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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Nikolai Lugansky: Rachmaninoff 24 Preludes
Rachmaninoff took the genre of the prelude to its highest degree of perfection with his boundless musical invention and fearsome technical demands. In his first recording for Harmonia Mundi, Russian pianist Nikolai Lugansky brilliantly meets the challenge, offering a program of the finest gems in his repertory of choice. BBC Music Magazine said, “Lugansky captures the depth of emotion and ...
Grigory Krotenko: Travels with Goliath
Josef Kämpfer (1735–?1810) was a cavalry officer in the Hungarian army and a self-taught double bass virtuoso and double bass designer. He led a peripatetic life moving through musical circles at the highest levels in Austria, Germany, Paris, London and St. Petersburg. Kämpfer met Leopold Mozart, the Haydn brothers, Vaňhal, and many of the most famous musicians of the day. Russian ...
Liza Ferschtman: Music of Korngold & Bernstein
Dutch violinist Liza Ferschtman is known for her passionate performances, interesting programs and communicative qualities on stage. She is equally at home on the concert stage with concertos, chamber music, recitals, and solo works. In 2006, she received the highest accolade awarded to a musician in the Netherlands, the Dutch Music Prize. On this album, Ferschtman pairs Korngold’s late-Romantic Violin ...
Trio Vitruvi: Schubert
Schubert’s great E-flat major piano trio had its first performance in 1827 in Vienna. Trio Vitruvi returns to Schubert’s gem, giving us the original (longer) version of the score in an impassioned reading, along with the beautiful “Notturno.” Violinist Niklas Walentin, pianist Alexander McKenzie, and cellist Jacob la Cour have performed critically acclaimed concerts around the world. They won both ...
Rachmaninoff: Symphonies – London Symphony Orchestra, Valery Gergiev
Rachmaninoff’s three symphonies reflect different stages of his life and creative development, with the later Symphonic Dances proving to be his last work. United by their unashamed romanticism, they also share his signature “tag” – the Dies irae plainchant, a grim reminder of mortality that pervades Rachmaninoff’s music. They are accompanied here by two works of his fellow countryman, Mily ...
Orion Weiss: Presentiment
Presentiment by Orion Weiss is an album of large-scale works by Granados, Janáček and Scriabin directly and indirectly addressing a world about to be catapulted into the dread of global war, despair and triumph. “The new century,” Weiss says, “had already flooded the romantic aesthetic of the old with anxiety, nostalgia, and confusion. These ominous musical stories go even further, with some ...
Mendelssohn: Complete Music for Cello & Piano
Paul Mendelssohn, Felix’s younger brother, was a banker by profession but an accomplished amateur cellist, and it is to him that we owe Felix Mendelssohn’s three major compositions for cello and piano. This new recording presents Mendelssohn’s complete output for cello and piano, and includes the three large scale works, as well as two short pieces, performed by cellist Marcy ...
Cello Music of Myaskovsky, Prokofiev & Taneyev
Myaskovsky’s two Cello Sonatas are woefully neglected works and deserve far wider circulation – romantic and passionate, they make a worthy alternative to Rachmaninoff’s famous sonata. Coming from the early and late years of the composer’s life, the second sonata was written for Rostropovich, who championed it and ensured all his pupils studied and learned it. Prokofiev’s Ballade is an ...
Berlioz: Harold in Italy
“Wine, blood, joy and rage mingle in mutual intoxication and make music together” was Berlioz’s description of the finale of “Harold in Italy.” He wrote the piece on commission from the virtuoso Niccolò Paganini. Upon seeing Berlioz’s first movement, however, Paganini found the piece to be insufficiently flashy for his own performance, and he never played it, though he confessed to admiring ...
Beethoven: Seiji Ozawa & Martha Argerich
Pianist Martha Argerich and conductor Seiji Ozawa have had long, distinguished careers and have performed together on the concert stage, but this is their first recording collaboration. Joined by the Mito Chamber Orchestra, the album holds Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and his Symphony No. 1. The recordings were made in concert in Japan. Gramophone magazine said, “Seiji Ozawa is ...
