers’ Union to commemorate the centenary of Chopin’s …

Tania León was the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Composer-in-Residence for two seasons concluding in July 2025. The orchestra’s new album on their in-house label presents four of León’s works which the orchestra has premiered in the UK and Europe including an LPO commission. Horizons (1999) is a shimmering tapestry of asymmetrical rhythms and Latin inflected orchestration. Stride (2020) is a Pulitzer …

The WDR Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Elena Schwarz present orchestral works by Elsa Barraine, a composer who has long been unjustly neglected. Born in Paris in 1910 and a pupil of Paul Dukas alongside Olivier Messiaen, Barraine won the Prix de Rome in 1929—a remarkable achievement for the fourth woman ever to receive it. The album centers Barraine’s …

Recently awarded the prestigious Brahms Prize of the Schleswig-Holstein Brahms Society, Kent Nagano and the Hamburg State Philharmonic, of which he was principal conductor from 2015 until 2025, perform the last two symphonies by the Hamburg-born composer, recorded in concert. The most personal of Johannes Brahms’s four symphonies, the Third is both heroic and deeply troubled with each movement ending …

Wilhelm Furtwängler rose to the most important conductorships available, replacing Richard Strauss at the Staatskapelle Berlin in 1920, and then, following the sudden death of Arthur Nikisch, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic. Through the 1930s and ‘40s, his career was defined by his opposition to Nazism, and the determination of the regime to use his international reputation …

During the decade of the 1930s, Florence Price produced two substantial concertos: the romantic Piano Concerto in One Movement and her first violin concerto – an expansive and richly orchestrated work that was apparently never performed during her lifetime. The later Violin Concerto No. 2 was completed just a few months before her death. These three works represent her entire …

Henriëtte Bosmans is considered one of the most important Dutch composers of the first half of the 20th century. Having refused to become a member of the Nazi’s Chamber of Culture, her career was put on hold. This new album from cellist Raphael Wallfisch and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra led by Ed Spanjaard is part of Wallfisch’s survey “Voices …

Following the success of his Beethoven and Schubert recordings, Jordi Savall now presents his first album devoted to music of Robert Schumann and Anton Bruckner. Adopting historically informed performance practices, Le Concert des Nations casts light on a repertoire that has been unfairly forgotten. Starting with Robert Schumann’s Zwickauer Symphony, the period instrument orchestra reveals new colors and ardor. The …

Daniel Ottensamer presents Brahms’ two legendary clarinet sonatas, reworked for clarinet and orchestra by Stephan Koncz, who also conducts the Berlin German Symphony Orchestra on this recording. Koncz’s orchestrations bring these masterful pieces out of the limited space of chamber music, presenting them in a new symphonic light. The album is rounded out by a hidden gem, Walter Rabl’s clarinet …

Klaus Mäkelä conducts Orchestre de Paris in two classic showpieces that premiered in Paris: Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique and Ravel’s La valse. “Mäkelä is a star, no doubt, and the proof of it is that he makes his players look and sound like stars, too” wrote The Guardian about the BBC Proms performance of the Berlioz last summer, shortly before this …

The internationally acclaimed German label CPO has been enthusiastically filling the niches that larger companies in the industry have sometimes overlooked. The latest release is the label’s sixth album dedicated to the music of Emilie Mayer, and their third in a series presenting the composer’s symphonies with the NDR Radio Philharmonic. Orchestrator Andreas N. Tarkmann reconstructed the lost score of …

To mark the 50th anniversary of Shostakovich’s death, DG has released an album of world premiere recordings and rarities featuring violinist Gidon Kremer, violist Nils Mönkemeyer, pianists Daniil Trifonov and Yulianna Avdeeva, Kremerata Baltica, the Dresden Staatskapelle conducted by Thomas Sanderling, and others. Most of the pieces were recorded at the International Shostakovich Festival in Gohrisch, the world’s only annual …

Behzod Abduraimov won the 2009 London International Piano Competition at the age of 18 with a performance of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 — a victory that marked his graduation from a prodigy to a celebrated musician. In his new album recorded with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra led by Vasily Petrenko, Abduraimov pairs Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto with the lyrical …

This album from the celebrated Borusan Istanbul Phiharmonic Orchestra and their new chief conductor, Carlo Tenan, presents a program of vibrant eastern European orchestral music. Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, close friends and musical collaborators, did much to explore and preserve traditional Hungarian music which shines through in the Dance Suite and Dances of Galánta. Bohuslav Martinů’s radiant Frescoes of …