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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Haydn: String Quartets, Op. 42, 77, 103 – Takács Quartet
Combining an international career with their longstanding appointments as Artists in Residence at the University of Colorado Boulder, the members of the Takács Quartet perform throughout Europe, the United States, Asia, and Australasia, and are Associate Artists at London’s Wigmore Hall. For Hyperion, the ensemble continues its survey of Haydn’s string quartets. Regarding a previous release, BBC Record Review said, ...
Evgeny Kissin: The Salzburg Recital
In August 2021, as the Salzburg Festival made a return to full capacity, Evgeny Kissin drew a sell-out crowd to the city’s Grosses Festspielhaus. He treated his audience to a strikingly original program of works by Alban Berg, Frédéric Chopin, George Gershwin and, to the surprise of some, Tikhon Khrennikov. A generous selection of encores featured one of Kissin’s own ...
Rachel Barton Pine: Violin Concertos by Black Composers Through the Centuries
Chicago-based violinist Rachel Barton Pine plays American composer Florence Price’s Violin Concerto No. 2 with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, conducted by Jonathon Heyward, on her new Cedille Records album, Violin Concertos by Black Composers Through the Centuries. The new release marks the 25th anniversary of Pine’s pioneering 1997 Violin Concertos by Black Composers of the 18th and 19th Centuries ...
Sheku Kanneh-Mason: Song
The celebrated cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason has a new solo album which reveals more about the star and what inspires him than ever before. Entitled Song (referring to the unique singing tone of the cello), this is his most personal album yet, presenting a musical portrait of the gifted musician. Stretching from Bach to Bacharach, Song sees Kanneh-Mason present an extraordinary ...
Yuja Wang, Andreas Ottensamer, Gautier Capuçon: Rachmaninoff & Brahms
Pianist Yuja Wang, clarinetist Andreas Ottensamer, and cellist Gautier Capuçon have earned a reputation as a “super-trio,” giving performances worldwide that reveal the instinctive, almost telepathic bond of musical communication that exists between the three players. Their first album for Deutsche Grammophon documents that extraordinary rapport. Capturing the energy and intensity of sessions held at the Konzerthaus Dortmund in 2021, the ...
Vivaldi: Il Mondo al rovescio – Gli Incogniti, Amandine Beyer
A world turned upside down. Vivaldi’s concertos for multiple instruments are true precursors of the symphony in their amplitude and audacity. In these pieces, the “Red Priest,” a creator of boundless imagination, amused himself by devising literally unheard-of combinations of timbres. In the famous concerto Il Mondo al rovescio (The world upside down), he includes flutes, oboes, and harpsichord to double ...
Serenata: Brazilian Music for Chamber Orchestra – English Chamber Orchestra
Brazilian composers in the 19th century often sought state scholarships to enable them to study in Europe where they were influenced by the German, Italian, and French compositional schools. They also became involved in the vogue for writing suites based on ancient dances, such as Alberto Nepomuceno’s delightful Ancient Suite, premiered at Edvard Grieg’s home, or Francisco Braga’s Madrigal-Pavana which ...
Mozart: Complete Piano Sonatas, Volumes 2 & 3 – Orli Shaham
The internationally-renowned concert pianist Orli Shaham is deep into a multi-year endeavor of recording all of Mozart’s piano sonatas. In this two-CD set, she performs the ever-popular Sonata K. 331, including the Rondo Alla Turca; one of the most technically demanding piano works by Mozart – the Sonata in D major, K. 576; and the Sonata in A minor, K. ...
Summer Night Concert 2022 – Vienna Philharmonic, Andris Nelsons
The Summer Night Concert is an annual open-air event which has been held since 2008. The park of Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna is the magical setting for the concert. For the first time since the coronavirus pandemic, the concert was able to take place again with a full audience. The Vienna Philharmonic devoted this year’s program to the theme of ...
Alison Balsom: Quiet City
Alison Balsom says, “The concept of this project began decades ago, when I decided that Copland’s Quiet City was a work that everyone needed to hear – especially so as Copland reveals the scene so brilliantly via the solo trumpet and English horn. There is a true melancholy in this work that only a certain type of trumpet playing can ...
