Curating the best new classical recordings
There’s always wonderful music to discover, from instrumental to vocal music, new recordings of old favorites, or albums featuring cutting-edge contemporary works. Discover more about each selection below.
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Bach’s Coffeehouse
Inspired by the musical soirées curated by J.S. Bach, this new release from Apollo’s Fire features repertoire that is believed to have been performed at the Café Zimmerman in Leipzig. Selections include Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 with virtuoso soloists Alan Choo, violin, and Daphna Mor, recorder; and the Double Concerto for Oboe and Violin featuring oboist Debra Nagy and ...
My American Story: North
CSO Artist-in-Residence Daniil Trifonov celebrates music from the country he now calls home with his new double album ranging from jazz and swing to modernism, minimalism, and popular soundtracks. Joined by the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin for George Gershwin’s Concerto in F and the world premiere recording of the concerto written for him by Mason Bates, Trifonov also performs ...
More Bach, Please!
Rinaldo Alessandrini adds a generous helping to the baroque orchestral repertoire with his original transcriptions, arrangements, and adaptations of works by J.S. Bach. Stylishly performed by Concerto Italiano, the album features an orchestral transcription of the Overture in the French Style, BWV 831 (for solo harpsichord), a pastiche Partita for Traverso and String Orchestra, and a pastiche Overture for String ...
Handel: Jephtha – Live in Chicago
Music of the Baroque presents the sublime oratorio Jephtha, Handel’s final masterpiece, recorded live conducted by Dame Jane Glover. Tenor David Portillo, a Ryan Opera Center alum, leads the cast that includes sopranos Lauren Snouffer and Katelyn Lee, mezzo-soprano Clara Osowski, countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, and bass-baritone Neal Davies. The performance from September 2022 marked Jane Glover’s 20th season leading ...
Prayer for Ukraine
Founded in 2010 by students of the Lviv National Music Academy, Vivere String Quartet showcases three Ukrainian composers: Zoltan Almashi, Vasyl Barvinsky, and Hanna Havrylets. The program includes Maria’s City, an homage to Mariupol, composed by Zoltan Almashi from a bomb shelter in Kyiv; two works by Hanna Havrylets, who died from lack of medical care at the onset of ...
Danish Chamber Orchestra: Haydn Late Symphonies, Vol. 4
The Danish Chamber Orchestra presents the fourth volume in a series of Haydn symphonies led by Ádám Fischer, who has led the orchestra for over two decades. The three late symphonies on this album were written during Haydn’s second, triumphant visit to London. The works possess increased artistic weight and mark a transition from Viennese Classicism to Romanticism. With this ...
Nightfall
The new album from Voces8 gathers night-inspired repertoire. includes two world premiere works from British composer and 2024 Classic FM Rising Star Lucy Walker, as well as US composer and regular collaborator, Taylor Scott Davis. Selections by contemporary choral composers Caroline Shaw, Kerensa Briggs, Dan Forrest, and Frank Ticheli share Voces8’s formidable platform with arrangements of songs by Ludovico Einaudi, ...
Mozart: Requiem
The staged production of Raphaël Pichon’s concept for Mozart’s Requiem with director Romeo Castellucci premiered at Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, 2019. After several dates across Europe, a concert version premiered at the 2023 BBC Proms; The Times headline exclaimed, “Mozart’s Requiem is reborn at the Proms” continuing with “It’s not often a performance of Mozart’s Requiem comes along that makes it sound ...
Fauré & Poulenc: Works for Piano & Orchestra
Following his acclaimed recording of the Saint-Saëns piano concertos with the Malmö Symphony Orchestra, French pianist Romain Descharmes reunites with the orchestra for works by Fauré and Poulenc conducted by Michael Halász. The centerpieces of this all-French program are Fauré’s Ballade and the Poulenc concerto, the former graceful and serene with a flamboyant “Liszt-ian” finale, and the latter clever, whimsical, ...
