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.
Stay on top of New Releases with WFMT's curated Spotify and Apple Music playlists
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 ...
Dies Irae
Pianist Dmitry Masleev, who took first prize in the 2015 Tchaikovsky International Competition, leads the Svetlanov Symphony Orchestra (a.k.a. Russian State Symphony Orchestra) from the piano in a program that centers two piano concertantes utilizing the chant melody Dies irae: Liszt’s Totentanz, and Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. The program also includes Liszt’s Rhapsodie espagnole in a version ...
Reynaldo Hahn: Piano Quintet; Songs; Piano Quartet
The Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective was conceived in 2017 by husband-and-wife duo Tom Poster, piano, and Elena Urioste, violin. The Collective operates with a flexible roster featuring many of today’s most inspirational musicians, both instrumentalists and singers, and its creative programming is marked by an ardent commitment to celebrating diversity of all forms and a desire to unearth lesser-known gems of ...
The Korngold Symphony
This two-CD album presents, for the first time ever, a recording of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Symphony in F-sharp performed by the composer himself, an incredibly special historical recording from the Korngold Family Archives. The new release also presents a 1997 live performance by the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana conducted by John Mauceri, whose research into the symphony included his exclusive ...
Schubert Beatles
New York Festival of Song (NYFOS) presents the debut solo album of the rising star American baritone Theo Hoffman, a student of the late Sanford Sylvan and an alumnus of the Ravinia Steans Music Institute, in an adventurous yet appealing program that pairs Schubert songs with Beatles songs (by Lennon-McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison) on similar themes. Hoffman tells WFMT, ...
Terra Mater
The world music-leaning period instrument band L’Arpeggiata, led by theorbo player Christina Pluhar, celebrates nature in a mostly Baroque program (Monteverdi, Bononcini, Biber and Handel) coupled with traditional songs and ballads including eden ahbez’s “Nature Boy.” In Terra Mater (meaning Mother Nature), Pluhar writes, “You will hear the chirping of the nightingales, sweet birds, cuckoos, frogs and chicken, the whispers of the winds, ...
In the Cabinet of Wonders
Chicago-based violinist Martin Davids (Callipygian Players, Bella Voce Sinfonia, Haymarket Opera, Music of the Baroque) is joined by organist, musicologist, and author David Yearsley for a program paying tribute to an unlikely, yet celebrated duo. In 17th century Hamburg, organist Heinrich Scheidemann (1595-1663) and violinist Johann Schop (1590-1667) became one of the town’s leading cultural attractions playing from the organ ...
The Age of Extremes
Francesco Corti leads the prolific period-instrument orchestra from the harpsichord in a program centering composers belonging to the generation of the Empfindsamer Stil or “Sentimental Style.” Following the High Baroque style of JS Bach and Handel, the composers of the next generation explored contrast and extreme juxtapositions in their music. This avant-garde style remained in fashion for only a short ...
Panoramas: Flute Music of the Philippines
Flutist Norman Menzales is Principal Flutist of Montana’s Great Falls Symphony, Colorado’s Fort Collins Symphony, and the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra. In Panoramas, he reflects on his Filipino heritage through a series of chamber ensemble collaborations. The album’s title work is by the groundbreaking Filipino composer Nicanor Abelardo (1893-1934). Panoramas, scored for flute, violin, viola, celeste, and piano, blends Filipino folk ...
Weber: Clarinet Concertos, Clarinet Quintet
French clarinetist Arthur Stockel has established himself as a passionate and eclectic musician through his virtuoso career as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral musician. For his debut solo album, he is partnered with the Hanson Quartet and the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, where was appointed principal clarinet at the age of 21. The repertoire features the two concertos and ...
Beethoven: The Early Quartets
As their first decade of performing together coincided with the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, the Calidore String Quartet embarked on a tour to perform the complete cycle of the composer’s sixteen string quartets. “Performing the Beethoven cycle is the musical equivalent of scaling Mount Everest,” said violinist Ryan Meehan, who once appeared on WFMT’s Introductions. “It is a grueling ...
Ravel: The Complete Solo Piano Works
Star Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho marks the 150th anniversary of Maurice Ravel’s birth by recording his complete solo piano music. Cho’s insightful readings of Ravel, on stage and in the studio, underline his status as one of today’s most elegant and accomplished pianists, ten years after his First Prize win at the Chopin International Competition. Seong-Jin Cho has always felt ...
