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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C.P.E. Bach: Sonatas & Rondos – Marc-André Hamelin
“A performer of near-superhuman technical prowess” (The New York Times), pianist Marc-André Hamelin is known worldwide for his unrivalled blend of consummate musicianship and brilliant technique in the great works of the established repertoire, as well as for his intrepid exploration of rarities. The music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach makes complex stylistic demands of the performer like little else ...
United Strings of Europe: Renewal
Having released their debut album, In Motion, in 2020, the musicians that make up United Strings of Europe (USE) return with another innovative program: Renewal. The title refers in part to the fact that the majority of the works included are heard in arrangements and adaptations tailormade for the ensemble by Julian Azkoul, who also directs from the violin. In ...
Benedict Sheehan: Vespers
Conductor and composer Benedict Sheehan leads the Saint Tikhon Choir in his new setting of Eastern Orthodox Vespers in English. Inspired by the great All-Night Vigil setting by Rachmaninoff, Sheehan’s composition expands the genre with full settings of Psalms. Each verse is treated with deep musical pathos to express a full range of human emotion. The Saint Tikhon Choir was ...
Quicksilver: Early Moderns
Quicksilver brings together today’s top North American historically-informed performers. On Early Moderns, the ensemble explores brilliant and sumptuously beautiful music one could hear in 17th-century Vienna, including works by Schmeltzer, Fux, Buonamente, Bertali, Biber, Rosenmüller, Kerll, Legrenzi, and Valentini.
Stewart Goodyear: Phoenix
As a phoenix obtains new life by arising from the ashes of its predecessor, the works on this album obtain new life by arising from the sound world, past traditions, and gestures of Franz Liszt. Whether it is the virtuosic splashes of color created by Debussy, the urban landscape constructed by Jennifer Higdon, the intense improvisation and haunting dissonant starkness ...
Rachmaninoff: Cello Sonata – Gautier Capuçon, Yuja Wang
Rachmaninoff’s Cello Sonata, Op. 19, one of the great landmarks of late Romantic music, has found its ideal interpreters in Gautier Capuçon and Yuja Wang. Their new recording of the work projects a partnership of equals fully immersed in the music’s turbulent emotions and striking expressive contrasts. “In the last few years of working together, Gautier and I have developed ...
Beethoven: String Quartets Nos. 10 and 11 – Ehnes Quartet
Hailed as “an important new force in the chamber music arena” with a “dream-team line-up” (Strings), the Ehnes Quartet is comprised of four internationally renowned string musicians: violinists James Ehnes and Amy Schwartz Moretti, violist Richard O’Neill, and cellist Edward Arron. On their third release devoted to Beethoven, the Ehnes Quartet includes the last two works of his “middle period.” ...
Clément Lefebvre: Ravel
Maurice Ravel, a versatile and eclectic composer, took his inspiration from many sources, but especially and most constantly throughout his life from music of the French Baroque. His Menuet antique, Pavane pour une infante défunte, Valses nobles et sentimentales (title chosen in homage to Franz Schubert), and Le Tombeau de Couperin are fine illustrations of that interest and inspiration, and ...
Bach: Sonatas for Viola da Gamba and Harpsichord – Sarah Cunningham, Richard Egarr
Legends of the period-performance community Sarah Cunningham and Richard Egarr need little introduction with their contributions to recorded music, garnering critical acclaim from early music afficionados across the decades. They join forces for their Avie Records debut recording of J.S. Bach’s celebrated Sonatas for Viola da Gamba and Harpsichord together with Cunningham’s dazzling Organ Trio Sonata and Flute Partita arrangements ...
Christian-Pierre La Marca: Wonderful World
Cellist Christian-Pierre La Marca’s new two-disc set Wonderful World embraces classical, neo-classical, world music, and jazz in a program dedicated to saving the planet. “Nature has always been a source of inspiration for many musicians,” says La Marca. “I have conceived Wonderful World, a project where several art forms combine on stage, aligning the beauty of our world with its ...