Kaleidoscope
Spanish pianist and scholar Isabel Dobarro has an active international performing career and has performed and lectured at some of the most renowned venues in the world, including Carnegie Hall, the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, the European Parliament, and the National Auditorium in Madrid and the Palau de la Música Catalana. Dobarro is recognized as a passionate advocate for female ...
American Woman
Cellist Juliana Soltis and pianist Ruoting Li champion women composers Mary Howe, Amy Beach, Margaret Bonds, Helen Crane, Dorothy Rudd Moore, and Florence Price. The new album sheds light on a treasure trove of rarely heard gems of cello-piano literature. Helen Crane’s Six Idylls is of particular interest, and new to WFMT. Written in 1918, the Six Idylls for Cello ...
Destinées
Baroque violinist Sophie de Bardonnèche pays tribute to French female composers of the 18th century. The centerpiece works are three violin sonatas of Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, one of which is unpublished. No fewer than ten female composers — most new to the WFMT library – are represented in this programme of sonatas, overtures and dances devised by de ...
Silenced: Unsung Voices of the 20th Century
Tenor Ian Koziara and pianist Bradley Moore spotlight art songs by Franz Schreker, Vítězslava Kaprálová, Viktor Ullmann, and Alexander von Zemlinsky, whose musical achievements were overshadowed by the oppression of the Third Reich. This album marks the first tenor-voice recording for almost all of these rare songs. The musical language of these early 20th century works is more Late Romantic ...
Adrian Sutton: Orchestral Works
Following a devastating cancer diagnosis in September 2022, Adrian Sutton, the composer of the music for War Horse, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and other National Theatre productions, made a conscious decision to change his focus, committing himself to working solely on music for the concert hall. This new album of world premiere recordings reflects his ...
Cor Collaborandi: A Transnational Celebration of the Early Modern
Led by trombonist and early music specialist Michael Kris, the Kris Collective brings together musicians from across two continents performing on modern instruments. Their album Cor Collaborandi celebrates the cross-pollination of musical ideas between the Venetian and Spanish schools of the early Baroque. In his program notes, Michael Kris says: “Music of the 16th to 18th centuries was transmitted artist ...
Stravinsky Chamber Works
Grammy Award-winning Conductor and soprano Barbara Hannigan leads an ensemble of outstanding young musicians from the Royal Academy of Music and The Juilliard School on this new recording. Since 2002, the Academy and The Juilliard School, both international leaders in their field, have enjoyed collaborations in performances, exchanges and recordings. In this project, Hannigan conducts this transatlantic group in a ...
The Masters of Notre-Dame de Paris
Led by harpsichordist and organist Sébastien Daucé, Ensemble Correspondances brings together a group of singers and instrumentalists, all of whom are specialists in seventeenth-century French repertory. Ensemble Correspondances made its Chicago debut in the spring of 2022 at University of Chicago. Their new album centers the Messe de Requiem of André Campra, contextualizing it with works by François Cosset, Jean ...
Brahms: Piano Quartets Nos. 2 & 3
Lars Vogt, who died at age 51, founded the Spannungen festival for chamber music in Heimbach, NRW, Germany. Vogt gave his last concert there, playing Brahms’s Piano Quartet No. 3 with Christian Tetzlaff, Barbara Buntrock and Tanja Tetzlaff in June 2022. Vogt had attempted to record the Piano Quartets No. 2 and 3, but only the No.2 was complete at ...
Douce France
French tenor Benjamin Bernheim’s first song recital album pairs him with his regular collaborator, pianist Carrie Ann Matheson. Matheson is artistic director of the San Francisco Opera Center and the Merola Opera Program and was formerly coach, prompter, and assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera. Bernheim made his American debut at Lyric Opera of Chicago in 2019 in Gounod’s Faust ...
Espansiva
Danish pianists Rikke Sandberg and Kristoffer Hyldig have partnered to record dazzling versions of music by Denmark’s most famous composer Carl Nielsen for piano, four hands. Selections include Nielsen’s own piano, four hands versions of his Third Symphony, “Sinfonia Espansiva,” and excerpts from his opera Saul and David. In addition to being promotional tools, four hand arrangements were , in ...
