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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Tomas Cotik & Tao Lin: Mozart’s Complete Violin Sonatas
Violinist Tomas Cotik and pianist Tao Lin continue their series of recordings for Centaur with this new release. Here they perform the complete sonatas for violin and piano by Mozart. Hailed by Michael Tilson Thomas as “an excellent violinist,” Tomas Cotik is internationally recognized as a soloist, chamber musician, and professor. Described by Miami Herald as possessing “keen musical intelligence ...
Kian Soltani: Home
Kian Soltani’s debut album for Deutsche Grammophon, Home, is an homage to his Austrian and Persian roots. He presents works by his favorite composers, Schubert and Schumann, as well as the world premiere recording of Iranian composer Reza Vali’s Persian Folk Songs, newly arranged for and dedicated to this young cellist.
Westminster Abbey Choir: Music of Nicholas Ludford
Nicholas Ludford’s music is by no means eclipsed by that of his more famous near contemporaries (who include Thomas Tallis and John Taverner). We now can place him as the preeminent composer of the last days of pre-Reformation England and inheritor of the mantel of Robert Fayrfax. The Choir of Westminster Abbey performs a selection of sacred music by Ludford. That ...
Daniel Barenboim: Debussy
Daniel Barenboim celebrates the legacy of Claude Debussy, whom he extols as “the artist of illusion,” with his first album devoted to the composer’s piano music. His interpretations are enriched by a profound knowledge of Debussy’s orchestral works, which Barenboim explored intensively as principal conductor of the Paris Orchestra. Here, using wholly pianistic means, he creates an imaginary orchestra with ...
Brahms: Symphony No. 2 – Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, Thomas Zehetmair
The Stavanger Symphony Orchestra has become one of the most successful orchestras in Scandinavia. In recent years it has achieved major artistic development and attracted an ever greater following, both inside and outside Norway. In 2015, the SSO established its own label SSO Recordings. Now, one year later comes the label’s first release, a dynamic recording of Brahms’ Symphony No. 2 in ...
Kim André Arnesen: Choral Works
Kim André Arnesen is one of Norway’s most frequently performed contemporary composers. International recognition of his music includes a performance of the beautifully evocative Cradle Hymn at the White House for Barack Obama in 2016. Arnesen’s association with Denver’s Kantorei resulted in their commissioning the warmly expressive The gift I’ll leave you and the eloquent Making or Breaking. Even When ...
Sheku Kanneh-Mason: Inspiration
18-year-old cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason came into the spotlight when he won the prestigious BBC Young Musician award in 2016. Signed to Decca Classics, his debut album, “Inspiration,” features Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1, the piece he performed in the BBCYM final. Recorded live with conductor Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, “Inspiration” also includes a broad range of ...
Garrick Ohlsson: Music of Manuel de Falla
Although long regarded as one of the world’s leading exponents of the music of Frédéric Chopin, Garrick Ohlsson commands an enormous repertoire, which ranges over the entire piano literature. His latest recording on the Hyperion label features some of Manuel de Falla’s most beloved works, combining music originally written for the piano with the composer’s own transcriptions from his classic ballet and ...
Montreal Symphony Orchestra Chamber Soloists: Beethoven & Strauss
This is the first album of a new series of recordings with the soloists of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, under the artistic direction of Andrew Wan, concertmaster of the orchestra since 2008. Two major works are at the heart of this new album: Beethoven’s Septet in E-flat Major, Op. 20, and Franz Hasenöhrl’s arrangement Till Eulenspiegel einmal anders! on the music ...
Czech Philharmonic: Smetana’s Má Vlast
In one of his last recordings with the Czech Philharmonic, Jiří Bělohlávek conducts a heartfelt account of Smetana’s great set of symphonic poems: Má vlast (My Homeland). This recording is the first release by the Czech Philharmonic and their much-loved chief conductor, Jiří Bělohlávek, following his passing in May 2017. Smetana’s masterpiece has played a central role during the most important moments of the Czech Philharmonic’s ...
