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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Schubert: Impromptus, Op. 90 & 142
American pianist Eric Lu, recent First Prize winner of the 19th International Chopin Piano Competition, presents Franz Schubert’s Impromptus D.899 and D.935. Lu previously performed the Op. 90 Impromptus during the 2018 Leeds International Piano Competition, which he also went on to win. He says, “I have a real sense of a journey with these works, in particular with Op.90, ...
Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky
Nobuyuki Tsujii has performed Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto the world over, from London to Australia, where Limelight Magazine deemed his performance “flawless” and “second to none.” On this new recording of “Rach 3” with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Domingo Hindoyan, Tsujii also presents solo transcriptions of songs by Rachmaninoff and Mikhail Pletnev’s suite of transcriptions of Tchaikovsky’s The ...
Mozart: Great Mass in C Minor
Jordi Savall presents the world premiere recording of a new performing edition of Mozart’s unfinished “Great” Mass in C minor, K. 427, restored and completed with historical rigor and musical sensitivity. Basing their score on Mozart’s own compositions and sketches, Savall and his fellow conductor/musicologist colleague Luca Gugliemi have fashioned a new version that The Times says “goes some way ...
Colors of Bach
Violinist Eldbjørg Hemsing reimagines 20 of J.S. Bach’s most beloved melodies in playful, yet intricate arrangements for chamber ensemble with piano or harpsichord. At the core of this project lies a shared artistic philosophy: to expand, rethink, and reshape Bach’s music without ever diminishing it. The arrangers draw strength from the positive and universal nature of his themes and harmonies, ...
Brooklyn Suite
Tenor Zachary Wilder is the descendant of a large family of Jewish immigrants, musicians who fled their small Lithuanian shtetl of Panevezys to escape the persecution of the brutal pogroms in the late 19th Century. Emigrating to America, the Steinfelds settled and flourished in their new home of Brooklyn. In Brooklyn Suite, Wilder reimagines his great, great uncles’ home gatherings ...
New Year’s Concert 2026
A souvenir of the famed Vienna Philharmonic’s 2026 New Year’s Day concert, an offering “a greeting of hope, friendship, and peace,” broadcast live around the world from the lavish Golden Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna. A tradition since 1939, this year’s program included beloved Viennese favorites Roses from the South and the Egyptian March along with lesser known but ...
Aloe
Marking the 400th anniversary of John Dowland’s death (1563–1626), Los Angeles-based guitarist Joseph Ehrenpreis presents a collection solo pieces by the English composer who bridged the late Renaissance to the early Baroque era. Ehrenpreis arranged Dowland’s music from lute tablature to his 8-string “Brahms Guitar,” an instrument invented by David Rubio and Paul Galbraith in 1994 that uses an endpin ...
Autumn Aubade
The Swedish duo of trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger and pianist-composer Roland Pontinen, longtime collaborators, present a program of recently composed works, arrangements, favorites of both musicians and standards from the Great American Songbook. The centerpiece of the program is Three Autumns by Staffan Storm, a reflection on elegiac autumn moods. Among contemporary composers, Mark-Anthony Turnage and HK Gruber, who have provided ...
Helden – Leben – Lied: Music by Dvořák, Glazunov, Strauss
The Bamberg Symphony and their chief conductor Jakub Hrůša present a multifaceted meditation on heroism — from the swaggering self-portrait of Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben, to the spiritual resilience of Antonin Dvořák’s A Hero’s Song, Op. 111, to the tender remembrance in Aleksandr Glazunov’s To the Memory of a Hero. Each of the three works engages with the idea of ...
Shostakovich: The Human Comedy, The Nose, The Shot
The Malmö Opera Chorus and Orchestra led by Mark Fitz-Gerald present reconstructions of previously unheard music from two significant theatre works by Shostakovich – The Shot and The Human Comedy – and rarely heard selections from his first serious opera The Nose. Shostakovich was known for his fun-loving attitude during his early years as a composer. The colorful incidental music ...
