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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Antonín Dvořák: Symphonies Nos. 7 – 9 – Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel
Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic garnered rave reviews for their performances of Antonín Dvořák’s masterful final three symphonies in February 2020. Hailed as “a revelation” by the Los Angeles Times, their interpretations were recorded live at Walt Disney Concert Hall by Deutsche Grammophon. Dudamel amplifies the turbulent emotions of each work and plunges deep into their often dark inner worlds, connecting with ...
Mosaic: Wenting Kang, Sergei Kvitko
Violist Wenting Kang, winner of the First Prize of the Tokyo International Viola Competition, has been praised as an “excellent violist” who “possesses a dark glowing sound” (New York Times). Her debut album Mosaic, on Blue Griffin Records, is a collection of diverse and colorful pieces from France and Spain. Kang says, “These composers not only had a strong impact ...
Telemann: The Recorder Sonatas – Dan Laurin
Over the past decades, Dan Laurin has established himself as one of the most interesting recorder players of our time. The first recordings Laurin made for the BIS label were of duets by Georg Philipp Telemann, and since then he has returned to the composer several times, recording chamber music and concertos. It is only now that he has set ...
Martha Argerich in Verbier
Martha Argerich in Verbier pairs live recordings of chamber and orchestral works from performances at the Verbier Festival in 2000 and 2001. In Haydn’s Piano Trio No. 39 from 2000, Argerich teams up with her long-term collaborators Mischa Maisky and Vadim Repin. While for her jaw-dropping performance of Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto from 2001, she performs with the Verbier Festival ...
J.S. Bach: Harpsichord Concertos – Andrew Arthur, Hanover Band
Harpsichordist Andrew Arthur says, “Bach’s seven concertos for solo harpsichord and strings occupy a significant place in the history of music, marking as they do the origin of the keyboard concerto genre. Collectively, they encompass the gamut of Baroque rhetorical expression; indeed, leaving aside the six ground-breaking Brandenburg Concertos…it is difficult to think of a more diverse, revolutionary, and technically ...
Berg, Webern, Schoenberg: String Quartets – Heath Quartet, Carolyn Sampson
Signum Classics offers the first album from the Heath Quartet with acclaimed soprano Carolyn Sampson. The three works on the recording demonstrate the extraordinary advances made in the development of the musical language of Arnold Schoenberg and his two chief pupils, Alban Berg and Anton Webern, over a period of a mere five years at the start of the 20th ...
Chopin & Rachmaninoff: Cello Sonatas – Jean-Guihen Queyras, Alexander Melnikov
After recording Beethoven, pianist Alexander Melnikov and cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras now turn to two more giants of the repertory. Chopin’s Cello Sonata, his last work published in his lifetime, seems almost like a testament, somber and tormented – a world away from the radiance and surging lyricism of the youthful work by Rachmaninoff that it inspired.
From Graceful Fields: Classical Works for Native American Flute – R. Carlos Nakai
For over 35 years, 11-time Grammy nominee R. Carlos Nakai has been at the forefront of the musical development of the Native American flute, introducing the traditional flute to the genres of jazz, new age, and classical music. From Graceful Fields is Nakai’s fifth classical album and features the ethereal and playful From Graceful Fields by Giuli Doyle, a new Nakai composition, ...
The Romantic Piano Concerto: Aloys Schmitt – Howard Shelley, Ulster Orchestra
Composer and conductor, pianist and pedagogue: Aloys Schmitt was respected by his peers but largely forgotten by posterity. He was an accomplished and prolific composer of impressive achievements, and his educational works for piano-playing were held in high esteem by Liszt. Schmitt was an acquaintance of Weber, Paganini, Liszt, and Chopin, and friends with Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn, and Louis ...
Alon Sariel: Plucked Bach
Alon Sariel makes his Pentatone label debut with Plucked Bach, a program exploring Bach’s cello suites performed on mandolins, lutes, baroque guitar, and oud, concluding with Sariel’s own Bach-inspired Mandolin Partita. Bach’s suites are often considered to be “the cellist’s Bible,” but the transferability of his music between instruments – a practice to which the composer himself also contributed frequently ...
