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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Lamenting Earth
The latest release from tenor Nicholas Phan features his regular collaborator, the outstanding pianist Myra Huang, and The Jasper Quartet in world premiere recordings of works by Vivian Fung and Patrick Castillo alongside songs by Schubert, Ives, and Vaughan Williams. Timed to coincide with World Earth Day, the program explores humanity’s interaction with nature. Franz Schubert’s songs evoke images of ...
Arvo Pärt: Complete Symphonies
Finnish conductor Eva Ollikainen leads the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, where she has held the post of Chief Conductor and Artistic Director since 2020, in the four symphonies of Arvo Pärt. Composed over a span of forty-five years and bearing little or no relationship to one another, the symphonies represent the composer’s output at separate parts of his creative journey. The ...
Hoffnung
The years 2023-2028 mark 200 years since the final five years of the life of Franz Schubert, leading up to the 200th anniversary of the composer’s death in Vienna on November 19, 2028. Paying homage to this important event, baritone Samuel Hasselhorn and pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz created SCHUBERT 200: a multi-genre international project aimed at a new, young generation of ...
Terra Infirma
Marking Earth Day, Grammy-nominated harpist Yolanda Kondonassis releases her new album Terra Infirma featuring the titular work by Reena Esmail – a concerto for harp and percussion both performed by Kondonassis with the Interlochen Center for the Arts Orchestra conducted by Andrew Grams. Terra Infirma was directly informed by Esmail’s experience living in Los Angeles during the catastrophic fires of ...
Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 9 & 22
Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki returns to the concertos of Mozart a decade after recording Nos. 20 and 21 for his Deutsche Grammophon debut. Joined by the Bamberg Symphony directed by Manfred Honeck, Lisiecki’s latest recording presents a contrasting but complementary pair of works in E-flat major: Concertos Nos. 9 and 22. “Recording these two works was a dream of mine,” ...
Christoph Graupner: Sinfonias
Founded in 1988, Il Gardellino is a Flemish Baroque orchestra whose name is taken from the virtuosic goldfinch in Vivaldi’s eponymous concerto. What was applied as a playful metaphor almost 40 years ago, now encapsulates the identity of this internationally acclaimed Belgian period instrument ensemble acclaimed for their focus on works by Johann Sebastian Bach and his contemporaries Johann Friedrich ...
New Nordic – Pocket Concertos
This album comprises world premiere recordings of seven new Nordic violin concertos by Veronique Vaka from Iceland, Sunleif Rasmussen from the Faroe Islands, Andrea Tarrodi from Sweden, Aksel Kolstad from Norway, Arnannguaq Gerstrøm from Greenland, Joel Järventausta from Finland, and Poul Ruders from Denmark. Composed for violinist Niklas Walentin and the Danish Chamber Players, these commissions reinterpret the Romantic violin ...
Prokofiev
Isata Kanneh-Mason’s latest recording stems from a long and personal relationship with the composer’s music, which reached a major public milestone when she made her BBC Proms solo debut in 2023, performing Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3. Since she first heard the concerto at the age of 18, the work and has been a key part of Kanneh-Mason’s concert life. ...
From Ordinary Things
Cellist Seth Parker Woods, Artist-in-Residence at the University of Chicago, presents a new album exploring identity, intimacy, and human connection with music by André Previn, George Walker, Tania León, and Sergei Rachmaninoff. The album’s title is drawn from Toni Morrison’s poetry – setting the tone for a program that elevates the everyday into something resonant and revelatory. “I’m still on ...
Spectrum
The third solo album from German pianist Esther Birringer surveys music by 15 different composers, bringing the masters such as Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, and others into dialogue with modern voices like Lera Auerbach, Ludovico Einaudi, and Valentin Silvestrov. “The term spectrum is usually associated with physics: when white light passes through a prism, it breaks into a full rainbow of ...
