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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Les Siècles: Music of Maurice Ravel
After their revelatory recording of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, Les Siècles and François-Xavier Roth give us the exotic Mother Goose Suite and Le tombeau de Couperin, which sound so new thanks to this period-instrument setting (light on vibrato, and with instruments appropriate to the time of composition). Ma Mére l’Oye, with its unique colors, benefits most from this approach, less sweet than ...
Schumann: Complete Works for Cello – Gabriel Schwabe
Schumann’s love of the cello, which developed when he learned the instrument as a young man, is expressed most fully in his Cello Concerto in A minor. It is a work marked by freshness of spirit and singing lyricism and stands as a rich example of mid-19th-century Romanticism. His small character pieces reveal Schumann’s joy in the cello’s unique lyrical ...
Toronto Symphony Orchestra: Music of Vaughan Williams
With this celebratory release completing his fourteen-year tenure as Music Director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Peter Oundjian conducts an exquisite Vaughan Williams program. In the program notes of the concert preceding the recording, Oundjian declared: “Ralph Vaughan Williams was possibly England’s most significant composer, and he is a personal favorite of mine. This [recording] presents some of his finest ...
Vyacheslav Gryaznov: Russian Transcriptions
Russian pianist Vyacheslav Gryaznov’s new recording features his own original piano transcriptions of orchestral and chamber works by his countrymen Borodin, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, and Glinka. Gryaznov says that the art of transcription is a genre that is an integral part of his creative life: “The process of creating any piano transcription is completely unique each and every time. I very much ...
Songs of Orpheus: Karim Sulayman, Apollo’s Fire
Lebanese-American tenor Karim Sulayman’s encapsulation of the Orpheus myth infuses his solo recording debut. Orpheus, the greatest singer of all time, famously followed his deceased beloved Eurydice to the gates of Hades in an attempt to bring her back to life. He was thwarted by the gods who forbade him to gaze at her during their journey back to earth. ...
Chicago Harp Quartet: Dance Sketches
The Chicago Harp Quartet, founded in 2012, has quickly established itself as the leading harp ensemble in the United States. CHQ is dedicated to presenting innovative, charismatic and forward-thinking programs. “Dance Sketches” is comprised of almost all original works written for the ensemble, along with some of their most popular arrangements. The album includes music by Richard Bissill, Bruce Broughton, Manuel ...
To Brahms, With Love: From the Cello of Pablo Casals
“To Brahms, with Love: From the Cello of Pablo Casals” features Israeli-American cellist Amit Peled in Brahms’s Cello Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2, accompanied by pianist Noreen Polera. Peled can be heard performing on the 1733 Pablo Casals Goffriller cello, which was personally loaned to him by Maestro Casals’ widow, Mrs. Marta Casals Istomin. Casals performed Brahms’s F Major Sonata for the composer himself, and ...
Matei Varga: Early Departures
Matei Varga’s artistry has received standing ovations from audiences around the world and superlative reviews from prominent critics. “Early Departures” features rarely heard and recorded works by Dinu Lipatti and Tudor Dumitrescu, Romanian pianists who both died young and who, while showing tremendous gifts also as composers, could not fulfill their potential. Varga completes the program with works by Janáček and ...
Lucille Chung: Music of Liszt
Internationally renowned soloist Lucille Chung performs a program of virtuosic and beguiling works by Franz Liszt. Chung has won numerous awards for her performances of Liszt’s music, including the B minor Sonata that is featured on this album. Chung says the sonata has been a close companion for most of her musical life, but it wasn’t until she was exposed ...
Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra: Mussorgsky & Prokofiev
The Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra has released its 13th recording with Music Director Miguel Harth-Bedoya featuring performances of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, in the rarely-performed version arranged by Sergei Gorchakov, and selections from Prokofiev’s beloved ballet Cinderella. The performances were recorded live at Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth, Texas. “There is something special about capturing a live performance with ...
