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 …

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.” …

Pianist Alexander Melnikov new album is dedicated to music of Sergei Rachmaninoff, centering his Variations on a Theme by Chopin. Melkinov traveled to Villa Senar, Rachmaninoff’s Bauhaus summer home on Lake Lucerne in Switzerland, to record on the composers’s own grand piano, a birthday gift from Frederik Steinway. The album also features the luminous soprano Julia Lezhneva who joins Melkinov …

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 …

Cellist Aron Zelkowicz is the founder and director of the Pittsburgh Jewish Music Festival which presents rare and diverse works from Jewish musical traditions. In his new album with pianist Christina Wright-Ivanova, Zelkowicz presents late 20th and early 21st century works by six American composers—Carter Pann, Gabriela Lena Frank, Kevin Puts, Margaret Bonds, Stacy Garrop, and Stephen Paulus. Though quintessentially …

On her debut album, Hungarian‑American pianist Julia Hamos presents a deeply personal musical journey that weaves together her dual heritage. A graduate of Juilliard, the Royal Academy of Music, and Mannes—where she studied with luminaries like Richard Goode and Sir András Schiff—Hamos brings technical brilliance to the miniatures by György Kurtág and Béla Bartók which anchor the program. The repertoire for Ellis Island, …

Angela Hewitt’s 50th album for Hyperion Records concludes her Complete Mozart Piano Sonatas project. The 2-CD album ranges from two of the most beloved works – the K545 “Sonata facile” and the charming Variations on “Ah vous dirai-je, maman” – to the composer’s last and most profound piano sonatas. “When you play the complete works of Mozart, you get the …

The Lost Tapes presents previously unreleased live recordings of four pivotal Beethoven piano sonatas. Captured during performances at the Lucerne Festival and Richter’s private venue in La Grange de Meslay, these recordings offer a rare glimpse into the interpretative genius of one of the 20th century’s most esteemed pianists. The selected sonatas—Op. 31 No. 3 “The Hunt”, Op. 90, Op. …

On his ninth album on the Decca label, internationally renowned British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor celebrates Chopin’s genius with two of his most profound and contrasting works: the Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor and the Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor. Composed five years apart, these masterpieces showcase the range of Chopin’s emotional and musical brilliance. Grosvenor comments, …

French harpsichordist and fortepianist Justin Taylor is celebrated for his stylish interpretations of early music. Keen to match the works he tackles with the most appropriate historical instruments, Taylor presents a program of intimate Chopin miniatures on a Pleyel pianino. The pianino, a small upright piano of six and a half octaves that was only made between 1835 and 1842, …

Appointed as the first-ever official organist of the Royal Albert Hall in May 2025, Anna Lapwood has strived to make organ music more accessible to a broader audience. Her dynamic presence and innovative programming continue to inspire both traditional concertgoers and new listeners alike. Firedove is her third solo album, blending classical organ works with contemporary and pop influences. The …