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
Angela Hewitt: Love Songs
Angela Hewitt’s recording Love Songs features some of the best-known musical declarations of love across the centuries, heard in transcriptions by some of the great pianists (including Hewitt herself). She sums up the album by saying, “It means a lot to me to present you with this recording, especially as it was made during a time of great isolation for ...
Concentus Musicus Vienna: Haydn & Schubert Symphonies
Concentus Musicus Vienna continues its exploration of works of the Classical and Romantic periods as envisioned by the ensemble’s late founder Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Stefan Gottfried conducts Schubert’s Symphony No. 5, written in 1816 at the age of 19, and the seventh of Haydn’s 12 London symphonies, No. 99, written in 1793. Recorded live at the famous Musikverein in Vienna, this ...
Brahms: Piano Sonatas, Rhapsodies – Garrick Ohlsson
Since his triumph as winner of the 1970 Chopin International Piano Competition, Garrick Ohlsson has established himself worldwide as a musician of masterful interpretative and technical prowess. Although he has long been regarded as one of the world’s leading exponents of the music of Frédéric Chopin, Ohlsson commands an enormous repertoire. The two sonatas recorded on this album are the ...
Leif Ove Andsnes: Mozart Momentum 1785
Mozart Momentum 1785 is the first of two releases on which pianist Leif Ove Andsnes and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra explore the remarkable years of 1785/86 in Mozart’s life. In 1781, aged 25, Mozart made the bold move of going freelance. With both public and private concerts taking place on a daily basis, Vienna was the place to be for an ...
Verona Quartet: Diffusion
Through the intimate voice of the string quartet, Diffusion explores a mosaic of cultures in Janáček’s String Quartet No. 2 “Intimate Letters,” Szymanowski’s String Quartet No. 2, and Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major. As an ensemble of four nations (Singapore, Canada, United States, and United Kingdom), the Verona Quartet reveals a kaleidoscopic snapshot of cultural migration at the turn ...
The Romantic Piano Concerto, Volume 83: Gablenz, Paderewski
The Hyperion label’s wide-ranging exploration of the Romantic piano concerto continues with works by two Polish composers. Ignacy Jan Paderewski is a familiar name, but the same can hardly be said of Jerzy Gablenz. Jonathan Plowright makes the strongest case possible for Gablenz’s piano concerto: a substantial work rich in melodic invention and thunderous pianism. The album also features Paderewski’s ...
Randall Goosby: Roots
Rising star violinist Randall Goosby presents his debut album, Roots. The album is an exploration of music written by Black composers and inspired by Black American culture. The collection is an homage to the pioneering musicians who paved the way for Goosby and his generation of young artists. Goosby says, “I am so grateful for the opportunity to share this album ...
Cantus: Manifesto
The vocal ensemble Cantus’ latest release of world premieres marks their full-length album debut on Signum Classics. In Manifesto, Cantus takes a nuanced look at identity and relationships — with friends, lovers, family, and the divine. The album takes its name from “Manifesto,” a minimalistic piece from Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang set to text from Google’s auto-complete list of ...
Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective: American Quintets
The Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective was founded in 2017 by Tom Poster and Elena Urioste, who met through the BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists program. The Collective operates with a flexible roster of today’s most inspirational musicians. For their debut recording, the ensemble performs Amy Beach’s Piano Quintet, which the KCC fell in love with during a residency at the ...
Duo Mantar: Music from the Promised Land
This selection of pieces for mandolin and guitar performed by Duo Mantar represents the rich variety of music from Israel. Styles range from the diaspora of Babylonian Jewry through European klezmer traditions and Balkan Ladino songs to contemporary influences from America. Paul Ben-Haim and Marc Lavry pioneered the use of music originating in the Jewish East, and Jan Freidlin continues ...
