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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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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Richard Strauss
Violinist Renaud Capuçon pays homage to Richard Strauss with a 3 CD compilation of chamber and orchestral works. The album is bookended by a new recording of the youthful Violin Concerto with the Wiener Symphoniker led by Petr Popelka, and an archival reading of Ein Heldenleben. Recorded in 2000, “A Hero’s Life” comes from Capuçon’s days as leader of the ...
Bennett: Orchestral Works, Vol. 5
The fifth volume of John Wilson’s series of orchestral works by his mentor and friend Sir Richard Rodney Bennett features three works composed between 1973 and 1989. The Concerto for Orchestra is an homage to Benjamin Britten, taking a twelve-note series used by Britten in his Cantata Academica as an abstract musical starting point. Bennett’s rarely performed cello concerto Sonnets ...
Bach: Goldberg Variations
A genuine masterpiece inspires musicians to adopt, adapt, or transcribe it without losing any of its greatness. Period-instrument ensemble Nevermind (Anna Besson, flute; Louis Creac’h, violin; Robin Pharo, viola da gamba; and Jean Rondeau, harpsichord and organ) has taken a creative look at Bach’s famous Goldberg Variations and made their own stylishly insightful “variations” on the work. As they themselves ...
Paganini: 24 Caprices
María Dueñas, Opus Klassik‘s 2024 Young Talent of the Year, presents Paganini’s iconic Caprices. These 24 dazzling gems have accompanied the Spanish rising star since she began playing. Noting that Paganini lived in the age of Italian bel canto, María seeks “to bring out the vocal quality in the Caprices – to reveal the music behind the technique.” The 2-CD ...
Lieder
The third solo album from Egyptian soprano Fatma Said focuses on Romantic era lieder by Franz Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn, Robert and Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms. In the conventional course of things, a lieder recital involves one singer and one pianist, but Said takes a characteristically imaginative approach with this album. “I’ve always wanted to make music with friends,” she ...
War Silence: Rare Italian Piano Concertos
Pianist Roberto Prosseda, a champion of contemporary music, with the London Philharmonic conducted by Nir Kabaretti, present piano concertos from four Italian composers, two of which are premiere recordings. Written between 1900 and 2015, the works by Guido Alberto Fano, Luigi Dallapiccola, Silvio Omizzolo, and Cristian Carrara provide an overview of the piano concerto in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Italy. All ...
Le Tre Soprano: The Three Ladies of Ferrara
Their names were Laura, Livia, and Anna. Together, they were known in the late 1500s as the Tre Donne di Ferrara – the three ladies of Ferrara. Their ensemble was praised by contemporary poets and won highest renown throughout Italy and Germany. However, women were not supposed to become famous for their professional achievements. And so, one of them was ...
Mozart & Bruch
Clarinetist Patrick Messina, violist Lise Berthaud, and pianist Fabrizio Chiovetta pair works by Mozart and Bruch on this new release. The trio celebrates the evolution of an innovative instrumental configuration established in Mozart’s 1786 “Kegelstatt” Trio, K. 498. Inspired by clarinettist Anton Stadler and written for a circle of close friends, the trio combines virtuosity and sensitivity, capturing the essence ...
Grace Williams: Orchestral Works
The BBC Philharmonic Orchestra centers a 20th century Welsh composer whose distinctive voice was influenced by both Vaughan Williams and the Second Viennese School. Four of Grace Williams’s orchestral gems, spanning three decades of her illustrious career, are performed on this program conducted by John Andrews. Four Illustrations of the Legend of Rhiannon (1939) is a suite that brings the ...
