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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Coleridge-Taylor, Dvořák, Stewart
Gil Shaham’s latest album with conductor Eric Jacobsen and the Virginia Symphony Orchestra explores the violin concerto as a vehicle for cultural memory and continuity. The program pairs Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Violin Concerto in G minor, Op. 80, and Antonín Dvořák’s Violin Concerto in A minor, Op. 53, with the world-premiere recording of “F. Harper,” from The Famous People by Curtis ...
Nadia
WindSync’s new album pays homage to the French composer, conductor, music theorist, and legendary composition pedagogue Nadia Boulanger, who wielded immense influence over American music and musicians. Boulanger found a way to nurture each composer’s individual voice, and in doing so sowed the seeds of the kaleidoscopic breadth of styles that emerged in American music in the 20th century. The ...
Piano Music 2016–22
Myron Silberstein, Brooklyn-born (in 1974) and a long-term resident of Chicago, belongs to that centuries-old tradition of the composer-pianist. But here the distant roots are not so much in Mozart and Beethoven as in Copland and Barber. Silberstein’s language echoes the tradition of earlier American composers like Paul Creston, Peter Mennin, and Vincent Persichetti, and his tonal harmony may remind ...
Patrice Michaels: On the Joys of Recorded Music (single)
Cedille Records marks the 93rd anniversary of the birth of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (b. March 15, 1933) with the digital single release of Patrice Michaels’s “On the Joys of Recorded Music.” Performed by soprano Alisa Jordheim and pianist Kuang-Hao Huang, the previously unreleased song was originally intended for Michaels’s cycle The Long View, featured on the album Notorious RBG ...
Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time
Comprising violinist Olivia De Prato, cellist Ashley Bathgate, clarinetist Ken Thomson, and pianist Karl Larson on piano, the Anzû Quartet brings to the table a vast collective experience with groups like Bang on a Can All-Stars, Mivos Quartet, Eighth Blackbird, Ensemble Signal, and Bearthoven. For their second album in as many years, this new-music supergroup presents the work that inspired ...
17(67)
Cuban-American cellist Dr. Tommy Mesa second solo album features works for cello and piano by Saint-Saëns, Jocelyn Morlock, Jules Massenet, Ernesto Lecuona, Florence Price, Francisco Braga, Andrea Casarrubios, Marlos Nobre, Jennifer Higdon, Ernest Bloch, and Kinan Azmeh. The album title draws its meaning from two worlds: 1767, the birth year of the Nicolò Gagliano cello Mesa plays throughout the album, ...
Leonardo Vinci: Artaserse
Acclaimed for their historically informed productions 17th- and 18th-century operas and oratorios, Haymarket Opera Company, presents the rare operatic gem Artaserse (1730) by composer Leonardo Vinci. This three-act opera seria centers on the Persian prince, Artaserse, who must bring his father’s murderer to justice amid betrayal, deceit, and mistaken identity. All female roles in the original performances of this opera ...
Szymanowski: Sinfonia Concertante Op. 60, Mazurkas Op. 50
Considered to be the most gifted and promising pianist of his generation in Poland, Szymon Nehring is the only Pole to have won first prize at the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv (2017). He was also a finalist at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw at age 19. His new album is dedicated to Karol Szymanowski, one of ...
Or. (Couperin & Vivaldi)
For her new recording, entitled Or (light), Franco-American cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton presents arrangements of works by Couperin and Vivaldi. The album begins with the first and third of Couperin’s Leçons de ténèbres — the Lamentations of Jeremiah, originally scored for soprano and continuo. Wieder-Atherton says, “I had long been looking for an instrument that could accompany my cello in the ...
Forgotten Melodies
Born in Moscow in 2001, Alexander Malofeev has already become one of the most captivating pianists of his generation thanks to his phenomenal technique and the remarkable expressiveness of his playing. In 2014, at just thirteen, he won first prize at the junior edition of the prestigious International Tchaikovsky Competition. For his debut solo album, Malofeev has selected four composers ...
