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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Price: Symphony No. 4, Dawson: Negro Folk Symphony – Philadelphia Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin
The Philadelphia Orchestra and its Music and Artistic Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin continue their project to revive neglected music by Black American composers. Their latest recording captures Florence Price’s Symphony No. 4 and William Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony. As part of his desire both to honor the orchestra’s rich tradition of championing contemporary composers and shine new light on unjustly forgotten masterpieces, Nézet-Séguin programmed what he calls the “mind-blowingly well orchestrated” ...
Villa-Lobos: Cello Concertos Nos. 1 & 2, Fantasia – Antonio Meneses, São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, Isaac Karabtchevsky
The Cello Concerto No. 1 was Heitor Villa-Lobos’s first major orchestral work. Filled with youthful energy and displaying an eclectic style, it is the sound of the composer finding his voice. Three decades later and with his reputation at its height, the inspired melodies and flowing style of the Fantasia sees Villa-Lobos giving free rein to his vivid imagination. Composed ...
Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 9 & 24. Lars Vogt, Paris Chamber Orchestra
The early death of award-winning pianist and conductor Lars Vogt on September 5, 2022 was a profound shock to the international music world. Some 16 months earlier, already aware of his diagnosis and in the middle of his treatment sessions, the artist had an urgent desire to record a Mozart piano concerto album along with the Paris Chamber Orchestra, of ...
Unbounded: Music by American Women – Dawn Wohn, Emely Phelps
Unbounded: Music by American Women builds on the success of Perspectives, Dawn Wohn’s premiere album that showcased music by women from around the world. Wohn’s and Emely Phelps’ performance on Unbounded is virtuosic and sensitive. The album brings recognition to two African American composers (Dorothy Rudd Moore and Irene Britton Smith) whose outstanding compositions are yet to be discovered by most listeners. Amy Beach’s ...
Haydn: Paris Symphonies, Violin Concerto No. 1 – Théotime Langlois de Swarte, Les Arts Florissants, William Christie
In the 1780s, Paris was unquestionably considered the epicenter of instrumental music in Europe. An internationally renowned concert organization, the Concert Spirituel played an essential role in the reputation of the capital. Haydn’s group of 6 “Parisian Symphonies” mixes gravity and fantasy, solemnity and humor. They were written in 1785 and 1786 for the Concerts de la Loge Olympique in ...
Stained Glass: Johan Dalene, Christian Ihle Hadland
This recital brings together two established classics from the 20th century with lesser-known works from the repertoire for violin and piano. Alongside Ravel’s Sonata, a work that reveals the influence of jazz on the French composer, and Prokofiev’s wartime Sonata, Op. 94a, we find compositions by Arvo Pärt, Lili Boulanger, and Grażyna Bacewicz, which, at times meditative, at times lyrical, ...
Respighi: Roman Trilogy – RAI National Symphony Orchestra, Robert Treviño
Ottorino Respighi’s fascination with the Eternal City, where he had been living since 1913, is nowhere better expressed than in the three symphonic poems that make up the so-called Roman Trilogy: Fountains of Rome (1916), Pines of Rome (1924), and Roman Festivals (1928). Having finally shaken off the shackles of late 19th-century Romanticism, in these works Respighi offered a first ...
Rachmaninoff: The Piano Concertos and Paganini Rhapsody – Yuja Wang, Gustavo Dudamel, Los Angeles Philharmonic
Los Angeles, the city in which Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) spent the last few months of his life, played host to an exceptional festival of music last February. As part of this year’s Rachmaninoff 150 celebrations, Yuja Wang joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic and its Music and Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel over two consecutive weekends to perform all four of the composer’s piano ...
Monteverdi: Vespers of the Blessed Virgin – Pygmalion, Raphaël Pichon
After “Stravaganza d’amore,” their superb album of late sixteenth-century Florentine music, Raphaël Pichon and Pygmalion return to Italy, this time to Mantua. Here they offer us their reading of one of the peaks of sacred music from this period: Monteverdi’s Vespers. Revealing like no other interpreters the poignant interiority of these pieces, they bring out to the full their inherent ...
Mozart y Mambo: La Bella Cubana – Sarah Willis
“My dream of recording all four of the Mozart horn concertos has been fulfilled at last. Little did I know that this long-held dream would come true in Cuba of all places and with a Cuban orchestra! I have learned so much about Cuban music and how to dance Mozart along the way and, as a result, feel changed as ...
