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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Dvořák: Poetic Tone Pictures – Leif Ove Andsnes
“I have to say I think this is the great forgotten cycle of 19th century piano music,” says Leif Ove Andsnes about his latest release on Sony Classical. On this album, he presents the most substantial piano collection by the great Romantic composer Antonín Dvořák – the unjustly neglected Poetic Tone Pictures. According to Andsnes, these undiscovered gems show an ...
Portrait: Alex Baranowski – Angèle Dubeau, La Pietà
Following their passion for seeking out rare musical gems, violinist Angèle Dubeau and La Pietà present Portrait: Alex Baranowski, the sixth release in their series of albums dedicated to contemporary composers. A successful young composer based in London, multiple award winner, and graduate of Paul McCartney’s LIPA, Alex Baranowski offers beautiful and generous music, rich in sound atmospheres. The album includes ...
The String Queens: Rise
Praised for its authentic, soulful, and orchestral sound, The String Queens (TSQ) is a dynamic trio that creates stimulating musical experiences that inspire diverse audiences. With an array of repertoire spanning from the Baroque era to the Jazz Age to today’s Billboard Hot 100 Chart, TSQ performs versatile programs that take listeners on a rousing musical journey through time and ...
Alexandre Tharaud: Cinema
Alexandre Tharaud’s relationship with film music runs deep – it also ranges wide. On his double album, Cinema, the French pianist delves into 50 celebrated film scores by composers from 19 countries. Among them are Michel Legrand, John Williams, Ennio Morricone, Francis Lai, Marvin Hamlisch, Nino Rota, and Philip Glass. As Tharaud says: “This album pays tribute to them with ...
Beethoven, Stravinsky: Violin Concertos – Vilde Frang
“The Beethoven concerto is a piece of overwhelming power,” says violinist Vilde Frang. “It is somehow more than music – the dimension of it feels almost cosmic. The force of this concerto takes me by surprise, over and over again.” Frang juxtaposes Beethoven’s epic, lyrical work with Stravinsky’s compact violin concerto, which pays spiky tribute to 18th century models. The ...
Santiago Cañón-Valencia: Ascenso
“Ascenso is a collection of works that have, in one way or another, a direct connection to myself. I wanted to present an album that was a representation of my current self, not just as a cellist, but as an artist. My idea is that this is not a cellist’s recording, or an album centered around the instrument, but rather ...
Schubert: Piano Sonatas D. 537, 568, 664 – Paul Lewis
After a brilliant Beethoven cycle and forays into Haydn and Brahms, Paul Lewis returns to complete his exploration of Schubert’s sonatas, which began with his first recording for Harmonia Mundi in 2001. The new recording features three early masterpieces. The Sonatas D. 537 and D. 568 display the daring and freshness of their youthful creator, while with D. 664, Schubert ...
Ravel: Orchestral Music, Volume 2 – Basque National Orchestra, Robert Trevino
Robert Trevino’s first album together the Basque National Orchestra featuring orchestral works by the great French-Basque composer Maurice Ravel received an excellent response. The program in this second volume is perhaps more “French” in nature, but the Basque orchestra is giving dazzling performances of these works by their own national composer. While the first album was focused on some of ...
Beethoven: Violin Sonatas – Midori, Jean-Yves Thibaudet
Though Midori and Jean-Yves Thibaudet have long been friends, they had never collaborated with one another until the 2018–19 season, when they toured a recital program of violin sonatas. The result was a consistent success, and they quickly got to work planning a recording of Beethoven’s violin sonatas. Over ten sonatas, spanning fifteen years of Beethoven’s life, this recording sees the longtime ...
Hans Rott: Symphony No. 1 – Bamberg Symphony, Jakub Hrůša
Fortune dealt Hans Rott a cruel hand. The Austrian composer, born in Vienna in 1858, struggled as a freelance musician and died at the age of twenty-five soon after succumbing to mental illness. Rott’s name lives on thanks to his Symphony No. 1 in E major and receives top billing in a new recording by the Bamberg Symphony and its Chief ...
