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 …