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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Respighi: Transcriptions of Bach and Rachmaninoff
The success of Ottorino Respighi’s “Roman Trilogy” brought the composer international fame as an outstanding orchestrator. One side effect of this are the orchestral transcriptions gathered on this album: all made in 1929-30 and commissioned by eminent conductors such as Arturo Toscanini and Serge Koussevitzky for their American orchestras. Respighi’s wide-ranging musical tastes included an interest in early music which ...
Mahani Teave: Rapa Nui Odyssey
After studying at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and the Hans Eisler Music Academy in Berlin, Mahani Teave was destined for a big career on the international concert stage, having won the Claudio Arrau International Piano Competition in 1999, and later being selected as a Steinway & Sons artist. However, she returned to her native Easter Island (Rapa Nui) and ...
Pascal Contet: Tango
With his new album “Tango,” accordionist Pascal Contet steps off the beaten track to explore the repertoire of those who inspired the great Astor Piazzolla. Contet pays homage to the finest tango dances with a set of contemporary arrangements, rounding things off with two original works, Stras Medianoche and Valentino Suite. In partnership with Paul Meyer, Contet explores how the ...
Atrium Musicae de Madrid: Al Andalus
This recording transports the listener into the world of classical Arabic and Andalusian music with highly elaborate musical sequences. Musician Beatriz Amo says, “In recreating this music [which dominated Granada from the eighth century until the fall of the Caliphate in January 1492], we steeped ourselves in the atmosphere that still reigns in the Alcazar, the Alhambra, and the mosque ...
Imani Winds: Bruits
Bright Shiny Things Records presents Bruits by the acclaimed Imani Winds. The album’s title is a medical term for a vascular murmur, an abnormal sound that is generated by the turbulent flow of blood in an artery that has been obstructed. Imani Winds write: “We are bruited. Our passages are raw, blocked. And we cannot continue this way.” The album ...
Mozart: Violin Concertos, Volume 1 – Aisslinn Nosky, Handel and Haydn Society
Mozart’s violin Concertos need little introduction. From No. 3 in G major featuring the 19-year-old Mozart at his elegant, witty, and beguilingly changeable best, to the Sinfonia Concertante with its masterly mixture of noble strength and tender lyricism, these are some of Mozart’s most well-known and best-loved works. The Handel and Haydn Society Orchestra with its inspirational concertmaster, Aisslinn Nosky, ...
Contrapunctus: The Sweetest Songs
The richest single source of Tudor polyphony, preserving almost 170 works many of which survive nowhere else, is a set of manuscript partbooks copied between about 1575 and 1581 by John Baldwin, a lay clerk at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. This album is the third and final installment in a series of recordings by Contrapunctus exploring contrasting aspects of this ...
Lara Downes: Remember Me to Harlem
Inspired by her own mixed-race heritage and career-long engagement with diverse musical traditions, pianist Lara Downes creates and curates a new digital recording initiative, Rising Sun Music, that sheds a bright light on the music and stories of Black composers over the past 200 years. The first installment in the series celebrates Harlem as a mecca of migration, a center ...
La Serenissima: Settecento
“Settecento” is the style of art, music, and architecture that emerged in Italy in the early 18th century, celebrated here by La Serenissima and Adrian Chandler with a collection of works from that era. The pieces are grouped by the areas of Italy where each composer worked. La Serenissima is recognised as the United Kingdom’s leading exponent of the music ...
Emerald Brass Quintet: Danzón
Since forming in 2006 at the Eastman School of Music, the Emerald Brass Quintet has gained recognition as a dynamic and virtuosic collection of performers and educators. Their debut album, “Danzón,” is a recording of reimagined masterworks arranged for brass quintet by Chris Van Hof. The idea of dance is a significant influence throughout, highlighting Baroque forms, popular Central and ...