Olivia Belli: Daimon
Known for her refined neoclassical voice, the new album from Italian composer and pianist Olivia Belli draws inspiration from Homer’s Odyssey. Belli was fascinated by Odysseus’s destined return to Ithaca and the idea that every life follows a journey toward its true purpose. This concept shaped her new piano concerto, Daimon, recorded with the German Chamber Orchestra Berlin and influenced ...
Penderecki: Resurrection; Ciaccona
The legendary Lithuanian pianist Mūza Rubackytė, a longtime friend of Krzysztof Penderecki, presents a live recording of the late Polish master’s Piano Concerto “Resurrection” with the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Keri-Lynn Wilson. Completed in 2006, Penderecki dedicated it to the events of 9/11, saying: “The title ‘Resurrection’ should be understood in a broader, symbolic, and universal ...
Cover Girl (EP)
Critically acclaimed harpist Ashley Jackson presents an EP of artistic arrangements of music by four icons of popular music: Whitney Houston, Nina Simone, Dolores O’Riordan (the late lead singer of The Cranberries), and Pakistani singer-composer Arooj Aftab. Cover Girl celebrates the fearless women who have shaped the popular music landscape. With brand new arrangements, Ashley Jackson pays homage to those ...
Symphonies in 3 Movements
Winner of the 2024 La Maestra competition in Paris and recipient of five additional prizes, conductor Bar Avni was born in Israel and first studied percussion before turning to conducting. She counts Yoav Talmi, Barbara Hannigan, and Ayelet Geva as mentors and has assisted conductors such as Gustavo Dudamel, Klaus Mäkelä and Myung-Whun Chung. Known for her desire to seek ...
Songs of Remembering: In Memory of Ahmaud “Quez” Arbery
The Grammy-winning Los Angeles-based chorus Tonality presents the world-premiere recording of Running From, Running To, an eight-part suite reflecting on the life and death of Ahmaud Arbery, the young Black man whose killing on February 23, 2020 while jogging sparked a national outcry. Composed by Founding Artistic Director Alexander Lloyd Blake, Running From, Running To is scored for chorus, soloists, ...
Invitation: Mozart, Mendelssohn & Schumann
Under Jörg Widmann’s 10-year leadership as Principal Conductor and Artistic Director, the Irish Chamber Orchestra has established itself as a globally recognized, high-energy ensemble known for innovative programming, premiering new works, and extensive international touring. Widmann, a clarinetist, composer, and conductor, often directs the orchestra while performing as a soloist on the clarinet. This album celebrates their transformative ten-year creative ...
Elsa Barraine: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2 ‘Voïna’
French composer Elsa Barraine (1910–99) was a pupil of Paul Dukas and fellow student of Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire. She won the Prix de Rome at age 19, before going on to hold several public posts in French music. She spent more than 20 years as a professor and was also prominent in the French Resistance during the ...
American Tapestry
Pianist Orli Shaham has been the curator, host, and pianist of Pacific Symphony’s “Cafe Ludwig” chamber music series for nearly two decades. This new album of contemporary chamber music is the product of her long relationship with the musicians of the symphony, which is based in Southern California. The program demonstrates the diversity of chamber works by leading American composers ...
American Tapestry
The latest album by the Calidore String Quartet weaves together a panoramic portrait of American musical expression across the 20th and 21st centuries spanning Samuel Barber’s lyrical String Quartet No. 1 (famous for its iconic Adagio movement), Wynton Marsalis’s jazz-inflected At the Octoroon Balls, and John Williams’s With Malice Toward None — here in its world premiere string quartet version. ...
Rachmaninoff: Piano Works
Boris Giltburg, widely recognized as a leading interpreter of Rachmaninoff, continues his ongoing series for Naxos dedicated to the composer. Composed at the age of 19, Rachmaninoff’s earliest published cycle of piano pieces, the Morceaux de Fantaisie, contains the Prélude in C sharp minor, destined to become a signature work, and the Mélodie in E major, much loved by Tchaikovsky. ...