Music of Charlotte Sohy
La Boîte à Pépites (The Jewel Box) is a new classical record label dedicated to releasing music by women composers. Founded by cellist Héloïse Luzzati, the label has ambitious plans to discover and record works by women composers that have rarely, if ever, been heard before or were lost over the decades. The label launches with a boxset of the ...
Schumann: The Symphonies – Berlin Staatskapelle, Daniel Barenboim
Deutsche Grammophon honors the supreme artistry of Daniel Barenboim on his 80th birthday. The great pianist and conductor’s remarkable legacy of recordings for the label remains the focus of a major campaign comprising three albums, two DG Stage concerts, and a series of e-video releases. The first release holds his latest readings of Schumann’s four symphonies, recorded live with the ...
Carl Friedrich Abel: Cello Concertos – Bruno Delepelaire, Berlin Baroque Soloists
It is a constant source of amazement that to this very day, musical gems even by famous composers often fail to receive the exposure they deserve or have even – despite modern digital access – been unjustly consigned to oblivion. The four works by Carl Friedrich Abel presented here are just such treasures, and two of them – the Sinfonie ...
Florence Price: Songs of the Oak, Concert Overtures – Württemberg Philharmonic, John Jeter
The rediscovery of Florence Price’s music has revealed one of the most significant bodies of work by an African American composer in the 20th century. The variety of genres represented on this release place Price’s immense artistic imagination on full display. The two Concert Overtures explore her engagement with spirituals, both episodically and coloristically, in music that embraces the somber, ...
Guitarra a Seis: Works for Guitar Sextet
With specially made instruments and a range that can emulate that of a whole orchestra, the acclaimed Guitarra a Seis bring us a colorful program that includes works written specially for the ensemble. Opening with a real feast for the ears in Bach’s lively Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, we further encounter the magical moods of Ravel’s Ma mere l’Oye, a ...
Sarah Cahill: The Future is Female, Volume 2 (The Dance)
Pianist Sarah Cahill, described as “a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde” by the New York Times, presents the second volume of The Future is Female. The project celebrates and highlights women composers from the 17th century to the present day. These albums encompass 30 compositions by women from around the globe and include many new ...
An Unexpected Mozart
Always curious about unjustly neglected repertoire, organist and conductor Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas introduces us here to a Mozart we have not met. Above and beyond his church sonatas, works written on commission, pieces meant to showcase a vocalist or an instrument (such as the rarely heard glass harmonica) or as a mark of friendship with another musician, this is ...
Anne Akiko Meyers: Mysterium
In violinist Anne Akiko Meyers’ latest program, Mysterium, the “musical wizard” (San Diego Union-Tribune) teams up with conductor Grant Gershon and the Los Angeles Master Chorale to present four world-premiere arrangements of popular works. The program is anchored by composer Morten Lauridsen’s choral masterpiece O Magnum Mysterium, reworked by the composer and Gershon for violin and choir, and also includes ...
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5; Rimsky-Korsakov: Kitezh Suite – London Symphony Orchestra, Gianandrea Noseda
History, heritage, and fate combine in this recording from Gianandrea Noseda and the London Symphony Orchestra, bringing together the music of Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, brimming over with drama and emotional intensity, charts a course from darkness to a final, life-affirming glimmer of optimism. Rimsky-Korsakov dug deep into Russian legends and folk tales for his opera The Legend ...
ARC Ensemble: Chamber Works of Alberto Hemsi
It is indeed ironic that composer Alberto Hemsi, who spent much of his life rescuing music that faced extinction, should have his own brilliantly original works threatened with a similar fate. As part of its mission to research and recover 20th-century music suppressed, or marginalized by repressive regimes, war, and exile, Canada’s ARC Ensemble focuses on this overlooked and prodigious ...
