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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Escualo5: Astor Piazzolla
Astor Piazzolla’s music is played in concert halls around the world and has been arranged for the most varied forces: symphony orchestra, string quartet, brass ensemble, mandolin orchestra, and harpsichord. Taking their name from Piazzolla’s Escualo (Shark), the five musicians who make up Escualo5 have a different approach, replicating the formation that Piazzolla performed with for much of his career: ...
Locke: The Flat Consort – Fretwork
Matthew Locke was born 400 years ago in 1622, and while he is often ranked as one of England’s finest composers, he is still unaccountably neglected. His music may not be as immediately appealing as his immediate successor, Henry Purcell, nor as wide-ranging as William Byrd, yet his forceful musical personality and luxuriant technique place him in the first echelon ...
Mendelssohn: Complete Solo Piano Music, Volume 6 – Howard Shelley
Howard Shelley’s six-volume survey of the complete solo piano music of Felix Mendelssohn offers a welcome opportunity to revisit and reassess this repertoire. As we now know, Mendelssohn composed or began nearly two hundred works for piano. Nevertheless, he saw only about seventy through to print. In this, the final installment of the series, Shelley focuses on late works and ...
Telemann: Viola Concertos – Antoine Tamestit, Berlin Academy for Ancient Music
A precursor in this field as in so many others, Georg Philipp Telemann gave the viola its very first masterpieces, immediately establishing it as a solo instrument in its own right. Alongside Sabine Fehlandt and the musicians of the Berlin Academy for Ancient Music, Antoine Tamestit pays splendid tribute to this pioneering music, which blends melodic charm and contrapuntal rigor ...
New Year’s Concert 2022: Vienna Philharmonic, Daniel Barenboim
There are few concerts in the world that are awaited with as much excitement as the New Year’s Concert from Vienna. For 2022, the Vienna Philharmonic ushered in the New Year with a concert conducted by Daniel Barenboim for the third time at the magnificent Golden Hall of the Vienna Musikverein. The concert was broadcast to over 90 countries all ...
From Brighton to Brooklyn: Elena Urioste, Tom Poster
Elena Urioste is a musician, yogi, writer, and entrepreneur, while Tom Poster is a musician whose skills and passions extend well beyond the conventional role of the concert pianist; they are musical and (now married) life partners. From Brighton to Brooklyn is an exploration and celebration of their British and American backgrounds and mutual fascination with music from each other’s ...
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 ...
