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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Violins of Hope: Live at Kohl Mansion
“Violins of Hope” presents instruments that were owned by Jewish musicians before and during the Holocaust, representing strength and optimism for the future during mankind’s darkest hour. They have been refurbished by luthiers Amnon and Avshalom Weinstein, founders of the “Violins of Hope” project. On this album, recorded live at Kohl Mansion in Burlingame, California, the instruments are used to ...
Mozart: Complete Keyboard Sonatas – Kristian Bezuidenhout
Hailed for his expressive and communicative style, Kristian Bezuidenhout has already earned a reputation as one of today’s most exciting keyboard players. Harmonia Mundi releases Bezuidenhout’s multi-volume traversal of Mozart’s music for solo keyboard. The award-winning series (Diapason d’Or de L’année, Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, and Caecilia Prize) is issued as a 9-CD boxed set. “These interpretations – excellent to ...
2021 New Year’s Concert in Vienna
The 2021 New Year’s Concert in Vienna, conducted by Riccardo Muti, was a truly memorable event. Because of the pandemic, the concert had to take place without an audience in the Golden Hall of the Musikverein. The performance was broadcast to over 90 countries all over the world and watched by more than 50 million viewers on TV. The program ...
María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir: Kom vinur
Sono Luminus releases Kom vinur, a world-premiere recording of two choral works by Grammy-nominated Icelandic composer María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir on texts by feminist poet Vilborg Dagbjartsdóttir. Recorded in Reykjavik’s Hallgrímskirkja in September 2020, the disc features the church’s renowned chamber choir, Schola Cantorum, led by conductor Hörður Áskelsson.
Bowen: Fragments from Hans Andersen & Studies – Nicolas Namoradze
Nicolas Namoradze relishes the challenges of York Bowen’s whimsical Hans Christian Andersen “fragments” as well as the sheer bravura of his studies. In this wonderfully planned program, the poetry of the Andersen “fragments” – music for a fully-fledged technique, despite the fairy-tale title – is pleasingly complemented by the studies. Namoradze proves more than equal to the demands of both.
Elgar: Partsongs; From the Bavarian Highlands – Bavarian Radio Chorus, Howard Arman
The British composer Edward Elgar wrote a great deal more than just his Pomp and Circumstance marches. His highly diverse output encompasses symphonies, concertos, chamber works, piano music, and numerous choral works. On this release, partsongs by Elgar can be heard with and without accompaniment as part of a representative selection of live and studio recordings. The album begins with ...
Beethoven: Cello Sonatas, Op. 5 – Raphaël Pidoux, Tanguy de Williencourt
With each new album, the Stradivari collection invites you to discover another unique instrument lovingly preserved and housed at the Museum of Music in Paris. The magnificent 1734 Guarneri cello and the 1855 Gebauhr grand piano are both exceptionally well suited to the music of Beethoven and his contemporaries. When these remarkable examples of European instrument-making are entrusted to performers ...
Bach: Soli Deo Gloria
Bach’s cantatas form an inexhaustibly rich body of work of the highest musical inspiration, embracing all the compositional styles of his time and thus of his own music. The two cantatas coupled here invite us to measure his evolution over a decade. In Weimar, with the Cantata BWV 21, we see him in a period of experimentation, turning to the ...
Signum Saxophone Quartet: Echoes
An ensemble that attracts rave reviews and sell-out crowds at prestigious venues everywhere from Vienna to New York, the sensational Signum Saxophone Quartet presents their first Deutsche Grammophon album. Featuring inventive arrangements of music by composers from Dowland to Peter Gregson, as well as Guillermo Lago’s Sarajevo, a saxophone quartet original, Echoes showcases the full potential of the saxophone – a ...
Mirian Conti: Tangorama
This panoramic survey of Argentine tangos shows the genre in all its rich variety of moods and virtuosity. It salutes Angel Villoldo, the father of tango, whose El choclo (‘The Corncob’) is one of the most famous tangos of all time, and charts the music’s evolution towards the romanticism and lush harmonies of Augustín Bardi. Improvisatory styles, syncopation, and jazz ...
