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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Festmusik: A Legacy – Onyx Brass
A recording based on a family’s hidden collection of letters from the great Romantic masters featured on the disc. New transcriptions of music by Richard Strauss, Schumann, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Rubinstein and Franz sit alongside a superb new recording of Strauss’ masterpiece, Festmusik der Stadt Wien. Directed by John Wilson and joined by the acclaimed brass ensemble, Septura, this recording is ...
Mendelssohn: The Complete Solo Piano Music Vol. 5
Today, in the midst of a full-scale Mendelssohn revival, Volume Five of Howard Shelley’s survey of the complete solo piano music in six volumes 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 the press, released in seventeen ...
José Serebrier: Last Tango Before Sunrise
Reference Recordings is proud to present new recordings of a compendium of nine works of José Serebrier, including four world premières and the first digital recording of his dramatic Symphony for Percussion, performed by the Gnessin Percussion Ensemble of Moscow. Grammy-winning conductor and composer José Serebrier is one of the most-recorded classical artists in history. Born in 1938 in Uruguay of Russian and ...
Strauss: Ein Heldenleben, Burleske – Santa Cecilia National Academy Orchestra, Antonio Pappano
Antonio Pappano conducts Rome’s Santa Cecilia National Academy Orchestra in two works from the earlier phase of Richard Strauss’s career: the mercurial, virtuosic Burleske for piano and orchestra, with Bertrand Chamayou as soloist, and the epic, autobiographical tone poem Ein Heldenleben, one of the composer’s orchestral masterpieces. “Strauss always thought dramaturgically,” says Pappano. “Recording this music in Italy, the link has ...
Beethoven & Schnittke: Violin Concertos – Vadim Gluzman
Vadim Gluzman takes on the work that in the beginning of the 19th century mapped out a new course for the violin concerto: Beethoven’s Concerto in D major, Op. 61. With this work, Beethoven presented a symphonic reinterpretation of the concerto, with soloist and orchestra becoming equal partners. Over the years, a number of composers and great violin virtuosos have ...
Mozart: Wind Serenades K. 361 & 375 – Berlin Academy for Ancient Music
When Mozart took up the popular genre of the serenade, it was to transcend it and lend it new luster. A festive masterpiece of simplicity and emotion, his Gran Partita quickly became a hit. Thanks to the distinctive, spellbinding timbres of their period instruments, the Berlin Academy of Ancient Music gives a unique flavor to these two extraordinary serenades.
Andrea Dieci: English Guitar Music of the 20th Century
It’s easy to identify the classical guitar with Spanish repertoire. After all, Andrés Segovia, who revived the fortunes of the instrument in the early decades of the 20th century after long neglect, was a Spaniard. This does not do justice, however, to the major contribution made to 20th-century guitar repertoire by a number of national schools, among which the United ...
Juilliard String Quartet: Beethoven, Dvořák, Bartók
The Juilliard String Quartet celebrates the 75th anniversary of its founding with a new recording from the heart of the quartet repertoire. Included are Beethoven’s String Quartet in E Minor, Op. 59, the second of the composer’s three Razumovsky quartets; Bartók’s String Quartet No. 3; and Dvořák’s String Quartet in F Major, Op. 96, American. This recording is the first ...
Inca Trail Connections – Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Miguel Harth-Bedoya
The Caminos del Inca, or Inca Trails, is a road network that traverses South America connecting lands and peoples. The area’s musical traditions are ancient and varied, taking in indigenous sounds as well as European influences, and the composers represented on this album have all been inspired by this musical legacy, the people of their homeland, and the land itself. ...
Ysaÿe: Six Sonatas for Solo Violin – James Ehnes
Eugène Ysaÿe’s six sonatas are, together with Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas, among the most important extended works for the solo violin. Ysaÿe composed each one of them with a particular violinist in mind, capturing their personality and the characteristics of their playing. These sonatas represent the stylistic bridge between the old and the new, between tradition and improvisation, offering a ...
