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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Ravel String Quartet
The two-time Grammy Award-winning Attaccca Quartet commemorates the 150th anniversary of Ravel’s birth with a recording of Ravel’s String Quartet in F, an EP that also marks their debut in the Platoon record label. Celebrated for their versatility and ability to seamlessly navigate between traditional classical repertoire and contemporary collaborations, the ensemble continues to push the boundaries of the traditional ...
Ravel: The Piano Concertos
In a companion to Ravel: The Complete Solo Piano Works released in January, Seong-Jin Cho continues his celebration of the Maurice Ravel 150th anniversary year with the composer’s two piano concertos. The recordings were made live at Boston’s Symphony Hall with Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Cho’s critically acclaimed readings of Ravel, on stage and in the studio, ...
Fantasie
On her debut solo album, pianist Jeneba Kanneh-Mason takes listeners on a journey that explores connections across different composers’ sound worlds – whether they met, influenced each other, or simply existed in resonance. From Claude Debussy, Frédéric Chopin and Alexander Scriabin to Florence Price, Margaret Bonds and William Grant Still, Jeneba presents a program which is also very personal to ...
Telemann Paris Quartets, Vol. 1
Georg Philipp Telemann was—to characterize him in contemporary terms—a workaholic, thanks to which we have, amongst his 3,000-plus works, his two sets of marvelously rich Paris Quartets. The first set of quartets, or quadri, was published in Hamburg and such was their popularity that they were republished in Paris by Le Clerc in 1736 without Telemann’s permission. This prompted Telemann ...
Portrait Georges Bizet
In a career spanning less than twenty years, Georges Bizet produced works in every genre: orchestral music, piano pieces, cantatas, operas, songs and more, characterized by a mastery of orchestration and a taste for orientalism and folklore. This comprehensive 4-CD portrait album and accompanying 159 page book from the musicological record label for Palazzetto Bru Zane – Center for Romantic ...
Hymns of Bantu
In his second album for Warner Classics, cellist, vocalist, and composer Abel Selaocoe celebrates his South African heritage with traditional Bantu music played alongside cello-centric “Western Classical” baroque or baroque-inspired works. Much of the album features Selaocoe original compositions or arrangements on which he sings and plays both percussion and cello with a full band that includes string ensemble (the ...
Tchaikovsky: String Quartets Vol. 2
The Dudok Quartet Amsterdam completes its two volume project of recording Tchaikovsky’s complete String Quartets on gut strings with this new release, featuring the posthumous Quartet Movement in B-flat and the Third String Quartet. When the artists told their coach Dmitri Ferschtman, a pioneer in historically informed performance practice, that they wanted to perform Tchaikovsky on gut strings, he asked: ...
Beyond
This album of world-premiere recordings is inspired by opera but without singing. As conductor Timothy Redmond says, it is “a distillation of the theatrical experience heard through the voice of the orchestra.” The repertoire includes Jonathan Dove’s Stargazer, subtitled “an opera for trombone and orchestra,” featuring virtuoso trombonist Peter Moore. This year marks the 30th anniversary of Thomas Adès’s opera ...
Liaisons II: All Things Bright and Beautiful
Anthony de Mare’s landmark commissioning project, Liaisons: Re-Imagining Sondheim from the Piano, reaches Volume II with a roll call of contemporary composers from the worlds of classical, jazz, film, indie, pop and musical theatre, including Jon Batiste, Stephen Hough, Meredith Monk, Max Richter, Conrad Tao, and de Mare himself. Sondheim, the ever-eloquent wordsmith, proclaimed he was “thrilled” with the music ...
Marsalis: Blues Symphony
The Detroit Symphony Orchestra presents Wynton Marsalis’s Blues Symphony. The work is a triumphant ode to the power of the blues and the scope of America’s musical heritage. With a blend of influences from ragtime to habanera, the seven-movement work takes listeners on a sonic journey through America’s revolutionary era, the early beginnings of jazz in New Orleans, and a ...
Dazzling Light
For their second album, Ensemble Altera led by Christopher Lowrey explores light in all its forms: the light of morning and evening, sacred light, light as a symbol of Christ, light as the conqueror of darkness and even (thanks to the James Webb telescope) the light of distant galaxies. This program includes works primarily from the 20th and 21st centuries, ...
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 ...