Irina Muresanu: Four Strings Around the World
“Four Strings Around the World” by Romanian-born violinist Irina Muresanu is a program celebrating the diversity of cultures refracted through the unifying voice of solo violin. The album is organized into two sections – “Music from Western and Eastern Europe” and “Music from the Middle East, South and North America.” The recording includes two world premiere recordings: Vák by Indian-born ...
Alessio Bax: Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto & Solo Piano Works
Pianist Alessio Bax returns to recording with the Southbank Sinfonia under Simon Over, in a new album of works by Beethoven centered around the majestic “Emperor” Piano Concerto No. 5. Combining exceptional lyricism and insight with consummate technique, Bax is without a doubt “among the most remarkable young pianists now before the public” (Gramophone). He is now a familiar face ...
The Nash Ensemble: Chamber Music of Dohnányi
The name of Ernő Dohnányi (1877-1960), the Hungarian composer, pianist and conductor, almost disappeared completely a couple of decades after his death, and with it his works were nearly forgotten. Admired by figures as disparate as Brahms and Bartók, Dohnányi’s music embodies virtues of taste, humor, impeccable control of form, and beauty of style. All those qualities are relished by ...
Angela Hewitt: Beethoven Piano Sonatas, Volume 7
One of the world’s leading pianists, Angela Hewitt appears in recital and with major orchestras throughout Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Her career has been established at the highest level, not least through her award-winning recordings for the Hyperion label. This latest installment in Hewitt’s survey of Beethoven’s piano sonatas is bookended by the ‘Tempest’ and Op. 109 sonatas. The ...
Circles: Piano Concertos by Bach & Glass
Grammy-nominated string orchestra A Far Cry and pianist Simone Dinnerstein have teamed up on a new recording of keyboard concertos by Philip Glass and J.S. Bach. The album features the world premiere recording of Glass’s Piano Concerto No. 3, a new concerto for piano and strings co-commissioned by A Far Cry and composed by Glass specifically for Dinnerstein, whom the New ...
Duo Gazzana: Music of Ravel, Franck, Ligeti & Messiaen
A sense of discovery is a key theme in the third ECM recital of sisters Natascia and Raffaella Gazzana. Alongside a landscape of French music for violin and piano, drawing on a multiplicity of inspirations, the album includes a premiere recording of György Ligeti’s Duo, dedicated to Kúrtag. Duo Gazzana plays César Franck’s epic A major Sonata of 1886, and Maurice Ravel’s Sonate ...
Stephen Hough’s Dream Album
Pianist Stephen Hough’s Dream Album, which casts him in the role of performer, composer, and transcriber, is the seventh in a series of “Album” releases from Hough that began with The Piano Album in 1993 and continued most recently with the French Album in 2012. Like all of his Albums, this collection juxtaposes works by different composers, in this case ...
Anne-Marie McDermott: Haydn Piano Sonatas, Volume 2
The esteemed American pianist Anne-Marie McDermott has played concertos, recitals, and chamber music in hundreds of cities in the United States, Europe, and Asia. On this release, McDermott has once again chosen the sonatas of Haydn, making this her second volume of the composer’s work for Bridge Records. “McDermott plays with tremendous wit, bringing out the geniality and humor of Haydn with great ...
Bruckner: Symphony No. 7 – Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Andris Nelsons
This release is the continuation of Andris Nelsons’s much-admired Bruckner symphony cycle with the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig. Here they play the Seventh Symphony – premiered in 1884 by this orchestra and now recorded live to mark its 275th anniversary. Nelsons brings youthful energy, fluidity and rhythmic impulse, while still leaving room for Bruckner’s music’s monumental sound blocks that give ...
Jean-Guihen Queyras: CPE Bach Cello Concertos
Why should music before Mozart now be the sole preserve of period-instrument orchestras? For some years now, Ensemble Resonanz has challenged this idea, without ever neglecting the notion of the sheer pleasure to be derived from the concertos and symphonies of the great Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Like their guest soloist Jean-Guihen Queyras, all the musicians possess equal virtuosity in ...
