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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Khachaturian: Piano Concerto
Jean-Yves Thibaudet’s latest release features Aram Khachaturian’s Piano Concerto, recorded live with Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The concerto is complemented by a series of solo piano works including Khachaturian’s Pictures of Childhood piano suite; Oscar Levant’s transcriptions of the “Sabre Dance” and “Lullaby” from the ballet Gayane; and the premiere recordings of Thibaudet’s own transcriptions of the ...
Le temps des lilas
In their first full-length album, I Giardini, a collective of French chamber musicians, center the music of Ernest Chausson. The Concert in D major, Op. 21 for violin, piano, and string quartet is a masterly work on the borderline between chamber music and orchestra, featuring violinist Pierre Fouchenneret and I Giardini’s co-artistic director, pianist David Violi. I Giardini also deliver ...
Field: Complete Nocturnes
While the nocturne — a short, dreamy, and melodically expressive work that evokes the night — is often associated with Chopin, it was pioneered by the lesser-known Irish composer John Field. Alice Sara Ott’s recording of his 18 Nocturnes celebrates the music of the man credited as the inventor of form. “Engaging with Field’s nocturnes was a deeply rewarding experience,” ...
Donizetti Songs, Vol. 3
The music of Gaetano Donizetti has been a source of inspiration for the founders of the Opera Rara, the company that restores, records, and performs neglected vocal repertoire from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Spearheaded by Artistic Director Carlo Rizzi, the Donizetti Song Project is curated by musicologist and Opera Rara’s Repertoire Consultant Roger Parker. Over the course of ...
Marie De Grandval’s Grand Trio
French composer Clémence de Grandval (1828–1907), born Marie Félicie Clémence de Reiset and known as Vicomtesse de Grandval and Marie Grandval, studied composition with Friedrich Flotow, composer and family friend, and later with Frédéric Chopin and Camille Saint-Saëns, the latter dedicating his Oratorio de Noel to her. A prolific composer, Grandval’s output includes a mass, 50 songs with piano accompaniment, ...
Sibelius Symphonies Nos. 6 & 7, The Tempest
This release marks the fifth and final volume of the complete Sibelius symphonies performed by the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra under the charismatic Finnish percussionist turned conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali. Rouvali, who made his debut with Chicago Symphony Orchestra in February, has been Chief Conductor of Gothenburg Symphony since 2017, a position that concludes in 2025. This series has already won numerous ...
Songs in Flight
This new release features world premiere recordings of Shawn E. Okpebholo’s complete song cycle Songs in Flight. Drawing inspiration from 18th and 19th century print advertisements for the recapture of runaway enslaved individuals, Songs in Flight explores their untold stories with texts by poets Tsitsi Jaji, Crystal Simone Smith, and Tyehimba Jess. The work incorporates styles including spirituals, folk tunes, ...
Censored Anthems
Founded in 2019, the New York-based chamber orchestra Parlando is the brainchild of conductor Ian Niederhoffer, a Musical America “New Artist of the Month” and BBC Music Magazine “Rising Star.” In the ensemble’s debut album, Niederhoffer explores from the 20th century as a tool of cultural resilience in the face of censorship, particularly in the Soviet Union. The album opens ...
Walton: Violin Concerto, Symphonic Suite from ‘Troilus and Cressida’, Portsmouth Point
The prolific recording artists Sinfonia of London conducted by John Wilson present works by Sir William Walton (the first in a new series of recordings) featuring Charlie Lovell-Jones as soloist in the Violin Concerto. Leader of the Sinfonia of London, the 26-year-old Welsh violinist has been recognized as one of the most promising international soloists of his generation. Commissioned by ...
Schumann Violin Sonatas
The duo of violinist Alina Ibragimova and pianist Cédric Tiberghien present their tenth album for Hyperion Records. Previous collaborations for the label include acclaimed recordings of the complete violin sonatas of Brahms, Mozart, and Felix Mendelssohn, as well as complete works for violin and piano by Schubert and Ravel. “In a word, delicious” was Gramophone’s verdict on the duo’s last ...
Gershwin, Montsalvatge, Bernstein & Jenny Peña Campo
Formerly known as Philharmonie zuidnederland, Philzuid is the only professional symphony orchestra in the south of the Netherlands as well as one of the largest in the country. Founded in 2013 and based in Eindhoven and Maastricht, Philzuid was created by merging the Brabant Orchestra and the Linburg Symphony Orchestra. Chief Conductor Duncan Ward leads a high energy performance of ...
Hough: Piano Concerto, Sonatina & Partita
The theme for the latest album from the prolific virtuoso pianist-composer and polymath Sir Stephen Hough is nostalgia. This album centers the premiere recording of his first piano concerto, recorded by the composer with The Hallé under Sir Mark Elder. Its subtitle “The world of yesterday” deliberately places the work in a broader context of the pianist-virtuosi of yesteryear who ...
Uncharted
Chicago audiences have had a chance to experience Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen’s artistry, with the countertenor having made debuts with the Newberry Consort, Music of the Baroque, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Uncharted ventures outside typical countertenor territory into 19th and 20th century lieder. Austro-Germanic lieder was the countertenor’s first musical love and on Uncharted, he indulges in music by Erich ...
The Summer Portraits
The latest album from popular classical composer Ludovico Einaudi is as a song cycle in thirteen tracks. The Summer Portraits is inspired by a series of striking oil paintings adorning an Italian villa Einaudi and his family rented last year. Einaudi discovered that the paintings were produced over many summers by a woman from Rome who owned the house for ...
Strana Armonia d’Amore
What can our ears really perceive when music deviates from a norm whose codes are no longer our own? Geoffroy Jourdain leads Les Cris de Paris in an exploration of the “strange harmonies” characteristic of the late Renaissance, as in the microtonal works of Nicola Vicentino (1511-1575), which divides the octave into 31 notes in a nod to Ancient Greek ...
Haydn: The Complete Piano Trios, Vol. 4
Trio Gaspard continues its acclaimed series of Haydn Piano Trios with this collection of later works. As in the case of the previous volumes, the album includes the world premiere recording of a piece commissioned to complement Haydn’s works – in this instance Sally Beamish’s Trance. The British composer says of her trio: “The melancholic nature of Haydn’s [F sharp ...
Ravel: Daphnis et Chloé
Coinciding with the London Symphony Orchestra’s first US Tour with new chief conductor Sir Antonio Pappano, the LSO releases Daphnis et Chloé, one of Ravel’s largest and best loved orchestral masterpieces. Marking their second recording together for the orchestra’s dedicated label LSO Live, the album captures their performance of Ravel’s ballet last April, for which they were joined by the ...
Poème Mystique
Themes of art song, poetry and spirituality run throughout the second album by Korean-American violinist Danbi Um, performed with Finnish pianist Juho Pohjonen. Poème Mystique centers Richard Strauss’s intimate Violin Sonata, written in the year he met his future wife, and Ernest Bloch’s Second Violin Sonata, the title work of the album. By turns ecstatic, spiritual, and fantasy-like, in his ...
Arc III
The new album from acclaimed pianist Orion Weiss features music by Brahms, Schubert, and Debussy paired with works from young composers after World War I and II: Ernst von Dohnányi, György Ligeti, and Louise Talma. As the final issue of his ambitious three-part Arc series, this album is a set of pieces born from the bright points of life, inspired ...
Mendelssohn, Goodyear & Schumann
Canadian pianist, composer, and recording artist Stewart Goodyear forges new territory with his new album, combining works by Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn with two of his own compositions, joined by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Andrew Constantine. Goodyear’s original works are heard in their world premiere recordings and explore two very distinct thematic threads. Goodyear ...
