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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Polyptyque
Inspired by the polyptchs (altarpieces composed of multiple panels, often depicting scenes from the Bible or religious figures) of the 14th century Italian painter Duccio, Swiss composer Frank Martin composed a work in six tableaux based on the Passion of Christ. Polyptyque, a concerto for violin and two small orchestras rooted in the music of Bach, Martin sets out to ...
Women
A tribute to women composers across history and a range of genres, Esther Abrami’s new album Women showcases 14 composers, spanning newly composed works and rediscovered masterpieces. Abrami carefully chose each piece on Women, not only for its musical brilliance but also for the emotional connection it holds for her, highlighting the often-overlooked voices of women in classical music. “I ...
Ukraine: A Piano Portrait
Described by Gramophone as a pianist of “consummate skill and thrilling conviction,” Margaret Fingerhut presents a deeply personal recital featuring music written between 1877 and 2005 by composers from the country of her grandfather’s birth. The survey includes Mykola Lysenko, the earliest Ukrainian composer represented. We owe our knowledge of Lysenko’s music to his pupil and editor, Lev Revutsky, who ...
Brahms: Piano Quartets Nos. 2 & 3
Polish conductor and pianist Krystian Zimerman is joined by violinist Maria Nowak (co-leader of his Polish Festival Orchestra), violist Katarzyna Budnik (principal viola of the Sinfonia Varsovia), and cellist Yuya Okamoto (newly appointed cellist of the Ébène Quartet) to perform two piano quartets by Johannes Brahms. In an interview with Presto Music, Zimerman is disarmingly honest about the foursome having ...
Daugherty: Blue Electra
This album showcases three new evocative works by American composer Michael Daugherty, exploring the triumphs and tragedies of flight. Blue Electra is a dramatic violin concerto inspired by the sensational life and mysterious disappearance of aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart in 1937. Last Dance at the Surf is a one-movement dance symphony for orchestra that reflects upon rock ’n roll legend ...
Bach: The Complete Violin Concertos
James Ehnes debuted with Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra in 1993 when he was 17 and has since shared the stage with the ensemble countless times. He was the Orchestra’s first-ever Artist in Residence from 2021 to 2024 and a featured artist on several national and international tours. Ehnes reunites with the musicians of the NAC Orchestra to perform Bach’s ...
Silk Apples: Chamber Music by Rami Levin
Following the release of her debut album Wings, composer Rami Levin returns with a second album of chamber music featuring some of the most celebrated Chicago-based musicians. Cavatina Duo performs the title track, where Levin draws on the Brazilian choro, characterized by fast tempi, syncopation, and counterpoint. The cross-cultural infusion continues with the Brazilian rhythms of Danças brasileiras performed by ...
J.S. Bach: Mass in B Minor
Raphaël Pichon and his ensemble Pygmalion mark their 20th anniversary with a new recording of Bach’s Mass in B minor, a work that has been central to the group’s repertoire. Having first performed the piece in 2013 and revisited it regularly since, Pichon now presents a recording shaped by over a decade of performance experience with a close-knit group of ...
Dvořák & Price: Piano Quintets
In their fifth album together on Hyperion records, the extraordinary virtuoso pianist Marc-André Hamelin and the superb Takács Quartet explore two piano quintets linked by American heritage; one by Florence Price, the first African American woman to have a composition played by a major orchestra, and the other by Antonín Dvorák, whose residency in America during the 1890s made a ...
Satie
French pianist Alain Planès could not let the centenary of Satie’s death go by without paying tribute to this composer whom he admires above all others. Planès is the heir of the great 20th century French pianism as a student of Jacques Février, the renowned interpreter of Satie who studied with Marguerite Long and was a favorite of both Poulenc ...
Tchaikovsky: Orchestral Suite No. 3
Stanislav Kochanovsky began his new post as chief conductor of the NDR Radio Philharmonic in 2024. For his debut album leading the orchestra, he leads a program of music of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian music dear to his heart and training in St. Petersburg. The album’s centerpiece is Tchaikovsky’s Third Orchestral Suite, evocative of the composer’s melancholy Sleeping Beauty ballet ...
Ruth Gipps Orchestral Works, Vol. 4
Rumon Gamba’s exploration of the music of Ruth Gipps continues with these world premiere recordings of the Fifth Symphony, Violin Concerto, and Leviathan. Composed in 1943 and conceived for her elder brother, Bryan, the Violin Concerto is large in scale and shows remarkable assurance of touch for a twenty-two-year-old composer. Leviathan, for double-bassoon and orchestra, dates from the late 1960s, ...
Elfrida Andrée: Symphony No. 1; Fritiof Suite
Elfrida Andrée, the youngest daughter of a Swedish musical family, demonstrated early talent and at fourteen began studying organ in Stockholm. She became Sweden’s first female organist in 1857 at age sixteen and was later appointed Sweden’s first female cathedral organist. It would take 150 years before another woman would follow in her footsteps. She enjoyed remarkable success as a ...
Thomas Adès: Orchestral Suites
London born composer, pianist, and conductor Thomas Adès is known for his extensive work with world’s leading orchestras, opera companies, and festivals. This album features performances of three of his operatic and ballet suites conducted by Adès himself. The Luxury Suite is adapted from the opera Powder Her Face and was premiered by the Berlin Philharmonic in 2018. Adès’s 1995 ...
Standard Stoppages
Third Coast Percussion’s 20th anniversary album celebrates ensemble’s legacy of musical collaboration and artistic growth since its founding in 2005. The program of world premiere recordings explores the passage of time, both through the eyes of percussionists charged with “keeping time” for an ensemble, and on the grander scale of time elapsed over decades. The album opens with Jlin’s Please ...
Concertos for Baroque Lute
After being the king of court instruments in the seventeenth century, a symbol of refined entertainment, the lute was gradually abandoned in the following century. A small group of virtuosos and composers nevertheless refused to accept this predicted decline: these musicians moved the epicenter of its influence to the courts of Vienna, Bayreuth and Dresden, adapting the codes and forms ...
Milestones
Multi-Grammy nominated violinist Philippe Quint’s presents the world premiere recording of works written for him by three trailblazing women: Lera Auerbach, Errollyn Wallen, and celebrated Soviet-born composer Lora Kvint, the violinist’s mother, with whom he collaborates here for the first time. The concertos by Auerbach and Wallen feature the Royal Scottish National Orchestra led by conductor Andrew Litton, who also ...
Sondheim: New Chamber Music Arrangements
Award-winning violin-piano duo, Opus Two (violinist William Terwilliger and pianist Andrew Cooperstock) presents world-premiere recordings of highlights from Stephen Sondheim’s exceptional Broadway shows in arrangements by Eric Stern, a longtime collaborator of the late composer. These include “Broadway Baby” from Follies, “Every Day a Little Death” from A Little Night Music with cellist Beth Vanderborgh, “Finishing the Hat” from Sunday ...
Shift
Born in Belfast and brought up in Greater Manchester, trombonist Peter Moore came to international attention in 2008 when, aged 12, he became the youngest ever winner of BBC Young Musician. Appointed Co-Principal Trombone of the London Symphony Orchestra aged just 18, he departed after ten years to focus on his solo career. As a recording artist, Moore is has ...
Preludes
On his new album Canadian virtuoso pianist Jan Lisiecki brings the diverse sounds of the prelude to life, illustrating the genre’s potential to be more than just a curtain-raiser to something else. Frédéric Chopin’s extraordinary 24 Preludes Op. 28 are inspiration and centerpiece of this recording. For Lisiecki, Chopin was a “master of the short form” who “brought the prelude ...
