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.
Stay on top of New Releases with WFMT's curated Spotify and Apple Music playlists
Mozart, Strauss: Oboe Concertos – Cristina Gómez Godoy, West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, Daniel Barenboim
Spanish oboist Cristina Gómez Godoy combines technical brilliance with musical expressiveness, stunning virtuosity with artistic sensitivity. In 2012, at age twenty-one, she joined the Berlin Staatskapelle as solo English horn. In 2013, Gómez Godoy was appointed principal solo oboist of the orchestra under the baton of Daniel Barenboim. Now, she has released her first recording, playing pieces that made her ...
Solomiya Ivakhiv: Poems and Rhapsodies
Ukrainian violinist Solomiya Ivakhiv brings us a collection of programmatic works for violin and orchestra, Poems and Rhapsodies. Along with the evocative and ethereal sound of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending, the recording includes the American composer Kenneth Fuchs’ American Rhapsody and works by Camille Saint-Saëns and Ernest Chausson. Ivakhiv also recorded rarely-heard music by two Ukrainian composers: Myroslav Skoryk and Anatoly ...
A Night in London: Ophélie Gaillard, Pulcinella Orchestra
In the 1730s, many composers tried their luck in London. Francesco Geminiani revolutionized instrumental writing with his famous treatise on interpretation and presented an amazing version of La Folia. His pupil Charles Avison orchestrated concertos by Domenico Scarlatti, and Nicola Porpora ventured away from opera to rediscover the vocalism of the cello with one of the most beautiful concertos of ...
Beethoven: Piano Sonatas, Volume 2 – Nikolai Lugansky
For the second volume of Beethoven sonatas, Nikolai Lugansky selects three milestones in the composer’s stylistic evolution: the Moonlight, the Tempest, and the Appassionata. The master of Bonn gradually broke with the models he inherited from the codes of Viennese Classicism in order to give free rein to affect, emotion, and Romantic gesture. With these three works, Beethoven laid the ...
Vaňhal: Symphonies, Volume 5 – Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Pardubice
Johann Baptist Vaňhal was one of Haydn’s most important contemporaries. His symphonies in particular were widely admired throughout Europe, with music historian Dr. Charles Burney reporting that Vaňhal’s symphonies were known in England before those of Haydn. The finely wrought works in this recording include the Symphony in F minor, considered one of his best in this genre, and the ...
José Fernández Bardesio: Bach and Barrios
This album brings together things that at first glance don’t appear to have much in common: works by Johann Sebastian Bach and Agustín Barrios, who lived in distinctly different cultures many generations apart. However, the intriguing aspect of combining two so very disparate worlds is that shared elements only become apparent when they are placed side by side. Born in ...
Vivaldi, Leclair, Locatelli: Violin Concertos – Théotime Langlois de Swarte, Les Ombres
Théotime Langlois de Swarte continues his exploration of the violin repertory of the early eighteenth century. In this program, he highlights the links between three leading composers for the instrument, whose popularity was burgeoning at the time: Antonio Vivaldi, father of the violin concerto, and two of his most brilliant younger contemporaries, Pietro Locatelli and Jean-Marie Leclair. An album which, ...
Elle: La Pietà, Angèle Dubeau
Violinist Angèle Dubeau presents Elle, a new album that magnificently marks the 25 years of existence of her orchestra La Pietà. This 46th album resonates with the sensitivity and virtuosity specific to Dubeau and the ensemble she founded in 1997, which has ever since demonstrated its artistic excellence and audacity. Elle transports listeners to a mesmerizing universe, that is alternately ...
Joachim Raff: Complete Works for Cello and Piano – Christoph Croisé, Oxana Shevchenko
The beautiful, lyrical music of prolific 19th-century Swiss composer Joachim Raff was widely performed during his lifetime but is relatively under-represented today. Who better than Christoph Croisé, Raff’s modern day compatriot, to breathe new life into the composer’s complete works for cello and piano. Raff’s chamber music, and especially his works for cello, were among his most notable achievements. Having ...