Bach: Christ Lag in Todesbanden. Cantatas Bwv 4, 106, 131
For their first recording exploring the world of Bach, Sébastien Daucé, and Ensemble Correspondances give new life to the young composer’s first sacred cantatas: Christ lag in Todesbanden, BWV 4; Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit (Actus tragicus), BWV 106; and Aus der TIefe rufe ich, Herr, zu dir, BWV 131. These three works were written in Mühlhausen, where he ...
Dear to Us
The debut album by violinist sisters Hina & Fiona showcases two rising stars of the classical music world. Born in New York, these gifted sisters have already achieved remarkable milestones individually: Hina recently won first prize at the 2023 Elmar Oliveira International Violin Competition, while Fiona debuted with the New York Philharmonic at 16, and respectively embarked on illustrious solo ...
Orfeo son io
Rolando Villazón has joins forces with period instrument ensemble L’Arpeggiata and its founder-director Christina Pluhar to present an album inspired by the myth of Orpheus. The recording is based on a conceptual program devised by Pluhar which the artists have also performed live to great acclaim. Villazón sings excerpts from Monteverdi’s Orfeo and operas on the same subject by Gluck, ...
Opus 109
The new album from Víkingur Ólafsson features music by Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert in a recital the Icelandic pianist presented at Symphony Center last June, named one of “Top Ten Performances of 2025” by Chicago Classical Review. At the heart of Opus 109 is Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 30 in E major, Op. 109, which Víkingur places in a musically ...
Sun Triptych
The recording of Dobrinka Tabakova’s Concerto for Cello and Strings on String Paths, her debut album for ECM New Series, brought international acclaim to the Bulgarian British composer. Her follow-up ECM album brings back some of the String Paths ensemble, including violist Maxim Rysanov, violinist Roman Mints, and cellist Kristine Blaumane. Friends and colleagues since conservatory days at the Guildhall ...
Pur ti miro
A Chinese-German-Finnish trio comprising sheng virtuoso Wu Wei, violist Martin Stegner, and double bass player Janne Saksala perform arrangements of works by Claudio Monteverdi, J. S. Bach, and Antonio Vivaldi with an additional non-Baroque bonus: “Buremarsj frå Beiarn,” a bridal march from Norwegian folk tradition. The sheng, whose history goes back three thousand years, is a free reed polyphonic instrument, ...
Jewish East
The Jewish Chamber Orchestra Munich, mezzo-soprano Shachar Levi, and conductor Daniel Grossmann present songs by Mieczysław Weinberg and orchestral works by two composers who have all but vanished from history. Jozef Koffler, a Polish Jew, was captured with his wife and young son by German troops in the city of Lwów in 1944, deported to the ghetto in Wieliczka and ...
Jane Austen’s Piano
In her new EP commemorating the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, rising star pianist Jeneba Kanneh-Mason ponders “with what music may Jane Austen have been familiar? Which pieces might she have performed privately?” The original Austen family music book collection dating from Jane Austen’s lifetime is extant and was able to provide some direction. Furthermore, Jane Austen is also ...
Organisms
With their latest album, reeed quintet Calefax explores the majestic and mysterious essence of the organ— without an organ in sight. Revoicing centuries of repertoire for their wind ensemble, they channel the instrument’s spiritual depth, improvisational roots, and theatrical flair through breath and reed instead of pipes. From Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck’s Fantasia Chromatica and Nicolaus Bruhns’s richly imaginative Prelude in ...
Richard Strauss: Eine Alpensinfonie; Vier Lieder Op. 27
The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Nicholas Collon present a new album of orchestral works by Richard Strauss. The program includes Strauss’s longest and final major orchestral work, the Alpine Symphony together with Four Songs, Op. 27 sung by Louise Alder, the star British soprano who made her Met debut this fall in Strauss’s Arabella. Strauss composed more than ...