The Gesualdo Six: Lux Aeterna
“A sequence for the souls of the departed, to be heard by those who remember them” is how director Owain Park characterizes this latest release from The Gesualdo Six. Lux aeterna is a poignant reflection on the perennial themes of sorrow and consolation, given eloquent expression in the works of fourteen composers from the sixteenth century and the present day. Stylistic ...
Mariam Batsashvili: Romantic Piano Masters
Franz Liszt takes pride of place on Mariam Batsashvili’s second Warner Classics album, primarily devoted to evocative, technically formidable piano transcriptions of opera, song, and organ music. Among the works are Liszt’s realization of the Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, a spectacular take on Bellini’s opera La sonnambula from Liszt’s great rival, Sigismund Thalberg, and Harold Bauer’s adaptation of ...
The Knights: The Kreutzer Project
The Brooklyn-based orchestral collective The Knights embodies the spirit of exploration with their new album release, The Kreutzer Project, a program that explores the connections between Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata and the Tolstoy novella it inspired. The album includes new arrangements of both Beethoven’s and Janáček’s Kreutzer Sonatas, along with a new work entitled Kreutzings by The Knights’ co-founder Colin Jacobsen, ...
Haydn Piano Sonatas, Volume 11 – Jean-Efflam Bavouzet
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s survey of Haydn’s piano sonatas reaches its conclusion with this 11th and final volume. Bavouzet notes, “It has been eleven years since the launch of this project to present Haydn’s sonatas, not in their chronological order, but as collections juxtaposing works from different periods. The program for this final album was actually the first one to be devised: ...
Augustin Hadelich: Recuerdos
A subtle and profound Spanish theme runs through Recuerdos (Memories). Violinist Augustin Hadelich has conceived an album that unites three works for violin and orchestra and a piece originally written for solo guitar. For Britten’s Violin Concerto, Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2, and Sarasate’s Carmen Fantasy, Hadelich is joined by the WDR Symphony Orchestra and its Chief Conductor, Cristian Măcelaru. ...
La Serenissima: Vivaldi’s Women
Vivaldi’s Women is the latest recording from the critically-acclaimed ensemble La Serenissima. The album showcases Vivaldi’s compositions written for the women of the Ospedale della Pietà, a Venetian institution founded in about 1340 that cared for unwanted children, often illegitimate or physically disadvantaged. The Pietà’s performers were taken from a group of women (not normally girls, contrary to popular belief) ...
Konstantin Vassiliev: Guitar Works, Volume 1 – Yuri Liberzon
Konstantin Vassiliev’s music synthesizes several different styles including jazz, Russian folk music, and contemporary Western traditions. This album contains music written over a 22-year period, with three works composed specifically for guitar soloist Yuri Liberzon. Hommage à Tom Jobin was inspired by one of the creators of the bossa nova style, while the melancholic and lyrical contrasts of Rose in ...
Brahms: Complete Symphonies – Danish Chamber Orchestra, Adam Fischer
Brahms was 43 years old when, after a long period of maturation, his First Symphony was published, marking a new phase in his musical development. The Second Symphony is traditionally seen as the pastoral element in the cycle, while the Third, with its melodic beauty, ends with astonishing serenity. The compelling finale of the Fourth Symphony represents a fitting summation ...
Makaris: The Galant David Rizzio
In the early 18th century, a number of the most popular traditional Scottish songs were bizarrely attributed to David Rizzio, who more than 150 years earlier had been brutally murdered while serving as secretary to Mary, Queen of Scots. The ensemble Makaris explores arrangements of the “Rizzio melodies” by galant-era composers including Francesco Geminiani, Johann Christian Bach, and James Oswald. ...
Lisa Batiashvili: Secret Love Letters
Violinist Lisa Batiashvili’s new album, Secret Love Letters, features evocative music inspired by late-Romantic literature and great virtuosos of the past. Her recording celebrates the fine art of concealment, of holding private passions just beneath the surface until they erupt. Joined by the Philadelphia Orchestra and conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, as well as by pianist Giorgi Gigashvili, Batiashvili performs Karol Szymanowski’s First ...