Ralph van Raat: Debussy & Stravinsky
Both La Mer by Debussy and The Rite of Spring by Stravinsky are now regarded as two of the most influential pieces of the twentieth century, although these achievements were accomplished in entirely different ways. The notoriously difficult solo piano arrangement of Stravinsky’s own piano duet version of The Rite of Spring by the Russian pianist Vladimir Leyetchkiss met with ...
Accademia Bizantina: The Art of Fugue
Accademia Bizantina was founded in Ravenna, Italy, in 1983 with the intention of “making music like a large quartet”. Then as now, the group is managed autonomously by its members, guaranteeing the chamber music approach to their performances which has been their distinguishing feature. On its latest recording, the ensemble presents The Art of Fugue, Johann Sebastian Bach’s last composition. ...
New York Philharmonic: Beethoven Symphonies 5 & 7
The New York Philharmonic has launched a partnership with Decca Gold, a newly established label, with the release of concert recordings of Beethoven’s Fifth and Seventh Symphonies. The performances are conducted by Jaap van Zweden, who becomes the orchestra’s music director in September 2018. In a review of the concert, the New York Times stated that “Mr. van Zweden led ...
Poulenc Trio: Trains of Thought
Since its founding in 2003, the Poulenc Trio has established itself as one of the world’s finest ensembles in the lesser-known domain of double-reed chamber music. On “Trains of Thought,” the qualities of these instruments are particularly well-served by the trios from Francis Poulenc and Jean Francais. The album also offers winning arrangements of music by Shostakovich and Rossini, topped ...
Price & Cockerham: Violin Concertos
It is indeed a cause for excitement when two concertos by Florence Price, the first African-American woman to write a symphony performed by a major U.S. orchestra, are recorded. There are no known performances of Price’s first violin concerto, but the Violin Concerto No. 2, completed in 1952 was performed posthumously by its dedicatee, Minnie Cedargreen Jemberg, at the opening ...
Daniel Hope: Journey to Mozart
A stylish player and imaginative programmer, Daniel Hope would never give us just a Mozart violin concerto album. Instead, as the title implies, he leads us towards the composer, putting him in context, and taking us down some intriguing and delightful byways. So, before Mozart’s ever-charming Third Concerto, he offers works by Gluck, Haydn, and Salomon. Coaxing crisp, sprightly playing ...
Haydn: An Imaginary Orchestral Journey
Sir Simon Rattle pays homage to a composer he holds close to his heart with An Imaginary Orchestral Journey through the music of Joseph Haydn. Rattle trawls through the great composer’s impressive catalog, piecing together excerpts from symphonies, oratorios and operas spanning a 40-year period in what Rattle describes as ‘a kind of greatest hits’ format. The London Symphony Orchestra’s music director ...
ChangYong Shin: Bach, Mozart, Haydn & Beethoven
Changyong Shin, the gifted winner of the 2016 Hilton Head International Piano Competition, debuts on the Steinway Label with a shimmering program. During the competition, Jury Chair Douglas Humphreys remarked that Shin “is a pianist with passionate expression and profound artistry, representative of the best among his generation.” As part of his first prize package for the competition, Shin has ...
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir: Music of Schnittke & Pärt
Alfred Schnittke and Arvo Pärt lived through times of remarkable change in the last decades of the Soviet Union. From the 1970s, state restrictions on religion were gradually relaxed and this was reflected in the arts and especially in music. Both composers began to incorporate religious themes into their work, moving away from the modernist abstraction that had characterized their ...
Third Coast Percussion: Paddle to the Sea
Third Coast Percussion’s Paddle to the Sea transports listeners into a realm of imaginative sounds and world-premiere recordings evoking the aquatic world. Anchoring the album is the ensemble’s original collaborative composition Paddle to the Sea. The talented foursome conceived it as a live soundtrack to the 1966 film of the same name, based on a classic children’s story. Third Coast found a wellspring of ...