Liebestod: Works for Violin and Piano – Friedemann Eichhorn, Fazil Say
Turkish pianist and composer Fazıl Say is joined by his long-standing friend, violinist Friedemann Eichhorn, in an album of mid-19th-century German repertoire. Influenced by Franz Liszt, Say’s ingenious transcriptions of the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde are heard here in world-premiere recordings. The composite F–A–E Sonata of Albert Dietrich, Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms is seldom encountered ...
Albrecht Mayer: Bach Generations
After the huge success of his previous Deutsche Grammophon album, devoted to works by Mozart, oboist Albrecht Mayer turns his attention to the uniquely talented Bach family. For Bach Generations, he has chosen a selection of music by four members of the family: Johann Sebastian himself (1685-1750), Johann Christoph (1642-1703), Carl Philipp Emanuel (1714-1788) and Johann Christoph Friedrich (1732-1795). Mayer discovered the music of J.S. Bach ...
Pedro Henriques da Silva: Transclassical Concertos
The Portuguese guitar is an instrument associated with the traditional music from Portugal, fado. Pedro Henriques da Silva takes it beyond that role using a multitude of unusual techniques and sonorities on his new album which includes his own concerto for the instrument. The term “transclassical” was coined by Henriques da Silva’s wife and collaborator, Argentine composer and pianist Lucía ...
Trio Dichter: An Invitation at the Schumanns’
Trio Dichter (formed by violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte, cellist Hanna Salzenstein, and pianist Fiona Mato) recreates the music played in the Schumann’s parlor. The trio takes us on an imaginary visit to one of the most iconic couples in 19th-century Germany: the home of Robert and Clara Schumann, enlivened by their artistic, musical, and personal exuberance. Bach was one ...
Fauré: Nocturnes & Barcarolles – Marc-André Hamelin
“A performer of near-superhuman technical prowess” (The New York Times), pianist Marc-André Hamelin is known worldwide for his unrivalled blend of consummate musicianship and brilliant technique in the great works of the established repertoire, as well as for his intrepid exploration of the rarities of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. The Nocturnes and Barcarolles demonstrate Gabriel Fauré’s art at ...
Much Ado: Romantic Violin Pieces – Danbi Um, Amy Yang
Korean American violinist Danbi Um’s solo debut recording, Much Ado, highlights her virtuosity in repertoire by Austro-German composers Korngold, Kreisler, and Wagner, Hungarian-inspired music by Brahms, Hubay, and Dohnányi, and works by Jewish composers Achron, Bloch, and Zeitlin. The album is as striking for the young musician’s choice of “old world” repertoire as her virtuoso interpretations and the sumptuous sound ...
Telegraph Quartet: Divergent Paths
The Telegraph Quartet’s new recording, Divergent Paths, features two works that (to the best of the quartet’s knowledge) have never been recorded on the same album before: Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major and Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 1 in D minor, Op. 7. The album is the first in a series of recordings titled 20th Century Vantage Points. Telegraph explains, ...
Campra, Rameau, Mondonville – Le Concert d’Astrée, Emmanuelle Haïm
Emmanuelle Haïm, a Baroque expert “with an instinct for the crucial balance between energy and eloquence” (New York Times), directs the orchestra and singers of her ensemble Le Concert d’Astrée in choral works by three French composers of the 18th century: Jean-Philippe Rameau, André Campra and Jean-Joseph de Mondonville. The program, illustrating the transition from sorrow to joy and from ...
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5, Romeo and Juliet – Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra, Aziz Shokhakimov
In recent years, the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra has made an impact with its recordings of major works by Berlioz and Janáček. Now the orchestra performs two of Tchaikovsky’s best-loved masterpieces: the fate-driven Symphony No. 5 and the passionate tone poem Romeo and Juliet. The conductor is Aziz Shokhakimov, noted for his dynamism and his ability to shed new light on ...
Locatelli: Il virtuoso, Il Poeta – Isabelle Faust, Il Giardino Armonico, Giovanni Antonini
Il Giardino Armonico and violinist Isabelle Faust present a portrait of Pietro Antonio Locatelli, one of the most impressive violin virtuosos of the eighteenth century. Considered today as a sort of Baroque Paganini, he left picturesque, colorful, strikingly modern pieces for his instrument. Following their Mozart collaboration that earned them worldwide acclaim, Faust and Il Giardino Armonico bring out the ...