Sophie Junker: La Francesina
For the French soprano Élisabeth Duparc, known as “La Francesina,” Handel composed no fewer than twelve principal roles in major works – operas and oratorios – written towards the end of his life. She took the title role in Semele, for instance, and the parts of Michal in Saul and Nitocris in Belshazzar. Sophie Junker and the Concert de l’Hostel ...
Armand-Louis Couperin: Pièces de clavecin – Christophe Rousset
Armand-Louis Couperin – François Couperin (“le Grand”) was his father’s cousin – was regarded as one of the finest musicians of his time. His compositions, though little known today, provide us with precious evidence of the brilliance of the French harpsichord school and the skills of one of its most virtuosic representatives. Sensuous and very original, his Pièces de clavecin ...
Evelyn Glennie: Concertos for Mallet Instruments
This compilation of concertos for mallet instruments features triple Grammy Award-winning percussion virtuoso Dame Evelyn Glennie and the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong. Alexis Alrich’s Marimba Concerto, a rich amalgam of bold rhythms and exuberance, also explores Mexican and Asian-inspired music. Sir Karl Jenkins traces the 15th-century tune La Folia, furnishing it with refinement and strongly characterized intensity. Ned ...
Telemann: Concerti da Camera, Volume 2 – Camerata Köln
Georg Philipp Telemann’s chamber music has always had a significant place in the repertoire of Camerata Köln. The present release rounds off the complete recording of Telemann’s concertos with wind instruments on a total of 16 albums on CPO. The Baroque orchestra La Stagione Frankfurt performed the orchestral compositions, and Camerata Köln was responsible for the chamber works – and ...
The Romantic Piano Concerto, Volume 82: Stéphan Elmas
On Volume 82 of Hyperion’s Romantic Piano Concerto Series, Howard Shelley and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra showcase the appealing, warmly Romantic concertos of the Armenian composer Stéphan Elmas. The first work on this album appears to be the earliest piano concerto written by an Armenian composer. Equally significant is the fact that Elmas was a mere twenty years old when ...
Franz Schubert: Music for Violin, Volume 2 – Ariadne Daskalakis, Paolo Giacometti
The music for violin by Franz Schubert fits comfortably on two discs, and Ariadne Daskalakis released the first disc of her survey in 2019 to critical acclaim. The second installment focuses on the chamber music with piano, and once again Daskalakis is joined by Paolo Giacometti, playing a fortepiano by Salvatore Lagrassa. The instrument of the Viennese school was built ...
Weinberg: String Quartets, Volume 1 – Arcadia Quartet
The seventeen string quartets of Mieczysław Weinberg span nearly half a century, from his student days in Warsaw to the end of his career in Moscow, and show his development as a composer more clearly than his work in any other genre. The Second Quartet, composed in 1939, was dedicated to his mother and sister, who he would later learn ...
Tavener: No Longer Mourn For Me – Steven Isserlis
Cellist Steven Isserlis offers one of his most personal projects to date – an album of works by his close friend and frequent collaborator Sir John Tavener (1944 – 2013). The album includes Tavener’s final completed work, Preces and Responses, arranged by Isserlis for eight cellos, and recorded here for the first time. The culmination of six years’ work, the album ...
Beethoven’s Violin Sonatas on Historic Instruments – Jerilyn Jorgensen, Cullan Bryant
Beethoven’s ten violin sonatas are major works of the genre, not only because of their high artistic merit, but also because they represent the union of the two instruments that Beethoven himself played. In the words of Ms. Jorgensen, “We find in these works some of his most lyrical, virtuosic, and profound musical thought.” Recorded on period instruments of the ...
Strauss & Copland – Academy of London, Royal Northern Sinfonia
The four works on this release, all composed in the 1940s, embrace the lingering end of one musical tradition and the vigorous upsurge of another. Mellifluous, retrospective, and playful, the Duet Concertino and Prelude to Capriccio were late works of Richard Strauss. In the same decade, Aaron Copland was reaching out via radio, recordings, and film to a new mass ...
