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 …

Pianist Claire Huangci’s new album celebrates women composers and the struggles they’ve endured, with a collection of works by Clara Schumann, Amy Beach, Fanny Hensel, and Florence Price. Clara Wieck (who became Schumann after her marriage to Robert in 1840) was a mother of eight and the main breadwinner, constantly on tour. Fanny Hensel composed largely in private, often publishing …

The Amsterdam Sinfonietta under the direction of violinist Candida Thompson and the Netherlands Chamber Choir led by Martina Batič present an innovative program of Baltic and English works recorded live in concert. The program is bookended by two performances of Arvo Pärt’s meditative work Spiegel im Spiegel, the first with cellist Tim Posner, and the original version for violin (Candida …

The multi-faceted New York-based Japanese pianist and composer Hayato Sumino turns his gaze on Chopin, the composer who means the most to him. It was Sumino’s sensational performances at the 2021 International Chopin Competition where he was a semi-finalist that first brought the young musician to wider international attention. In Chopin Orbit, Sumino pairs six of his original compositions with …

The Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Thomas Clausen Trio, and Jean Thorel celebrate the enduring legacy of one of jazz’s greatest pianists. The album features three jazz, concerto grosso-like orchestral works recorded live. The influential Danish jazz trumpeter and composer Palle Mikkelborg was commissioned by the Danish Radio to compose his Bill Evans Suite for the Bill Evans Trio in 1969, comprising …

American pianist Eric Lu, recent First Prize winner of the 19th International Chopin Piano Competition, presents Franz Schubert’s Impromptus D.899 and D.935. Lu previously performed the Op. 90 Impromptus during the 2018 Leeds International Piano Competition, which he also went on to win. He says, “I have a real sense of a journey with these works, in particular with Op.90, …

Nobuyuki Tsujii has performed Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto the world over, from London to Australia, where Limelight Magazine deemed his performance “flawless” and “second to none.” On this new recording of “Rach 3” with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Domingo Hindoyan, Tsujii also presents solo transcriptions of songs by Rachmaninoff and Mikhail Pletnev’s suite of transcriptions of Tchaikovsky’s The …

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 new album from Víkingur Ólafsson features music by Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert in a recital the Icelandic pianist presented at Symphony Center last June, named one of “Top Ten Performances of 2025” by Chicago Classical Review. At the heart of Opus 109 is Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 30 in E major, Op. 109, which Víkingur places in a musically …

In her new EP commemorating the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, rising star pianist Jeneba Kanneh-Mason ponders “with what music may Jane Austen have been familiar? Which pieces might she have performed privately?” The original Austen family music book collection dating from Jane Austen’s lifetime is extant and was able to provide some direction. Furthermore, Jane Austen is also …

With their latest album, reeed quintet Calefax explores the majestic and mysterious essence of the organ— without an organ in sight. Revoicing centuries of repertoire for their wind ensemble, they channel the instrument’s spiritual depth, improvisational roots, and theatrical flair through breath and reed instead of pipes. From Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck’s Fantasia Chromatica and Nicolaus Bruhns’s richly imaginative Prelude in …

Composed in 1828, the final year of the composer’s short life, Schubert’s Fantasia in F minor is often described as the greatest of all works for piano, four hands. The Fantasia forms the centerpiece of the collaborative all-Schubert album from pianists Leif Ove Andsnes and Bertrand Chamayou, who first performed it together in 2016. The recording includes Andsnes performing the …

In 2024, the French harpsichordist Jean Rondeau devoted eight months to recording Louis Couperin: The Complete Works. The monumental project features all his works, plus works selected by Jean Rondeau composed by the masters and students of Couperin. “There is something in the music of Louis Couperin that transcends the instrument and proves inspiring in an absolutely unique way,” says …

Deutsche Grammophon presents a live album by Eric Lu, winner of this year’s 19th International Chopin Piano Competition, recorded earlier this year. The album captures highlights from Lu’s performances in various rounds of one of the most prestigious competitions in the world. A graduate of Curtis Institute, Eric Lu became the first pianist to win the International Chopin Piano Competition …

The BBC Philharmonic led by John Andrews present a landmark recording, the first album devoted entirely to the music of Avril Coleridge-Taylor (1903–1998), daughter of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. A composer, conductor, pianist, and singer of remarkable versatility, she long remained in the shadow of her father, but as the album reveals, she had a distinctive, eloquent, and assured musical voice. Her …

Francesco Tristano’s latest album, the third in the pianist’s “great life project” to record Johann Sebastian Bach’s complete catalogue, features the seven Toccatas, BWV 910-916. The Toccatas probably date to around 1707-1715, though no autograph manuscript has survived and their precise origins remain unknown. It is not clear if the Toccatas were written to provide training materials for his pupils, …

Violinist Geneva Lewis and pianist Clare Hammond are soloists join the BBC National Orchestra of Wales for another released this calendar year celebrating the music of Grace Williams. The Welsh composer held herself and her art to the highest standards, withdrawing and destroying scores which failed to live up to her ideals. Her Violin Concerto was only performed a few …

Lang Lang’s highly anticipated new album Piano Book 2 brings together iconic classical works, new contemporary pieces, and themes from film and TV scores, anime, and video games. It offers 32 miniature gems for all generations — spanning composers such as Bach, Chopin, Liszt, and Rachmaninoff to Tony Ann, Yu-Peng Chen, Ludovico Einaudi, and Joe Hisaishi. Also including music from …

The “American dream” is the thread that connects two works for two pianos and orchestra with a third piece for piano duo, presented by pianists Ludmilla Berlinskaya and Arthur Ancelle with the Victor Hugo Orchestra. Dana Suesse was born in Kansas City in 1909. She played her own compositions on the radio from the age of thirteen and composed hit …

Washington, D.C.–based pianists—composer-performer Sam Post and his friend and colleague Ralitza Patcheva—have join forces to reimagine Bach’s iconic Well-Tempered Clavier. Their new recording, The Well-“Tampered” Clavier, Book 1, embraces the expressive possibilities of the modern piano and infuses the music with rhythmic vitality drawn from jazz, ragtime, folk, world music, and twentieth-century classical styles. In the Baroque era, improvising, ornamenting, …

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 …

Georgijs Osokins, a proud advocate of the rarely celebrated musical heritage of the Baltic states, presents an album of works by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, who turns 90 this year. For Arvo features Pärt’s complete solo piano works as well as Osokins’s own transcriptions of several other famous pieces, including Fratres. This album marks Latvian-born pianist’s first solo recording on …

Yunchan Lim shares a deeply personal and thoughtful interpretation of one of Tchaikovsky’s most intimate piano works: The Seasons. Recorded live at the Yehudi Menuhin School in Surrey, Yunchan Lim views the twelve pieces not merely as a set of months, but as a story portraying someone’s final year of life “It begins with a man who is lost in …

Recently heard on Live from WFMT, Canadian pianist Jaeden Izik-Dzurko is the first prize laureate of the 2024 Concours musical international de Montréal and the winner of the 2024 Leeds International Piano Competition. Recorded in the months between the International First Round and the Concerto Finals of the Leeds Competition, Izik-Dzurko presents 13 sonatas by Antonio Soler, a Spanish composer …

Many of Valentin Silvestrov’s smaller form works for piano are addressed to fellow composers both past and present, including Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, Purcell, Glinka, and Silvestrov’s contemporaries Leonid Hrabovsky, Alexander Knaifel, Arvo Pärt, and Andre Volkonsky. Pianist Alexei Lubimov, who has been performing Silvestrov’s works for more than half a century, curated this program as a musical dialogue with those …