Inna Faliks: The Schumann Project
Ukrainian-born American pianist Inna Faliks is a passionately committed artist who has made a name for herself through her commanding performances of standard piano repertoire, genre-bending interdisciplinary projects, and inquisitive work with contemporary composers. On her latest recording, Faliks juxtaposes two large scale works by Clara Schumann (née Wieck) and Robert Schumann. In this first volume of her Schumann Project, ...
Mozart: Violin Concertos – Sebastian Bohren, CHAARTS Chamber Artists, Gábor Takács-Nagy
Swiss violinist Sebastian Bohren makes his Avie label debut with two concertos from Mozart’s “year of the violin” – Nos. 3 and 5 – paired with the composer’s youthful Symphony No. 29. Bohren’s interpretations bring out the sparkling energy of the concertos, written when Mozart was just 19 years old. His partners on the album, famed Hungarian violinist-turned conductor Gábor ...
Americans – Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, James Gaffigan
Vivid testimony to the multifaceted partnership of James Gaffigan and the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, their latest release invites us to explore the conductor’s American roots, from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story to Charles Ives’ Symphony No. 3, based on his works for solo organ. With dramatically potent dissonances, Ruth Crawford’s Andante for strings casts a spell in the form of ...
Andrew von Oeyen: Bach, Beethoven
Shaped by pianist Andrew von Oeyen’s experience of lockdown, this solo recital comprises Bach’s Overture in the French Style BWV 831, Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas No. 13 in E-flat major and No. 23 in F minor, Appassionata, and arrangements by Wilhelm Kempff of two movements that Bach wrote for accompanied flute. “Perhaps more than any other composer, Bach expresses the clearest ...
Hildegard von Bingen: Ordo Virtutum – Seraphic Fire
Grammy-nominated vocal ensemble Seraphic Fire’s latest release is the first complete recording of St. Hildegard’s 12th-century masterpiece Ordo virtutum to include the accompanying gradual Qui sunt hi. Artistic director Patrick Dupre Quigley worked in conjunction with scholar Dr. Honey Meconi – author of the 2018 biography Hildegard of Bingen – to bring this “play of virtues” to life. The women ...
Vivaldi: Violin Concertos, “Le nuove vie” – Boris Begelman, Concerto Italiano
Boris Begelman takes center stage with Rinaldo Alessandrini’s Concerto Italiano in a collection of violin concertos from the Naïve label’s Vivaldi Edition. Begelman – who is concertmaster of Concerto Italiano and who has performed in previous recordings as a member of the ensemble – here lends his “engaging and conversational” playing (The Strad) to Vivaldi’s eminently virtuosic, animated, and improvisatory late ...
Introspection: Solo Piano Sessions – Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin is also a versatile pianist. In the summer of 2020, when the pandemic shut down most of the cultural life all over the world, he found, as he describes it, “kind of a salvation” in playing the piano – and recorded his first solo album. Nézet-Séguin was inspired also by the memory of his admired teacher Anisia ...
Hope Amid Tears – Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax
Yo-Yo Ma and long-time friend and musical partner Emanuel Ax have released Hope Amid Tears, a new recording of Beethoven’s complete works for cello and piano, on Sony Classical. The album presents Beethoven’s five sonatas for cello and piano in the order in which they were composed, tracing an important arc in Beethoven’s development and approach as a composer. Joining them are ...
Brahms: Symphony No. 3, Serenade No. 2 – Budapest Festival Orchestra, Iván Fischer
With this recording of the Third Symphony, the Grammy-winning combination of Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra completes their cycle of Brahms Symphonies on Channel Classics. The recording began one day prior to Hungary closing its borders on September 1st, 2020. Engineer/producer Jared Sacks had just arrived from the Netherlands. Despite the lockdown, the venue remained accessible and the ...
C/O Chamber Orchestra: Divertissement!
The C/O Chamber Orchestra is a collective of 30 young musicians from a dozen different countries. For their first disc, the members have chosen to highlight the genre of the divertimento. The name implies a diversion, light music for entertainment, but many of the best-known examples of the form transcend that definition. The four works recorded here offer different perspectives ...