Soundtrack of the American Soldier
Navona Records presents an album of contemporary works for wind band performed by the United States Army Field Band and Soldier’s Chorus. Led by Colonel Jim R Keene, the Army Field Band is the U.S. Army’s premier touring musical organization. In “Soundtrack of the American Soldier,” the band presents music of classic American films and video games, and in doing ...
Benjamin Grosvenor: Liszt
British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor is internationally recognized for his electrifying performances, distinctive sound, and insightful interpretations. The album Liszt signifies his most substantial solo recording to date, centered around the works of the Romantic piano virtuoso and composer Franz Liszt. Grosvenor says, “The music of Liszt has been central to my repertoire since I was introduced to it as a ...
Saint-Saëns: Music for Wind Ensemble
Camille Saint-Saëns was involved in every aspect of French music during his long lifetime, and his frequent travels led to a fascinating mixture of Western music with Moorish and African elements in works such as Orient et Occident and the Suite algérienne. Saint-Saëns wrote few works for winds, but the grand biblical themes of Samson et Dalila, patriotic military traditions, ...
Modigliani Quartet: Haydn, Bartók, Mozart
From the peak of the classical era to the hectic years of the 20th Century, the string quartet has established itself as the genre to which composers entrust their most innovative ideas. The Modigliani Quartet highlights three masterpieces of dazzling originality, each of which bears witness to a pivotal moment in the lives of their creators: Haydn, Mozart, and Bartók. ...
Sinfonia of London: English Music for Strings
During the 1930s, Arthur Bliss, Benjamin Britten, and Lennox Berkeley all contributed major works to the repertoire for string orchestra, following in the footsteps of Edward Elgar and Ralph Vaughan Williams. They are joined on this album by Frank Bridge whose Lament was composed during the First World War. This is the fourth recording by conductor John Wilson with the ...
Alexander Fiterstein: A Clarinet in America
The clarinet has long been embraced by American composers for its jauntiness and jazzy flexibility, qualities heard in abundance on this album. Alexander Fiterstein plays Leonard Bernstein’s Cuban-influenced Sonata and the Sonatina by Budapest-born Miklós Rózsa, who made his name as a Hollywood movie composer. These pieces are bookended by two Aaron Copland works – his Concerto, written for Benny ...
Duke Ellington: Assault on a Queen
Dragon’s Domain Records presents the world-premiere soundtrack release of Assault on a Queen, featuring music by the legendary Duke Ellington for the 1966 adventure/thriller directed by Jack Donohue. The film starred Frank Sinatra, Vina Lisi, Anthony Franciosa, Richard Conte, Alf Kjellin, and Errol John. The music has been mastered by James Nelson at Digital Outland and satisfies a long-missing entry ...
Johannes Fleischmann: Exodus
Violinist Johannes Fleischmann gives heartfelt and deeply insightful interpretations of the music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Eric Zeisl, Viennese composers who escaped the rise of Nazism by journeying to America shortly before the Second World War. Once there, both composers adapted their talents to the world of Hollywood, becoming defining voices in the golden age of film scores. 2020 ...
Bright Sheng: Let Fly, Zodiac Tales, Suzhou Overture
Inspired by the image of a violin melody “flying off,” Chinese-American composer Bright Sheng’s virtuosic three-movement concerto Let Fly interweaves Chinese and Western classical elements. Vivid legends of astrological animals inform Zodiac Tales, a tour de force concerto for orchestra. Reflecting the city of Suzhou’s ancient, continuous cultural heritage, traditional nostalgia fuses with contemporary rhythms in the exciting Suzhou Overture. ...
Schnittke: Works for Violin and Piano – Daniel Hope, Alexey Botvinov
Daniel Hope was fifteen when he first encountered the music of Alfred Schnittke in 1989. The experience launched a love affair with the Russian composer’s work that has continued to deepen ever since. The violinist’s latest album pays homage to this maverick genius, whose elegant explorations of past styles and free-thinking experiments in “polystylism” were both original and iconoclastic, at ...
