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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Clair de Lune
Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “brilliant” and “superb,” SAKURA Cello Quintet (Stella Cho, Michael Kaufman, Yoshika Masuda, Zachary Mowitz, and Peter Myers) explores great music of the past through dazzling arrangements on familiar works, and continually expands the five-cello repertoire through commissioning new works. The group’s name, SAKURA, is a tribute to their mentor, cellist Ralph Kirshbaum, whose ...
Dvořák: Slavonic Dances
The Czech Philharmonic led by Principal Guest Conductor Rattle present the set of sixteen pieces which Dvořák composed between 1878 and 1886, taking inspiration from Brahms’s Hungarian Dances. Originally written for piano four hands, the first set of Slavonic Dances were orchestrated soon after publication at the request of Dvořák’s publisher Simrock, who also commissioned the second volume; the pieces ...
Travels with Cello
Cellist Susanna Mendlow presents her debut solo album that offers a unique musical tour of select styles, guiding the listener through a blend of original arrangements, works infused with traditional folk idioms, and contemporary premieres. It features music by Sulkhan Tsintsadze, Noam Faingold, Julia Adolphe, Astor Piazzolla, and Felix Mendelssohn — much of it never-before recorded for cello and piano. ...
A Romantic From Kharkiv: Music of Sergei Bortkiewicz
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 ...
Solitude
Countertenor Reginald Mobley’s Grammy-nominated (and Opus Klassik award-winning) album Because explored the roots of American music blending jazz, soul, blues, and classical genres. Collaborating with Chicago-based lutenist/guitarist Brandon Acker and double-bass and gamba player Doug Balliet, Mobley’s new album features English lute song by Purcell, Dowland, and Eccles, alongside song arrangements by Virginia-born guitar virtuoso, abolitionist, and composer Justin Holland ...
Piazzolla: Balada para un loco
Accordionist Théo Ould became, at the age of 24, the first accordionist to be shortlisted as a “Newly Discovered Talent” at the Victoires de la Musique Classique awards. Le Monde raved: “Served by a masterly technique (an unbelievably supple left hand and an inexhaustible wealth of phrasing), Théo Ould’s interpretations show a personality expressing itself naturally in terms of the ...
Paris – Hollywood
Alexandre Desplat, the Academy Award-winning modern master of the film score, presents a double-album souvenir of concert performed at the Philharmonie de Paris in January 2025. The concert program featured new arrangements from 15 of his best-known film scores including a suite from three Wes Anderson films (Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and The French Dispatch); a “Royal ...
Kevin Puts: Concerto for Orchestra, Silent Night Elegy & Virelai
St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s first album with Music Director Stéphane Denève comprises three world premiere recordings by native St. Louisan and Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy-winning composer Kevin Puts. Dedicated to this orchestra and conductor, Concerto for Orchestra was written in response to the school shooting that occurred in Uvalde in 2022. “Silent Night Elegy” is drawn from Put’s acclaimed opera, ...
Passing Fancy: Beauty in a Moment of Chaos
New York City-based period instrument ensemble Sonnambula’s debut album on Avie Records traverses music by several Renaissance composers who were forced to conceal their identities for social, religious, or ethnic reasons. Yet their music transcended the disorder surrounding them, flourishing in the intersection of beliefs and styles. The program features works by William Byrd and Richard Dering, two Catholics composing ...
Birds of Paradise
Ember – a trio comprising harpist Emily Levin, violinist Julia Choi, and cellist Christine Lamprea – releases its debut album celebrating both historical and contemporary women composers while addressing the cultural significance of the contributions of women in classical music. The program showcases three compelling works: French harpist and composer Henriette Renié’s groundbreaking Trio in B-flat Major (1901), the first ...
Symphonic Chronicles, Vol. 5
Navona Records continues its series of world premiere recordings of orchestral works by celebrated living composers from a wide variety of backgrounds and influences. Volume five includes Kim Diehnelt’s With Courage, Dear Heart. Diehnelt, currently a resident of Burlington, Vermont, was previously active in the Chicago scene leading such groups as Sounds of the South Loop, the South Loop Symphony, ...
Ravel Paris 2025
Daphnis et Chloé, Le Tombeau de Couperin, and Ma Mère l’Oye anchor this new three CD box set of orchestral works by Maurice Ravel, recorded by the Orchestre National de France and its Music Director, Cristian Măcelaru at the Ravel Festival in Paris earlier this year. The festival marked the 150th anniversary of the French composer’s birth and celebrated the ...
The French in Spain
Music director JoAnn Falletta leads the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in works by three French composers who saw Spain as a paradise of warmth, fragrance, and color, whether real or imagined. Debussy’s Images, Ibert’s Escales, and Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole show the considerable impact Spanish culture had on French composers in the early 20th century. “I have personally always been drawn to ...
Home
Rising American violinist Karisa Chiu — Cedille Records’ 2021 Emerging Artist Competition Finalist — and renowned Chinese pianist Zhu Wang unite for Chiu’s debut album, HOME. Influenced by her Chicago upbringing, pandemic discoveries, and Korean and Chinese family roots, the recording reflects the various interpretations of “home” in the 25-year-old violinist’s life. “This album is not only a story of ...
Songs of Passion
In their newest release, mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre and Jupiter, the ensemble led by lutenist Thomas Dunford, present a collection of vocal and instrumental music by John Dowland and Henry Purcell. Repertoire includes Dowland’s Lachrimae and vocal works from his First and Second Book of Ayres, as well as selections from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and The Fairy Queen. Baritone Huw ...
For Arvo
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 ...
Edge of the Storm
The Telegraph Quartet presents the second volume in its 20th-Century Vantage Points series with a new album examining the turbulent years of war and its aftermath from 1941-1951 through string quartets by Grażyna Bacewicz, Benjamin Britten, and Mieczysław Weinberg. As Kai Christiansen writes in the liner notes, “Each composer featured on the album lived a unique wartime life that unmistakably ...
William Lawes: Lighten Mine Eies
Led by gambist/conductor Robin Pharo, the French period instrument Ensemble Près de votre oreille (Close to your ear) makes its debut on the Harmonia Mundi label with a program of sacred vocal work and viol consorts with harp by William Lawes. The brilliant heir to William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons, Lawes wrote contrapuntal 5- and 6-part works of immense complexity ...
Nielsen: Clarinet Concerto, Helios, Symphony No. 5
Edward Gardner’s series of Nielsen symphonies with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra continues with this recording of the Symphony No. 5 complemented by the overture Helios and the Clarinet Concerto, featuring Alessandro Carbonare as soloist. Composed in 1903 on a trip to Greece, Helios depicts sunrise, noontime, and sunset over the Aegean Sea. The Clarinet Concerto dates from 1928 and is ...
Laurie Christman: Running with Horses
A native of Los Angeles, Laurie Christman was raised in a musical home as her mother had been an opera singer. Her melodic compositional style has been influenced by the music of the Romantic and Impressionist eras. Christman’s compositions embody those musical aesthetics while directing the listener toward a future where concert music continues to be relevant, meaningful, accessible, and ...