Divine Impresario
The latest album from countertenor Randall Scotting celebrates Nicolò Grimaldi, the castrato who conquered the opera world under the stage name Nicolini (1673 – 1732). The repertoire features rarely performed arias and duets from the early 18th century, nine of which have never been recorded before and have not been heard since Nicolini’s lifetime. While Nicolini is best remembered today ...
Live at the Met
Decca Classics presents a recital by soprano Lise Davidsen and pianist James Baillieu recorded at the Metropolitan Opera in September 2023. Their program reflects the full spectrum of Davidsen’s range, moving effortlessly between opera, song and musical theatre. Davidsen demonstrates her mastery of the music of Richard Strauss with four songs: “Allerseelen,” “Befreit,” “Zueignung,” and “Morgen.” Opera highlights include “Dich, ...
Echoes of Vienna
Vienna was in the grip of serious political unrest that forced many Jewish artists into exile when Erich Wolfgang Korngold composed his Second String Quartet in 1933, first performed the following year in the Austrian capital. In it he celebrated, before it faded away, the vitality of a musical school of which Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had been one of the ...
Emporium – Music of Aldo López-Gavilán
Cuban pianist-composer Aldo López-Gavilan presents world-premiere recordings of three of his own orchestral and solo works highlighting the composer’s distinctive musical voice—one that seamlessly blends classical virtuosity, improvisational freedom, jazz inflections, and Afro-Cuban rhythmic vitality. The title work is a three-movement piano concerto originally conceived during an improvisation session as a musical gift for the composer’s daughters. The album also ...
Rhapsody in Black
Vyacheslav Gryaznov’s Rhapsody in Black is a stunning and original work that blends classical and jazz influences, showcasing Gryanznov’s extraordinary skill as both a pianist and a composer. Based on themes from the Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, Rhapsody in Black picks up the story where the opera leaves off: Bess in New York, Porgy following in her footsteps. Rhapsody in Black ...
Opera Suites for Nonet – Act III
Founded in 2016, ensemble minui comprises five string and our wind players) active in the Carinthian Symphony Orchestra, the Slovenian National- and the Vienna State Opera orchestras who perform reduced versions of works from the symphonic and operatic repertoire. While simple reductions of large orchestral works were initially on the program, opera music gradually became the great passion of ensemble ...
Rising
The all-women a capella ensemble Lyyra (the only one of its kind based in the United States) presents their debut album with a genre-defying program that showcases the multifaceted beauty of upper voices. Created by VOCES 8, Lyyra’s members are Anna Crumley, MaryRuth Miller, Elizabeth Tait, Ingrid Johnson, Aryssa Leigh Burrs and Cecille Elliott, representing a wide range of specialisms ...
Beyond Vivaldi: Lute Concertos
Composed during Antonio Vivaldi’s stay in Prague in 1729–30, the Concerto for Lute RV 93 is the most celebrated example of a repertoire almost totally neglected today, but once extremely popular in the German-speaking world, particularly in the Habsburg lands of Austria and Bohemia. In her new album. lutenist Evangelina Mascardi illuminates a fundamental chapter in the history of the ...
Puccini: Heroines
A souvenir the all-Puccini program presented by Lyric Opera of Chicago in February 2025 featuring Sondra Radvanovsky with the Lyric Opera Orchestra conducted by Enrique Mazzola, recorded live. In a feat only imaginable for a soprano assoluta, the extraordinary Berwyn, Illinois-native performed one aria from every Puccini opera bringing vivid individuality to each heroine, from the tender lyricism of “Sì. ...
Leokadiya Kashperova: Piano Concerto · Symphony
Leokadiya Kashperova (1872–1940) was Igor Stravinsky’s piano teacher, having herself been a student of Anton Rubinstein. To this day, however, her compositions remain in the shadow of the male Russian masters, a fate shared by many other women of this era. Although her output is nowhere near as comprehensive as that of her contemporaries, what she did produce demonstrates incredible ...