Martha Argerich & Sergei Babayan: Prokofiev for Two
Pianists Martha Argerich and Sergei Babayan have recorded selections from Prokofiev’s music for stage and screen in magnificent two-piano transcriptions by Babayan. “Prokofiev for Two” captures for posterity the sense of mutual inspiration felt by these kindred spirits, palpable in their live performances together. The album features Babayan’s twelve-movement transcription of music from the ballet Romeo and Juliet and arrangements of Prokofiev’s incidental music for Hamlet ...
The Cardinall’s Musick: Votive Antiphons of Thomas Tallis
Andrew Carwood and The Cardinall’s Musick continue their series of recordings of choral music by Thomas Tallis. This latest release features his votive antiphons – devotional texts in honor of the Virgin, Christ, or the Saints used as additions to the daily office or for a special occasion. These settings are among the highlights of the composer’s evolving style which responded ...
Liquid Melancholy: Clarinet Music of James Stephenson
Liquid Melancholy, featuring virtuoso clarinetist John Bruce Yeh of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, exudes a kaleidoscope of colors and moods while showering listeners with attractive melodies in a program of music by James M. Stephenson, one of America’s most popular and prolific present-day composers. The Boston Herald has praised Stephenson’s “straightforward, unabashedly beautiful sounds.” The Minnesota Star Tribune calls him “a composer of real ...
The Romantic Piano Concerto: Sir William Sterndale Bennett
Sir William Sterndale Bennett was an English composer, pianist, conductor and music educator. He had a significant influence on English music in the 19th century, not solely as a composer but also as a teacher and as an important figure in London concert life. In recent years, appreciation of Bennett’s compositions has been rekindled and a number of his works have ...
Santa Fe Desert Chorale: The Road Home
Taking its title from Stephen Paulus’ a cappella choral piece, “The Road Home” celebrates the diverse and ever-changing influences that make up American culture. The Santa Fe Desert Chorale, one of the most distinguished American vocal ensembles, is led by artistic director Joshua Habermann. “The variety certainly displayed the ensemble’s impressive versatility. Habermann consistently got vivid performances, introspective music elegantly ...
Rachel Podger: Vivaldi’s Four Seasons
Rachel Podger, “the queen of the baroque violin” (Sunday Times), has established herself as a leading interpreter of the Baroque and Classical music periods. A creative programmer, she is the founder and Artistic Director of Brecon Baroque Festival and her ensemble Brecon Baroque. Together, they bring a fresh approach to Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.” Producer Jonathan Freeman-Attwood says the musicians bring ...
Anita Rachvelishvili: Opera Arias
For her highly anticipated first album on Sony Classical, Georgian mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili joins forces with the RAI National Symphony Orchestra and conductor Giacomo Sagripanti. The program includes two arias – the seductive ‘Habanera’ and ‘Seguidilla’ – from what has become her signature role, Carmen. The selection goes on to reflect her broad dramatic and musical range and her personal ...
Llyr Williams: Beethoven Unbound
“Beethoven Unbound” marks the completion of Llyr Williams’ monumental Beethoven cycle, recorded live at Wigmore Hall over three years. As well as the complete piano sonatas, the release features other works including the 32 Variations in C minor, Eroica Variations, Opus 126 Bagatelles and Diabelli Variations. Williams says, “Rather than adopt the chronological approach, I have arranged the works roughly in ...
Debussy: Impressionniste
Claude Debussy’s taste for the arts, and for painting in particular, is well known. His wide-ranging interests ran from the Italian paintings of the Renaissance to the masterpieces of Symbolism and Art Nouveau, by way of Japanese prints and Impressionism. This collection aims to show how music and painting nourished each other through a variety of Debussy’s works – from ...
Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet – Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Marin Alsop
Based on Shakespeare’s most famous romantic play, Prokofiev’s realization of Romeo and Juliet as a full-length narrative ballet was audacious in its day. It was written during a period of artistic turmoil under a Soviet regime in which arguments raged over such fundamental aspects as the choice between a happy or tragic ending. Marin Alsop’s acclaimed cycle of Prokofiev’s Symphonies ...