Miloš Karadaglić: The Moon & The Forest
Celebrating 10 years with Universal Music, Miloš Karadaglić releases an album featuring two outstanding new concertos, both commissioned for the guitarist – a testament to his musicianship and pioneering spirit, showcasing new guitar repertoire on the world stage. The Moon & The Forest features works by award-winning composers Howard Shore (Lord of the Rings, The Departed) and Joby Talbot (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to ...
Robert Schumann: Complete Piano Trios, Quartet & Quintet – Trio Wanderer
Constantly shifting from the most impulsive exuberance to the most restrained meditation, from the most intense passion to the most innocent tenderness, this program forms a representative panorama of Schumann’s chamber music. Going beyond the piano trios, which already give us a fully rounded account of Schumann, Trio Wanderer have invited their favorite partners to join them for their interpretation ...
Archivo de Guatemala: Music from the Guatemala City Cathedral Archive – El Mundo
Spanish colonies in Central and South America emerged as wellsprings of cultural activity throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. The meeting of indigenous populations with Latin American cathedrals and courtly life resulted in styles bearing the imprint of folk music, even in sacred compositions. The sophisticated musical culture of Guatemala City Cathedral is represented in an archive of hundreds of ...
Swedish Chamber Orchestra: The Brandenburg Project
Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos belong to those works that are so well-known that we risk taking them for granted. In order to (re-)discover the special qualities that can inspire us today, Thomas Dausgaard and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra decided to contact six contemporary composers, asking each of them to compose a companion piece to one of the concertos. In 2018, they ...
Wolf-Ferrari: Dreams & Drama – Emmanuele Baldini, Luca Delle Donne
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari’s reputation rests largely on his operas, but the instrumental music he composed at the beginning and end of his career deserves a wider currency. The influence of Brahms can be detected in the First and Second Violin Sonatas, though Wolf-Ferrari’s distinctive long melodies and chromatic flow are clearly present; the dramatic and expressive Second also includes references to ...
Brahms: Symphony No. 2, Academic Festival Overture – Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Herbert Blomstedt
Herbert Blomstedt and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra continue their Brahms symphonies project with a recording of the composer’s Second Symphony in D Major, alongside his Academic Festival Overture. Although idyllic and pastoral at first sight, Brahms himself remarked about the symphony that he had “never written anything so sad.” Blomstedt and the orchestra bring out all the different moods and ...
The Music of Gerre Hancock – Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys
The renowned Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys record a fitting tribute to their former Choirmaster and Organist Gerre Hancock (1934-2012). In this post for over 30 years, he was a pivotal figure in the choir’s rejuvenation and created a wealth of choral and organ music during his career – much of it composed for friends and colleagues across ...
Avison: Concerti Grossi (after Domenico Scarlatti) – Tiento Nuovo
Harpsichordist Ignacio Prego directs a new selection of the Concerti Grossi by Charles Avison drawing inspiration from keyboard sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti. Italian music had great popularity in Britain in the 18th century, and Avison adapted and transformed Scarlatti’s sonatas into his Grand Concertos, making them his own. Prego and his new Spain-based ensemble Tiento Nuovo relish the Iberian influences ...
Music of Salvatore Di Vittorio – Chamber Orchestra of New York
Salvatore Di Vittorio is seen as an heir to the Italian neo-Classical orchestral tradition with a narrative style notable for its colorful orchestration and ‘swelling lyricism’ (American Record Guide). This second volume of his orchestral works includes a vivid portrayal of the cultural and historical diversity of his home city in Overtura Palermo. Di Vittorio’s Symphony No. 3 evokes the ...
Franz Halász: Spain
Franz Halász stands at the forefront of the current guitar scene and has long been one of Germany’s most influential guitar educators. His latest album is a colorful and varied program of music from Spain, taking in highlights in the guitar literature such as Francisco Tárrega’s Recuerdos de la Alhambra, as well as Joaquín Turina’s Guitar Sonata, here recorded for ...