The Gesualdo Six: Josquin’s Legacy
The Gesualdo Six is an award-winning British vocal ensemble comprising some of the United Kingdom’s finest consort singers, directed by Owain Park. Taking inspiration from Josquin des Prez’s 500th-anniversary year in 2021, the ensemble examines his legacy in the Italian city of Ferrara, a particular destination for composers from France and the Low Countries. This album explores some of the ...
Mendelssohn: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3 – Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Thomas Dausgaard
Having begun their collaboration in 1997, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and its conductor laureate Thomas Dausgaard have developed an unusually tight partnership. Nowhere is this demonstrated more clearly than in their cycles of the symphonies of Schumann, Schubert, and Brahms – performances which have been characterized by reviewers as variously “fresh,” “vivid,” and “transparent.” Of Mendelssohn, the team has previously ...
Christmas Carols with The King’s Singers
This new Christmas album from The King’s Singers features 25 tracks covering everything from contemporary choral gems and folk songs through to well-loved carols. Dotted throughout the album are several of the most famous English church carols, which take The King’s Singers right back to their earliest singing days, and which also reflect the group’s heritage at King’s College, Cambridge. ...
The Sixteen: Carol of the Bells
The Sixteen contrasts traditional with contemporary in this choral feast of festive music. Bob Chilcott’s sumptuous Advent Antiphons based on plainsong melodies anticipate the coming of Christmas and feature alongside Mykola Leontovich’s much-loved Carol of the Bells, Richard Rodney Bennett’s stunning Susanni, and Eric Whitacre’s shimmering Lux aurumque. Interspersed with the beautiful simplicity of traditional carols, this is a Christmas collection ...
Fretwork: An Elizabethan Christmas
Viol consort Fretwork and mezzo soprano Helen Charlston explore the more reflective and somber Christmas celebrations of Elizabethan England, in a collection of works by William Byrd, Anthony Holborne, Orlando Gibbons, and Martin Peerson. With celebrations confined strictly to the twelve days from Christmas Eve to Epiphany, the preceding Advent was regarded as a time of religious introspection, with music ...
Ralph Vaughan Williams: An Oxford Christmas
This recording focuses on arrangements made by Ralph Vaughan Williams for the Oxford Book of Carols (1928). The preface tells us: “Variety in the method of singing is even more important than with hymns, and the verses should never be sung straight through all in the same way.” In this spirit, conductor William Vann has prepared the carols with a ...
In the Bleak Midwinter: Christmas Carols from King’s College, Cambridge
In the Bleak Midwinter reflects a Christmas that was unlike any other in recent history. Much of the music on this album was heard around the world as part of the 103rd Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, a service that has been broadcast live every year since 1930 from the Chapel at King’s College, Cambridge. But for Christmas Eve ...
A Star in the East – Ronn McFarlane, Carolyn Surrick, Jackie Moran
Viola da gambist Carolyn Surrick and lutenist Ronn McFarlane release a new holiday album, A Star in the East, featuring reimagined traditional Christmas favorites alongside new works by both McFarlane and Surrick. They weave a tapestry of music ranging from 15th-century Europe to 21st-century America, seamlessly held together by the timelessness of their instruments and their extraordinary musicianship. For A ...
The Knights Before Christmas
The Knights Before Christmas is a world-premiere recording of holiday music from numerous genres performed by the cutting-edge Brooklyn orchestral collective The Knights—praised by The Arts Fuse as “a group of instrumentalists whose collective musicianship is electrifying: full of just the right combination of wonder, play, and discovery.” Guest performers include Wu Man, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Magos Herrera, Krystle Warren, I’m ...
Boston Camerata: A Medieval Christmas, Hodie Christus Natus Est
Drawing on a wide variety of sources, mingling liturgical Latin with French, English, Italian, and Iberian vernaculars, these magnificent songs, hymns, and processionals show the multitude of ways in which the birth of Christ was celebrated in medieval times. The trio of female singers is accompanied by harp, fiddle, bells, and wind instruments. Together they touchingly evoke all the tenderness, ...