Iceland: The Eternal Music – Choir of Clare College Cambridge, Graham Ross
Icelandic music of the last half century is the focus of this recording by the Choir of Clare College Cambridge, led by conductor Graham Ross. Born from his close collaboration with the native composers of the “Land of Fire and Ice,” this program sets out to explore and highlight their hypnotic sound world, instinctively leaning towards contemplation. A prime example ...
Jan Lisiecki: Night Music
Following a critically-acclaimed recording of Chopin’s Nocturnes, Jan Lisiecki presents another new album inspired by night music. With this project, the Canadian-born pianist and former Gramophone Young Artist of the Year, continues to explore the theme with works by Mozart, Ravel, Schumann, and Paderewski. “I love putting together programs. I love taking the audience on that journey with me,” says ...
Daniel Hope: America
Berlin-based violinist Daniel Hope’s latest album takes a deep dive into the rich repertoire of American music, exploring its roots and distinctive qualities. “We know a piece is from America the moment we hear it,” says Hope. “But what makes music sound American?” Daniel Hope: America provides some answers, presenting works by composers as diverse as Leonard Bernstein, Sam Cooke, Aaron Copland, ...
Symphonies of the Bach Family: Berlin Baroque Soloists, Reinhard Goebel
Every generation creates its own forms of expression. Often, this happens in abrupt rejection of what has gone before. Such thoughts may have moved Johann Sebastian Bach when, in the early 1740s, his two eldest sons took up the genre of the symphony, which had come from Italy and was accompanied by a novel treatment of the orchestra and compositional ...
Richard Strauss: The Happy Workshop, Serenade – Carnegie Mellon Wind Ensemble
The Carnegie Mellon Wind Ensemble traces its roots to the Carnegie Tech Kiltie Band, founded in 1908. Over the years, the Kiltie Band grew and enjoyed a long and distinguished history as a concert band. Today, single players perform each instrumental part, emulating an orchestral wind section. This style of playing in a large ensemble allows for the tonal colors ...
Rachmaninoff: Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom – Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Kaspars Putniņš
The music of the Russian Orthodox Church was an essential part of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s musical background. His Vespers has long been admired as a summit of Russian liturgical music. It has unfortunately tended to overshadow the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, his earlier large-scale sacred composition. The Liturgy consists of a sequence of prayers, psalms, and hymns, which are sung ...
Magdalena Hoffmann: Nightscapes
Night falls in diverse ways in Magdalena Hoffmann’s Deutsche Grammophon debut album. Nightscapes sees the German harpist dive deep into the intimate, mysterious, magical world of night music, as well as exploring the theme of dance. Its program spans everything from the austere beauty of Britten’s Suite for Harp Op. 83 and languid lyricism of Pizzetti’s Sogno to the folk‑like colors of Tournier’s La danse ...
Music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: RTÉ Concert Orchestra, Adrian Leaper
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was an English composer, conductor, and activist who battled against racial prejudice with his music. The Hiawatha trilogy, with its stirring overture, established Coleridge-Taylor as one of Britain’s leading young composers and stimulated commissions in a wide variety of music. The Othello Suite was written for a stage production of the play, its powerful and contrasting themes illustrating ...
Orchestral Music of Maurice Ravel: Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Sakari Oramo
Maurice Ravel composed a number of works which have become classics of the repertoire both for solo piano and for orchestra. On the present disc, all except one work were first conceived for piano, which raises the question how it is possible to transfer such pianistic music to the orchestra without making it sound like a mere “colorized” version. Ravel’s ...
Reflections: Scott Joplin Reconsidered – Lara Downes
Iconoclastic pianist Lara Downes takes a fresh look at the music of Scott Joplin on her album Reflections: Scott Joplin Reconsidered, the newest release in her Rising Sun Music series, which brings to life the rich, 200-year lineage of Black composers in America. This recording looks back through a modern lens to explore the many layers of Joplin’s creative vision, as well ...
Boundless: Pablo Barragán, Sophie Pacini
Boundless: that’s how one might describe these sonatas by Sergei Prokofiev, Mieczysław Weinberg, Leonard Bernstein, and Francis Poulenc. All of them, except the one by Poulenc, were composed during the Second World War, each exploring in a different way the boundaries of the genre. While Weinberg draws on klezmer, the music of his childhood, and Bernstein on jazz, Prokofiev and ...
