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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Dance of the Night Sky
The Black Oak Ensemble (violinist Desirée Ruhstrat, violist Aurélien Fort Pederzoli, and cellist David Cunliffe) continues to push the boundaries of the string trio repertoire with their third album on Cedille Records. The idea for the album was born out of a mistaken Google search. During the 2022 World Cup, with Switzerland, Germany, France, and England all in the running—all ...
Honey-coloured Cow: Moosic for Bassoon
From TV theme tunes to a folk-inspired “circle dance on seven notes” by Villa-Lobos, Laurence Perkins, one of Britain’s best-known solo bassoonists, presents a pleasing miscellany of composers and works demonstrating the expressive potential of the bassoon. Perkins gets sterling support from a wealth of fine musicians and ensembles on his eighth album for Hyperion. The program covers a century ...
Jewish Vienna
Soprano Chen Reiss, conductor Daniel Grossmann, and the Jewish Chamber Orchestra Munich explore the music from Vienna at the turn of the 20th century, at the cutting edge of artistic and musical creativity with a sizable and flourishing Jewish artistic community. The works on this album bring together some of the composers of this age, including lesser-known names such as ...
Hommages
The United Strings of Europe and artistic director Julian Azkoul are devoted to developing engaging programs that blend the familiar with the new and encourage the discovery of new repertoire. On Hommages, the ensemble presents a program featuring the world premiere recordings of Dobrinka Tabakova’s Organum Light, inspired by Einstein’s quantum theory of light, Olli Mustonen’s Apotheosis – In memoriam ...
Mieczysław Weinberg: String Quartets, Vol. 5
The Transylvanian-based Arcadia Quartet reaches the fifth volume in its acclaimed series of recordings of the complete string quartets of Mieczysław Weinberg with this release featuring Quartets Nos 3, 9, and 14. As in previous volumes, the varied program features quartets from contrasting periods of Weinberg’s compositional development. Quartet No. 3, composed in 1944, could be considered as the first ...
Aavik Plays Max Bruch & Erkki-Sven Tüür
This new recording from Hans Christian Aavik, winner of the 2022 Carl Nielsen International Competition, brings together two contrasting yet deeply expressive violin concertos: Erkki-Sven Tüür’s Violin Concerto No. 2, and Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, performed with the Odense Symphony and conductor Gemma New. While Bruch’s concerto is a beloved cornerstone of the violin repertoire, ...
Hallelujah Junction
This album of works for two pianos features pianists who are life partners as well as a performing duo, and each also has a thriving solo career. Anna Geniushene won the silver medal at the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, while Lukas Geniušas’s two Rachmaninoff recordings have both won major awards. The program for their first duo album pays ...
Beethoven: Violin Concerto
Nicola Benedetti’s new EP of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto was recorded with Aurora Orchestra and its Principal Conductor Nicholas Collon, with everyone playing from memory. This is a recording of a piece that emerges out of the urgency of the performances that inspired it, and as Nicola Benedetti says, to “try to approach this music with freshness of heart and mind.” ...
The Last Rose
French gambist Mathilde Vialle leads an ensemble featuring early plucked instrument specialist Thibaut Roussel. It was love at first sight when Vialle and Roussel first encountered the English bass viol and Venetian archlute preserved at the Museum of Music at the Philharmonie de Paris which inspried this program of English music from the second half of the seventeenth century, much ...
Maestra
Following albums that explore the solo piano works of Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, Nora Douglas Holt, and Betty Jackson, and an album of chamber music from the African continent & diaspora with Castle of our Skins, the performer-scholar Dr. Samantha Ege’s new recording features concertos by two trailblazing female composers of the mid-twentieth century. Julia Perry’s Concerto in Two Uninterrupted ...
Liszt: Via Crucis & Solo Piano Works
Leif Ove Andsnes explores the introspective side of Franz Liszt in program that pairs his Via Crucis for choir and piano with a selection of solo works that do not call for the composer’s trademark showmanship or virtuosity. Via Crucis is unlike any other work in the repertoire: a concentrated ritual drama, ranging from liturgical chant to Lisztian chromaticism at ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
