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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Saint-Saens: Organ Symphony & Carnival of the Animals
Saint-Saëns briefly paused work on his Third Symphony for a holiday in Austria, during which the whimsy of his Carnival of the Animals was born. Yet these two works – from the very same year of the composer’s life – could not be more different, and make a dramatic coupling showing two sides of a singular genius. Martha Argerich and ...
Rachel Podger & Brecon Baroque: Grandissima Gravita
Rachel Podger, called “the queen of the Baroque violin” by the Sunday Times, has established herself as a leading interpreter of the Baroque and Classical music periods. She is the founder and artistic director of the Brecon Baroque Festival and her ensemble Brecon Baroque. Their new album brings together four violinist-composers who are united by a reverence for Arcangelo Corelli. Works ...
Leif Ove Andsnes: Sibelius
Sibelius’ solo piano music – too long in the shadow of his symphonic writings – is the focus of Leif Ove Andsnes’ new recording. The album gathers together some of the Finnish composer’s lesser-known gems that Andsnes uncovered while going through Sibelius’ entire piano output. Andsnes says, “There has been such a feeling of discovery. Everyone was astonished that there ...
Daniil Trifonov: Chopin Evocations
Pianist Daniil Trifonov’s latest album captures the magic of Chopin’s music and traces its influence through the works of five other composers. On this double-disc set, Trifonov performs Chopin’s two piano concertos and a selection of some of his earliest and latest solo works, as well as tributes to Chopin by Grieg, Mompou, Schumann, Tchaikovsky and Barber. The album features ...
Eden Stell Guitar Duo: Mompou’s Cançons i Danses
Mark Eden of the Eden Stell Guitar Duo writes: “Federico Mompou’s affinity for folkloric music demonstrates his love for an art with no artifice – one that can only be described as genuine, natural, sincere, and authentic.” Mompou wrote fifteen Cançons i Danses between 1921 and 1978, all for piano with the exception of the thirteenth for guitar and fifteenth ...
Cliburn Gold 2017: Yekwon Sunwoo
On June 10, 2017, the Fifteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition crowned its gold medalist in Fort Worth, Texas: Yekwon Sunwoo of South Korea. Established in 1962, the quadrennial Van Cliburn International Piano Competition is often recognized as “the most prestigious classical music contest in the world” (The Chicago Tribune) and engages its global audience through fully produced live webcasts ...
Juan Diego Florez: Mozart Arias
Acclaimed across the globe for the beauty of his voice and the emotional power of his performances, Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez has in his career so far focused almost exclusively on the masterpieces of the bel canto repertoire by Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini, and others. Now, in his debut recording for Sony Classical, he turns his attention to the ...
Sit Fast: Seven Tears Upon Silence
When John Dowland composed the pieces that form the famous Lachrimae, or Seven Teares, he gave the instrumental repertoire one of its first masterpieces. The Sit Fast consort, lead by Atsushi Sakaï, presents a new reading of those timeless pages. Who says the viol should be earmarked for early music? The pure sonority of this instrument also inspired the English ...
Angela Hewitt: Scarlatti Keyboard Sonatas
After the success of Angela Hewitt’s first album of Scarlatti sonatas, she has released a second on the Hyperion label. As Hewitt herself writes: “The first recording was such a great experience that, inevitably, I couldn’t stop there. Not with another 540 or so to choose from!” Of this latest selection, many are new to her repertoire and are performed ...
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet: Mozart Piano Concertos
The effervescent and communicative energy of pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and conductor Gábor Takács-Nagy is encapsulated again in this second volume of their series devoted to Mozart’s piano concertos. The two concertos presented here are among the six that Mozart composed in Vienna in an extraordinarily productive year. As Bavouzet states in the notes, they “share their association with operatic and ...
Music of Nimrod Borenstein
The legendary conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy, with the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra and the promising young violinist Irmina Trynkos, presents the premiere recording of three works by Nimrod Borenstein. The past few years have seen a number of Borenstein’s compositions presented at prestigious venues in London, Zurich, Paris, and New York. If You Will It, It Is No Dream was written especially ...
Choir of Clare College: Reformation, 1517-2017
In 1517, indignant at the mercenary abuses of the Church and convinced that a public debate was needed to restore faith in the founding texts of the Bible, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door of Wittenberg Castle. This marked the beginning of the Reformation, which was to spread all over Europe. Five hundred years later, Graham ...
George Li: Live at the Mariinsky
Pianist George Li celebrates his newly-signed exclusive Warner Classics contract with his recording debut, the solo recital ‘Live at the Mariinsky.’ The young American, winner of the silver medal at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 2015, offers an enthralling program of Haydn, Chopin, Rachmaninoff and Liszt. It was recorded live at the Mariinsky Concert Hall in that other ...
Takacs Quartet: Dvorak Chamber Works
Recognized as one of the world’s great ensembles, the Takács Quartet plays with a unique blend of drama, warmth and humor, combining four distinct musical personalities to bring fresh insights to the string quartet repertoire. A new release from the Takács Quartet is guaranteed to be a highlight of the musical year. Their latest features two works by Dvořák: the American ...
Ivan Ilic: Reicha Rediscovered
Pianist Ivan Ilić has signed a new multi-album recording contract with Chandos Records. His first project on the label is a series devoted to the solo piano works of the Czech composer Antoine Reicha (1770-1836), a contemporary and lifelong friend of Beethoven. Although best known for his contributions to the repertoire for wind quintet, Reicha wrote vast quantities of solo ...
Steven Osborne Plays Debussy
Steven Osborne is one of Britain’s most highly regarded pianists. His awards and prizes have included Gramophone Awards in 2009 and 2013, three German Schallplattenpreise, and the Royal Philharmonic Society Instrumentalist of the Year in 2013. Osborne’s unerring command of the elusive ambiguities of Debussy’s piano-writing has already been amply confirmed by his earlier recording of the two books of Preludes. ...
Danish String Quartet: Last Leaf
Widely recognized as one of today’s most exciting chamber groups, the Danish String Quartet not only brings new insights to contemporary composition and core classical repertoire. The group also explores folk music, beguiling listeners with these sounds on record and in concert. For “Last Leaf,” the group returns to the texturally rich, emotionally resonant world of Nordic folk music, from ...
Richard Narroway: Bach’s Six Cello Suites
Recognized for his stylistic versatility and wide-ranging musical interests, Australian cellist Richard Narroway has proven himself to be equally at home with repertoire both new and old. For his debut recording, he journeys through the six cello suites of Bach. Narroway says, “There is something truly remarkable about the way Bach was able to conjure a complete, multi-layered sound world ...
Jonas Kaufmann: L’Opera
Jonas Kaufmann pays homage to a magnificent era of opera that defined musical splendor and elegance, in his new album of 19th-century French opera arias and duets. “The French operatic repertory is very close to my heart,” says Kaufmann. “This fascinating music reflects a period in European culture. I didn’t want to choose only highlights for this album but also ...
Tasmin Little: Szymanowski & Karlowicz Violin Concertos
After widely acclaimed recordings of Walton’s and Lutosławski’s violin concertos, Tasmin Little again joins the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edward Gardner, in intensely expressive interpretations of the concertos by the Polish composers Karłowicz and Szymanowski. All were written within the space of a generation, and yet they belong to quite different worlds. One was composed at a time of national ...
