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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Keith Jarrett: Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
Keith Jarrett’s account of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Württemberg Sonatas is a revelation. “I’d heard the sonatas played by harpsichordists, and felt there was a space left for a piano version,” says Jarrett today. This outstanding recording, made in May 1994 and previously unreleased, finds the pianist attuned to the expressive implications of the sonatas in every moment. The younger ...
ORA Singers: Sanctissima
This album marks the ORA Singers’ 10th release, presenting a fantasy construction of a Vespers and Benediction service in honor of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. It weaves hypnotic plainchant around Renaissance gems and modern masterpieces. The music of the great Renaissance masters Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Francisco Guerrero, and Felice Anerio sit alongside distinctive voices from the 21st ...
Martin Owen Plays Strauss, Schumann, Weber
Regarded as one of Europe’s leading horn players, Martin Owen appears as a soloist and chamber musician around the world and is currently principal horn with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Weber’s Concertino was written for the old, valveless “natural horn.” The technical demands are testament to the extraordinary facility of the hornists of the period. The first Horn Concerto by ...
Anna Lapwood: Midnight Sessions at the Royal Albert Hall
Organist Anna Lapwood recently signed a major label deal with Sony Classical and has released an EP of film transcriptions recorded on the organ of the Royal Albert Hall. Lapwood says, “Over the last 11 months, I’ve been lucky enough to be let into the Royal Albert Hall in the middle of the night for practice sessions on the hall’s ...
Alice Sara Ott: Beethoven
Earlier this year, pianist Alice Sara Ott became the face of the Apple Music Classical app when she starred in its launch video, performing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and its Chief Conductor Karina Canellakis. The recording of it now becomes the headline work in Ott’s latest Deutsche Grammophon album. The pianist has paired ...
Sergei Kvitko: Schubert by Candlelight – Live in Madrid
Pianist, composer, and producer Sergei Kvitko’s new album, Schubert by Candlelight — Live in Madrid, is a stunning collection of thirteen piano works that showcase the beauty and depth of Franz Schubert’s music. The album was recorded in 2022 at Hinves Pianos in Madrid, Spain, before a live audience under the gentle glow of candlelight. The recording captures the intimate and ...
Sphinx Virtuosi: Songs for Our Times
Songs for Our Times introduces the Sphinx Virtuosi to a worldwide audience. Hailed as “top‑notch” by The New York Times, this groundbreaking self-conducted American string ensemble comprises 18 exceptional Black and Latinx artists. Sphinx Virtuosi’s Deutsche Grammophon debut recording is built from works by outstanding composers and artistic visionaries of color. Its strikingly diverse tracks include the world premiere recordings ...
Berlin Stories: Trio Gaspard
Berlin Stories is the first in a new series of recordings by Trio Gaspard, focused on different cultural capitals and composers associated with them. The album features three composers who lived and worked in Berlin for a period of their lives. Felix Mendelssohn’s grandfather, Moses, was a philosopher who established a preeminent position for the family in Berlin and created ...
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5, Schulhoff: Five Pieces – Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Manfred Honeck
Reference Recordings presents Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 in a significant new interpretation from conductor Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. It’s coupled with Erwin Schulhoff’s Five Pieces, newly arranged for large orchestra by Honeck and Tomáš Ille. The album was recorded live in 2022 in historic Heinz Hall, home of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, in superb audiophile sound. Honeck ...
Emmanuel Despax: Après un rêve
Pianist Emmanuel Despax’s latest album, Après un rêve, is a tribute to the beauty and elegance of the Belle Époque era. Despax showcases his masterful technique and interpretation of the music, bringing new life to these timeless works. Highlights include Cécile Chaminade’s Nocturne and Henri Duparc’s Aux étoiles, alongside Poulenc’s Les Soirées de Nazelles, Debussy’s Claire de lune, Saint-Saëns’ Danse macabre, Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit, and of ...
Mythes: James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong
Composed in 1915, Karol Szymanowski’s Mythes is a three-movement work consisting of miniature tone poems based on Greek mythology. Late romantic and impressionist in style, the composer’s travels to Sicily and north Africa without doubt influenced the sumptuous sound world he created in this work. Mythes is the opening work on this eclectic recital album from violinist James Ehnes and ...
