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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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 ...
Avant l’orage: French String Trios – Black Oak Ensemble
Black Oak Ensemble, the Chicago-based string trio with an international following, treats listeners to a double-album of stylish and often witty French treasures written between the World Wars. The ensemble offers seven rarely heard delicacies from the 1920s and 30s, including world premiere recordings of trios by Henri Tomasi, Robert Casadesus, and Gustave Samazeuilh along with works by Jean Cras, ...
J.S. Bach: Concertos for Harpsichord & Strings, Volume 2 – Bach Collegium Japan, Masato Suzuki
The concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach for solo harpsichord and strings are some of the earliest, if not the very first, keyboard concertos. In all likelihood Bach wrote them for his own use (or that of his talented sons) – probably to be performed with Leipzig’s Collegium Musicum. The concertos’ fresh and exuberant character came across on Masato Suzuki’s first ...
Celestial Dawn: Pembroke College Girls’ Choir, Anna Lapwood
Directed by Anna Lapwood, the Chapel Choir of Pembroke College has one of the most exciting and varied ranges of choral endeavors among choirs at the University of Cambridge. Alongside their primary responsibility of contributing to worship in the College’s Chapel, they engage in regular artistic collaborations, media appearances, and outreach work. The Pembroke College Girls’ Choir was founded in ...
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: Early Chamber Works – Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor is best known for his cantata Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, which brought him international success as well as propelling his career at home in the United Kingdom. The three pieces recorded here were all composed during his time as a student at the Royal College of Music. They were destined to remain unpublished during his lifetime, and indeed for ...
Plínio Fernandes: Saudade
Born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, Plínio Fernandes’s musical talent has brought him all over the world, including to the Royal Academy of Music in London where he received his master’s degree and has lived for the last seven years. With Saudade, an entrancing collection of works for solo guitar, Fernandes makes his auspicious recording debut for Decca Gold, weaving ...
Jean Mouton: Missa Faulte d’argent & Motets – Brabant Ensemble, Stephen Rice
Stephen Rice and the Brabant Ensemble continue exploring the music of the French composer Jean Mouton. Their earlier album of his works was described as “gorgeous” (BBC Music Magazine) and its successor is every bit as rewarding, confirming the distinction and originality of this near contemporary of Josquin des Prez. The Missa Faulte d’argent emerges as a major work in ...
Tournament for Twenty Fingers: Emma Abbate, Julian Perkins
Initially enjoying popularity first in Germany-speaking lands and then in France, the genre of the piano duet (four hands, one piano) went on to blossom in England during the 20th century. On this album, Emma Abbate and Julian Perkins present the complete works for piano duet by each of the composers selected: Lennox Berkeley, Richard Arnell, Stephen Dodgson, and Constant ...
Itamar Zorman: Violin Odyssey
Violinist Itamar Zorman’s new album was born out of his 2020 live-streamed video series Hidden Gems, presented during the lockdown when concerts were on hold. The popular series focused on many lesser-known and rarely-played works for violin. From this musical treasure trove, Zorman selected ten pieces for Violin Odyssey, made with pianists Ieva Jokubaviciute and Kwan Yi. The far-reaching geographical ...
Peter Boyer: Orchestral Works – London Symphony Orchestra, Peter Boyer
This album presents eight of the most recent works by Peter Boyer, one of the leading American orchestral composers of his generation. Balance of Power was commissioned for the 95th birthday of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, while Fanfare for Tomorrow was composed for the inauguration of President Joe Biden in 2021. Each of these pieces displays Boyer’s vivid ...
