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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When There Are No Words: Revolutionary Works for Oboe and Piano – Alex Klein, Phillip Bush
Grammy Award-winner Alex Klein, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s principal oboe emeritus, and pianist Phillip Bush perform works by composers from both sides of the Atlantic who were caught up in or deeply moved by 20th-century political turmoil. The Brazilian-born oboe virtuoso’s passionate project, with its underlying appeal for tolerance, encompasses works by Czech, German, British, American, and Brazilian composers. Much of the ...
Emily Granger: In Transit
Inspired by her life as an American artist living in Australia, Emily Granger makes her solo recording debut performing contemporary works that reveal the breadth and beauty of harp music from the two countries. With themes of travel and isolation, serenity and solitude, this music paints a vivid portrait of an artist’s life “in transit” between opposite sides of the ...
Mendelssohn: Piano Concertos – Lars Vogt, Paris Chamber Orchestra
Pianist-conductor Lars Vogt makes his first recording with the Paris Chamber Orchestra, where he became Music Director in 2020. This album of Felix Mendelssohn’s Piano Concertos and Capriccio brillant continues Vogt’s recordings of cornerstone works within the classic piano concerto literature, conducting from the keyboard. Previous releases include the complete piano concertos of Beethoven and Brahms with the Royal Northern ...
Beethoven: The Last Sonatas – Gerardo Teissonnière
Steinway & Sons releases Beethoven’s last piano sonatas (Op. 109, 110, and 111), marking pianist Gerardo Teissonnière’s debut on the label. Teissonnière – who began his musical studies in Puerto Rico and now resides in Cleveland where he is on the faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music – began performing all of Beethoven’s works for piano and orchestra in ...
Julie Cooper: Continuum
British composer Julie Cooper presents her commercial album debut, composed during the COVID-19 lockdowns. This musical diary represents Cooper’s reflections on the continuous cycle of life as experienced so vividly by many during this time. This theme is explored most prominently in the central work, Contemplation Suite, featuring soprano Grace Davidson. The album opens with the title track, Continuum, narrated ...
Stella: Renaissance Gems and Their Reflections – ORA Singers, Suzi Digby
Spanish composers of the sixteenth century followed a long tradition of writing music in honor of the Virgin Mary. The composer Tomás Luis de Victoria, a priest and a scholar too, wrote multiple settings of devotion to Mary of which this collection showcases some real gems. The album sees the ORA Singers continue their series of great Renaissance masterworks being ...
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 ...