Karl Jenkins: One World – World Choir For Peace, World Orchestra For Peace
Decca Records presents a new album from Sir Karl Jenkins, one of the world’s most-performed living composers. One World deals with a fractured world and heralds a vision of a peaceful and egalitarian planet. The music is scored in Jenkins’ inimitable style that resists categorization and has had a truly global reach. To create this vision, he takes inspiration from texts ...
J.S. Bach, C.P.E. Bach: Father and Son – Einav Yarden
Pianist Einav Yarden writes: “When I first discovered C.P.E Bach’s keyboard music, I remember being completely amazed by its versatility and originality, by its inventiveness, spectrum of expression, and its boldness. I was equally astounded by how much he preceded his time, that only one generation away from his father’s High Baroque, and long before the Viennese Classical School fully ...
Byrd: Mass for Five Voices – The Gesualdo Six
The Gesualdo Six and its director Owain Park have established a formidable reputation for intelligently planned programs, flawlessly performed. Their latest release amply satisfies both criteria. Park writes in the booklet notes: “At the heart of the collection of works on this album is William Byrd’s Mass for five voices, probably the last of a set of three Masses he ...
Eric Coates: Orchestral Works, Volume 3 – BBC Philharmonic, John Wilson
John Wilson’s third volume devoted to music by Eric Coates combines some of the composer’s large-scale works with miniatures and two marches. The Cinderella Phantasy frames the well-known fairy-tale from Cinderella’s perspective. The Three Men is to some extent autobiographical, as Coates explores his love of his native Nottinghamshire countryside, his love for London, and his love of the sea. ...
Mozart: Piano Concertos K. 107, 175, 336 – Robert Levin, Academy of Ancient Music, Laurence Cummings
This release features Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 5, Church Sonata No. 17, Concerto movement in G major from Nannerl’s Music Book (reconstructed by Robert Levin), and the Piano Concertos K. 107 based on the sonatas by Johann Christian Bach. The recording is part of a landmark cycle which Robert Levin began in 1993. Upon completion, this cycle will become the ...
Ysaÿe: Six Sonatas for Violin Solo – Hilary Hahn
Violinist Hilary Hahn offers her latest album with Deutsche Grammophon: a recording of Eugène Ysaÿe’s Six Sonatas for Violin Solo, Op. 27. Composed beginning in 1923, these six sonatas are among the supreme feats of technical virtuosity in the violin repertoire. Hahn’s interpretations see her come full circle as a direct musical descendant of Ysaÿe himself. “Just as Eugène Ysaÿe was ...
Handel: Water & Fire – B’Rock Orchestra, Dmitry Sinkovsky
George Frideric Handel’s Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks were both written for royal open-air ceremonies and as such may well have been drowned out by the noise of pyrotechnics and the waves of the Thames. Still, after Handel’s lifetime, they quickly became audience favorites. This recording captures a live performance in Gent, Belgium, with the B’Rock Orchestra ...
Yunchan Lim Live from The Cliburn – Liszt: Transcendental Etudes
In June 2022, Yunchan Lim became the youngest person ever to win gold at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. His performances throughout showcased a “magical ability” and a “natural, instinctive quality” (La Scena) that astounded listeners around the world. As Jury Chair Marin Alsop expressed: “Yunchan is that rare artist who brings profound musicality and prodigious technique organically together.” ...
Jonathan Leshnoff: Elegy, Violin Concerto No. 2, Of Thee I Sing – Noah Bendix-Balgley, Canterbury Voices, Oklahoma City Philharmonic, Alexander Mickelthwate
This is the Naxos label’s fifth album devoted to the music of leading American composer, Jonathan Leshnoff. He was Grammy-nominated for his album Violins of Hope and is among the most frequently performed of living composers. The themes of these recent works are remembrance, memorialization, and hopefulness. Elegy addresses ideas of harmony and discord through contrasting thematic ideas. His Violin ...
