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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Murray Perahia: Beethoven Piano Sonatas
Grammy-winning pianist Murray Perahia stands in the tradition of the great keyboard artists, armed with consummate technical skills and boundless imagination. After years of studying the original manuscripts, working sketches, and editions published during Beethoven’s lifetime, and having edited the new Henle Urtext edition of the complete Beethoven piano sonatas, Perahia records two sonatas for the first time: Op. 106 ...
Ernest Bloch: Music for Viola and Piano
After this vibrant program of Ernest Bloch’s music for viola and piano was recorded in 2001, the tapes disappeared for fifteen years. When they resurfaced, artists Paul Neubauer and Margo Garrett were thrilled that the tapes were not only salvageable, but also featured playing that they felt presented their best possible efforts to bring these works to life. Among the ...
Nikolaj Znaider: Mozart Violin Concertos Nos. 4 & 5
Nikolaj Znaider performs at the highest level as both conductor and virtuoso violin soloist, and for this album, the first of two releases exploring all five Mozart violin concertos, he directed the London Symphony Orchestra from his instrument, the ‘Kreisler’ Guarnerius ‘del Gesu’ of 1741. Mozart’s five violin concertos were all written when he was a teenager, but there is ...
Xiayin Wang: Piano Music of Granados
A pianist of keen musicality and sweeping virtuosity, Xiayin Wang presents a fascinating exploration of works by Enrique Granados, revealing a technically challenging and complex musical language, yet full of color and emotional intensity. Perhaps because the source of their inspiration was so close to the composer’s heart, the Goyescas piano pieces are the most liberated examples of the genius ...
Bruckner & Wagner: Gewandhaus Orchestra, Andris Nelsons
Andris Nelsons releases the second installment in his Bruckner cycle with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, released in time for the orchestra’s 275th birthday and Nelsons’ inauguration as its new music director. He brings youthful energy, fluidity, and rhythmic impulse, while still leaving room for Bruckner’s monumental sound blocks. By including selected instrumental works by Wagner in the cycle, Nelsons’ idea is to demonstrate ...
Lara Downes & Friends: For Lenny
Lara Downes’ album “For Lenny” celebrates the 100th birthday of Leonard Bernstein with a special friends-and-family tribute to the man behind the music. The recording features Bernstein’s aptly-named Anniversaries for Piano, new arrangements of his songs, and world premieres of works dedicated to Bernstein by leading American composers, including Stephen Sondheim, John Corigliano, and Stephen Schwartz. The album is introduced ...
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 ...