Beethoven: The Symphonies – Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe present Beethoven’s nine symphonies in what is the very first recorded cycle to be based on the recently concluded New Complete Edition of the composer’s works. “I’m interested in how Beethoven’s music can surprise us today,” says Nézet-Séguin. “Our interpretation should make the audience feel as if they were hearing this music for the first time. That is ...
Sachiko Furuhata: Chopin Piano Favorites
Sachiko Furuhata was born in Yokohama, Japan, and completed her piano studies at the Tokyo Conservatory. Further studies took her to Germany at the Detmold University of Music and the Robert Schumann University in Düsseldorf. Her concert activities have taken her to Germany, Holland, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and Japan. With this third recital album, Sachiko Furuhata takes up selected works ...
London Choral Sinfonia: Colourise
The London Choral Sinfonia and director Michael Waldron are joined for their latest recording by baritone Roderick Williams, tenor Andrew Staples, and violinist Elena Urioste. The album opens with the Five Mystical Songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams. These hypnotically beautiful songs are staples of the repertoire but have never before been recorded in this version for voice, choir, piano, and ...
Beach: Complete Works for Piano Duo – Genova & Dimitrov Piano Duo
Amy Beach was not the first American woman who composed or the first American woman who earned money with her compositions; but she created a stir in the music world by forging ahead into genres in which previously only men had distinguished themselves. It was above all the piano that was Beach’s lifelong companion. She honored her instrument with solo ...
Cubatina: Music from Cuba and Argentina – Nora Lee García, Rene Izquierdo
Flutist Nora Lee García and guitarist Rene Izquierdo team up on a new recording, Cubatina. The album presents fresh interpretations of favorite works from Cuba and Argentina, as well as newly-commissioned pieces for flute and guitar by some of the most exciting composers of today. A Puerto Rico native, García is one of the most highly regarded flutists in the ...
The King’s Singers: The Library, Volume 4
The King’s Singers were founded in 1968 by six choral scholars who had recently graduated from King’s College Cambridge. Their vocal line-up was (by chance) two countertenors, a tenor, two baritones, and a bass, and the group has never wavered from this formation since. This is the fourth volume in the ensemble’s Library EP series. The idea behind it is ...
Schoenberg, Messiaen, Ravel: Piano Concertos – Francesco Piemontesi, Suisse Romande Orchestra, Jonathan Nott
The Suisse Romande Orchestra and its Music and Artistic Director Jonathan Nott continue their acclaimed series of 20th-century masterpieces on Pentatone, together with star pianist Francesco Piemontesi, presenting piano concertos by Maurice Ravel and Arnold Schoenberg alongside Olivier Messiaen’s Oiseaux exotiques. Each of these composers redefined 20th-century music in a highly personal way, and the works recorded here share a ...
Emilie Mayer: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 6 – Bremerhaven Philharmonic Orchestra, Marc Niemann
Emilie Mayer (1812-1883) was a German composer of the Romantic era. She began her serious musical study relatively late in life, yet she was a prolific composer, producing eight symphonies and at least fifteen concert overtures, plus numerous chamber works and songs. She was the Associate Director of the Opera Academy in Berlin. Marc Niemann and the Bremerhaven Philharmonic Orchestra ...
Kemal Belevi: Cypriana – Silvia Grasso, Livio Grasso
Kemal Belevi’s works for the guitar, either solo or in combination, exude the color and allure of the eastern Mediterranean. Without alluding to any specific tunes, he evokes Cypriot folk music in Cypriana, while the linked Four Sketches show his variety in the work’s bracing modernity. Belevi is at heart a romantic and a melodist of touching beauty as can ...
Schubert: Symphonies Nos. 8 & 9 – Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Herbert Blomstedt
Herbert Blomstedt chose the repertoire for his keenly awaited Deutsche Grammophon debut recording without hesitation. Joining forces with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Swedish conductor decided on a program comprising two symphonic masterworks: Schubert’s Eighth and Ninth Symphonies. The album is being released days before Blomstedt’s 95th birthday. The conductor recorded the Schubert symphony cycle with the Dresden Staatskapelle in ...
