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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American Opus (Americascapes 2)
Following the acclaimed, Grammy-nominated Americascapes, the Basque National Orchestra and its music director Robert Treviño present a second album dedicated to American repertoire. American Opus features three 20th century compositions. George Walker’s first orchestral work, the folk and gospel-tinged Address for Orchestra (1959), is one that the composer hoped Robert Treviño would one day record. George Crumb’s enigmatic A Haunted ...
Resonance
The new album from British virtuoso trumpeter Matilda Lloyd with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Lee Reynolds explores the many meanings of the word “resonance.” The two featured concertos echo music of the past, with Mieczysław Weinberg’s containing fanfares harking back to the trumpet’s military beginnings, as well as snippets of music by other composers, including Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, ...
Winter Gardens
The latest album from the prolific 25-year-old trumpeter Lucienne Renaudin Vary features a collection of winter-themed popular songs by Richard Rodgers, Charlie Chaplin, and Hugh Martin alongside short movements from the classical repertoire by Dvořák, Rossini, Falla, Kreisler, Bach, and Vivaldi. Winter Gardens, which features the Paris Chamber Orchestra conducted by Sascha Goetzel, also features a work new to the ...
Haydn 2032, Vol. 16: The Surprise
In the lead-up to the 300th anniversary of Joseph Haydn’s birth in 2032, the Joseph Haydn Foundation in Basel is producing the performance and recording of all 107 of the composer’s symphonies by Il Giardino Armonico and Basel Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Giovanni Antonini, one of the most highly-respected specialists in baroque, early classical and classical music, with ...
Baroque Concertos
Trevor Pinnock, a pioneer in the historically informed performance practice, has convened a bespoke ensemble, dubbed Pinnock’s Players, to partner with star trumpeter Alison Balsom on her new album of Baroque concertos. All six of the concertos recorded here – by Handel, Vivaldi, Telemann, Albinoni and Marcello – are transcriptions of virtuoso works for violin or oboe, performed by Balsom ...
Brahms and Schubert
French pianist Alexandre Kantorow, winner of the Gold Medal at the 2019 Tchaikovsky competition, presents his fourth solo album for BIS, and his ninth album overall. The centerpiece work is Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy, considered to be the most virtuosic composition in his entire output. Liszt transcriptions of five Schubert lieder include the song quoted in the Wanderer Fantasy, “Der Wanderer,” ...
Who’s Afraid Of…?
The title of the Boulanger Trio’s latest album alludes to Virginia Woolf’s seminal 1929 essay “A Room of One’s Own” discussing the barriers faced by female creative artists. The Boulanger Trio (Karla Haltenwanger, piano; Birgit Erz, violin; Ilona Kindt, cello) pay tribute to centuries of women composers who struggled with, and one way or another triumphed over, those barriers. Included ...
Brahms Cello Sonatas
Longtime collaborators cellist Alisa Weilerstein and pianist Inon Barnatan present Brahms’s two Cello Sonatas, alongside their arrangement of his Violin Sonata in G Major on the cello. This Brahms portrait follows the duo’s recent acclaimed double album dedicated to Beethoven’s complete Cello Sonatas. While Beethoven’s sonatas reveal the gradual ascendancy of the cello as the proper solo instrument over the ...
Brass at Christmas
A selection of John Rutter’s most famous Christmas carols in beautiful new arrangements for brass, performed by the Black Dyke Band. Rutter’s sense of melody combined with a rich harmonic palette makes his music instantly accessible to performers and audiences alike, making him one of the most acclaimed and successful composers of carols alive today. The Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus, led ...
The Four Seasons in Janoska Style
The Austrian-based Janoska Ensemble (two violins, double bass, piano) has established it’s brand as an innovative, improvisational, boundary-defying quartet that bridge classical, jazz, pop, folk, and world music genres. Their fourth studio album is an idiosyncratic new arrangement of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons with newly composed passages by ensemble member, pianist, and composer František Janoska. Inspired by Vivaldi’s original sonnets, ...
Ukrainian Christmas
The Ukrainian violin virtuoso Solomiya Ivakhiv presents a selection of Ukrainian Christmas carols arranged for violin and orchestra. Accompanying Ivakhiv in these world premiere recordings is the Lviv National Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Serhii Khorovets. The soulful playing of Solomiya Ivakhiv, who grew up in Western Ukraine singing these songs, and the fanciful arrangements of Bohdan Kryvopust, born in ...
The Golden Age of the Horn
Hornists Jacek Muzyk and Daniel Kerdelewicz and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra led by JoAnn Falletta pay tribute to the extraordinary time in the classical period that celebrated extreme virtuosity on the horn, unmatched before or since. The two soloists play some of the most difficult pieces composed for the instrument, works which are rarely performed live due to the very ...
Flórez: Zarzuela
The first release of Florez Records, the new label founded by tenor Juan Diego Flórez, is dedicated to the genre of zarzuela. “These romances full of passion and emotion represent an almost unique opportunity for Spanish and Latin American tenors to sing in their mother tongue,” says Flórez. “This recording production certainly fills me with happiness and pride. Firstly, because ...
Schubert
The great Italian legend of the piano Maurizio Pollini passed away on March 23, 2024. This album, recorded together with his son Daniele, showcases three different aspects of Franz Schubert’s mastery of the piano: the sonatas, the collections of short pieces, and music for four hands. Schubert’s great F minor Fantasia was the first piano four hands work father and ...
Player 1
Challenging traditional perceptions of classical music, Ray Chen’s new album with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Cristian Mǎcelaru juxtaposes Erich Korngold’s perennial favorite Violin Concerto with music from video games, television, Anime, and film. By transforming simple 8-bit game tunes into lush symphonic arrangements, Chen believes he can tap into the nostalgia of Generation X and Millennials who grew ...
Leonardo da Vinci
The original score for the upcoming Ken Burns documentary Leonardo da Vinci features 28 new compositions by Caroline Shaw. The album features performances by the composer’s longtime collaborators Attacca Quartet, Sō Percussion, and Roomful of Teeth as well as double bass player John Patitucci. David McMahon, one of the documentary’s directors, says “Caroline’s existing body of music—joyful, daring, at times ...
Love Letters
French cellist presents a double album tribute to Clara & Robert Schumann pairing Robert Schumann’s Cello Concerto (with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Raphaël Merlin) with works and arrangements for cello and piano by both composers (with pianist Jean-Frédéric Neuburger). La Marca says “With this album, I wanted to bring to life one of the most beautiful love stories in ...
Sibelius: Violin Concerto
The celebrated international virtuoso James Ehnes joins the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Edward Gardner in this exploration of Sibelius’s extensive output for violin and orchestra. Sibelius studied the violin in his youth, and actively entertained the prospect of a career as a professional violinist for much of his student life. It therefore comes as no surprise that the instrument plays ...
Block: Chamber Works
The ARC Ensemble is devoted to righting sins of omission, unearthing 20th century music suppressed or marginalized as a result of political and racial discrimination. The ARC Ensemble’s Music in Exile series continues with this album of chamber music by Frederick Block, the first commercial recording of this composer’s works; hidden gems that richly deserve inclusion in the mainstream classical ...
Beethoven: Hammerklavier
With a discography of well over 100 albums, this release marks Marc-André Hamelin’s first Beethoven recording. The transcendental difficulties of the Hammerklavier — by far Beethoven’s longest piano sonata, and in the composer’s view also his finest — will always deter all but the greatest pianists of the day, with only a select few able to master its formidable musical, ...
