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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Yves Castagnet: Magnificat
In early December 2024, five-and-a-half years after the devastating fire of 2019, the great Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris reopened to the public. This recording of a new choral setting of the Magnificat by the organist-composer Yves Castagnet celebrates the cathedral’s “rebirth.” Since 1988, Castagnet has held the post of choir organist at Notre-Dame. His role also encompasses interpretative coaching ...
Puccini
Rising star British-Italian tenor Freddie De Tommaso and the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Edward Garner mark the Puccini anniversary year with a new EP of five arias. Mario Cavaradossi in Tosca is the Puccini role that marked the barnstorming tenor’s introduction to American audiences — the vehicle for his US debut at Santa Fe Opera in 2023, and his ...
Schütz: Weihnachtshistorie
Led by bass and recorder player Lionel Meunier, Vox Luminis is an early music ensemble based in Belgium which specializes in English, Italian, and especially German 17th- and 18th- century repertoire. The ensemble is comprised of some of the most sought-after European vocal soloists, and is supplemented, depending on the repertoire, with an extensive continuo, solo instruments, or a complete ...
Ehnes & Armstrong play Brahms & Schumann
Celebrated violinist James Ehnes picks up the viola for his first recording of the Op. 120 sonatas of Brahms in the composer’s arrangement for viola and piano. Originally written for clarinet, Brahms made subtle changes for the viola versions, enriching the meagre viola sonata repertoire with these two late masterpieces. Composed in just a few days in 1851, Robert Schumann’s ...
Adèle Hugo: Mélodies sur des poèmes de Victor Hugo
This album pays homage to the composer Adèle Hugo (1830-1915), the fifth child of the great poet Victor Hugo. Suffering from lifelong psychological instability, she spent half of her tragic life in mental institutions, from the age of 42 until her death at 85. She became passionately fond of music from an early age, studying the piano and then composition. ...
In Dulci Jubilo
The Windsbacher Boys’ Choir is considered one of the best ensembles of its kind. Since its founding in 1946, it has stood for the synthesis of musicality, versatility, precision and purity of sound. Ludwig Böhme has been the new artistic director of the Windsbacher since 2022. The new Christmas album, for which they joined forces with the Berlin-based period instrument ...
The Christmas Album
Lieder specialist Benjamin Appl celebrates Christmas with sacred arias by Bach and Mendelssohn, carols from Germany, Austria, America, Britain, Sweden and France. Appl is accompanied by instrumentalists (including his own mother on guitar), the Munich Radio Orchestra, and Germany’s most famous children’s choir, Regensburger Domspatzen, of which he was a member in his youth. “I returned to my hometown to ...
A Lullaby Carol: Christmas At Christ Church
Comprised of a treble line of boy choristers and an ATB line of men and women, the Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford holds a distinctive place within the great English choral tradition. Unlike all other collegiate and cathedral choirs, it serves both an Oxford college and a diocese. The choir is revered for the vibrancy of its sound and ...
Fasch: Orchestral Works Vol. 4
This volume of modern premieres of works by Johann Friedrich Fasch was recorded during a program that opened the 2023 International Fasch Festival in Zerbst, the city in which the composer was Capellmeister to the princely court. Fasch, a German violinist and composer, falls in the transitional period between the High Baroque and Classical eras. Tempesta di Mare has been ...
Bach: The 6 Partitas
Francesco Tristano is a Luxembourgish classical and experimental pianist and composer who also plays the clarinet. In his new album, Tristano interprets some of JS Bach’s most challenging pieces written for keyboard. The album is branded with Tristano’s own imprint intothefuture, making its debut on the Naïve label. Tristano has previously released three other albums dedicated to the music of ...
Hollywood
German pianist Sebastian Knauer explains the inspiration behind his new album with the Berlin German Symphony Orchestra: “My encounter with the great American film composer and conductor David Newman led me to dedicate an entire album to American film music from its beginnings to the present day.” David Newman, who made the orchestral arrangements for several of the album’s tracks, ...
Cello Concertos, Sonatas & Quintets – Music of the Angels
The acclaimed British cellist Steven Isserlis presents an imaginative selection of Luigi Boccherini’s cello concertos and cello-centric chamber music. The album shines a light on Boccherini’s graceful melodies and translucent scoring which makes the cello sound like a sister to the violins rather than their stern father.
MacDowell: Orchestral Works Vol. 1
This first release in a new series dedicated to the orchestral works of the American composer Edward MacDowell centers the First Piano Concerto, played by Xiayin Wang with the BBC Philharmonic conducted by John Wilson. The various romantic influences that shaped the style of the First Concerto include the music of Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Schumann, and Grieg, while the technical demands ...
Christmas
Carlos Simon — Composer-in-Residence for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the inaugural Boston Symphony Orchestra Composer Chair, and a member of The Blacknificent 7 — has already had his music performed by the world’s leading ensembles including the National Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra for the Last Night of the Proms, the Cincinnati ...
Crimson Roses
The three world premiere choral recordings on this album represent the commitment of Musica Viva NY’s artistic director, Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez, to perform new works by living composers. Joseph Turrin’s Crimson Roses Once Again Be Fair is the album’s centerpiece, boasting a movement for soloist and orchestra sung by the legendary American mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade, who has announced this performance ...
Children’s Stories
Led by Stilian Kirov, the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra makes its debut on Cedille Records with the world premiere recordings of Michael Abels’s Frederick’s Fables and Augusta Read Thomas’s Gwendolyn Brooks Settings. These works were adapted from short stories by celebrated children’s author and illustrator Leo Lionni and the poetry of former U.S. Poet Laureate Gwendolyn Brooks. Frederick’s Fables, which features ...
American Sketches
Violinist Kristin Lee’s debut solo album offers a distinct and recognizable sound of American music and its rich history, encapsulating both Lee’s journey as an American, as well as the journeys of the composers in the United States. A native of Seoul, Korea, Lee was compelled to select repertoire that expresses her pride in the country she now calls her ...
saman
Joseph Ehrenpreis is a multi-instrumental guitar performer. His specialization includes the 8-string “Brahms Guitar,” an instrument invented by David Rubio and Paul Galbraith in 1994 that uses an endpin and a resonance box, boasting an extended upper and lower range. Ehrenpreis, a native of Skokie, currently a student at Yale University, describes it as “the love child of my two ...
The Joyful Mysteries Choral Symphony and Other Works
American composer Daniel Knaggs’s The Joyful Mysteries is a choral symphony of five movements which correspond to the “Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary” in Catholicism: The angel’s Annunciation to Mary, her Visitation of Elizabeth, the Nativity of Christ, his Presentation in the temple, and his Finding in the temple as a young boy. The libretto is drawn from Biblical texts ...
Principal
Black Moon Trio (violinist Khelsey Zarraga, hornist Parker Nelson, and pianist Jeremy Vigil) is an ensemble committed to collaboratively affecting positive change in communities through chamber music. Founded in 2022, the trio champions underrepresented voices in their programming and commissions and aims to prove classical music is for everyone by engaging diverse audiences, youth, and artists of every type. Black ...
