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
Khatia Buniatishvili: Labyrinth
Khatia Buniatishvili’s new recording for Sony Classical is a concept album as imaginative, sensitive, and philosophical as the pianist herself. “Labyrinth” explores the unfathomable quest that is human life. Recorded at La Grande Salle Pierre Boulez at the Philharmonie de Paris, the album draws on the evocative language of composers from Scarlatti to Morricone and from Bach to Glass.
Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 5 – BBC Symphony Orchestra, Martyn Brabbins
Conductor Martyn Brabbins is a leading advocate of British composers. He continues a series of the complete symphonies of Ralph Vaughan Williams with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, giving a richly detailed account of the peaceful Fifth Symphony. Many of the themes in the symphony stem from Vaughan Williams’ then-unfinished opera, The Pilgrim’s Progress. The album includes music from the stage ...
Charpentier: Mass for Four Choirs – Ensemble Correspondances
Paris, 1665: a young composer leaves the Saint-Michel district to embark on a journey to Rome. The journey promises to be a long one, its stopovers rich in encounters for Marc-Antoine Charpentier. Conductor Sébastien Daucé and Ensemble Correspondances invite us on an imaginary recreation of that voyage of initiation, from Cremona to Rome, by way of Venice and Bologna. A ...
Trio de l’Île: Piano Trios from Armenia and Argentina
The Canadian ensemble Trio de l’Île presents its debut recording with a mix of Argentinian and Armenian music. The album focuses on the fusion of different styles bringing forth colorful mosaics. On the one hand, Astor Piazzolla revolutionized the tango by blending it with jazz and classical music, giving light to Nuevo Tango. While Gayané Chebotaryan and Arno Babadjanian harmoniously ...
Tallis Scholars: Josquin Masses
With this ninth and final release in their Josquin Mass cycle, Peter Phillips and the Tallis Scholars come to three of his greatest works. Although all three Masses come roughly from his early middle age, together they form a perfect showcase for a genius who felt challenged to make each setting different. Phillips says, “If one were looking for a ...
United Strings of Europe: In Motion
Formed in 2012 by students at London’s Royal Academy of Music, United Strings of Europe brings together outstanding players from across the continent. The artistic director is Julian Azkoul, who leads from the violin, curates programs, and arranges music for the ensemble. For In Motion, Azkoul has arranged Boccherini’s atmospheric Night Music in the Streets of Madrid. Far removed both ...
Transatlantic – Callum Smart, Richard Uttley
Callum Smart returns to Orchid Classics with an album described by the violinist as “American and English music from past and present…cultures that I’ve lived in all my life.” Joined by pianist Richard Uttley, Smart plays music by Edward Elgar, who wrote that his Violin Sonata is “full of golden sounds,” and the Romance by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. He also features ...
Cremona Quartet: Italian Postcards
Celebrating 20 years of an illustrious international career with their 14th recording and first on Avie, the multiple award-winning Cremona Quartet sends Italian Postcards, assembling evocations of the country by four non-natives. Mozart penned his first string quartet during his first Italian journey to the town of Lodi. Hugo Wolf’s Italian Serenade takes its inspiration from poetry and ancient Italian ...
American Music for Guitar and Piano
When they began playing together in 2017, guitarist Stefano Cardi and pianist Enrico Pieranunzi went in search of repertoire which would harmonize with their disparate musical backgrounds, that of a classical guitarist with a passion for jazz and blues, and a jazz pianist with a thorough grounding in the classics. They turned quickly to America, both north and south, and ...
Moszkowski: Orchestral Music, Volume 2 – Sinfonia Varsovia
The Polish composer Moritz Moszkowski (1854–1925) is best remembered for a handful of virtuoso piano pieces, but he also produced a substantial body of orchestral music, most of it unperformed for a century or more. The opening volume in this first-ever survey of his orchestral output presented the monumental symphonic poem Johanna d’Arc. On this latest release, two big-hearted Suites ...
Orchestral Music of Gershwin, Tower, Piston, and Harbison
This program represents American orchestral music in all of its verve and expressive variety. Following the sensational success of Rhapsody in Blue, Gershwin’s Concerto in F was his first foray away from jazz bands into the concert hall, recorded here for the first time in a new critical edition by Timothy Freeze based on the composer’s own notation and performances. ...
Ars Nova Copenhagen: And
“And” is a collection of contemporary sacred music by Arvo Pärt, Julia Wolfe, and Caroline Shaw, interspersed with songs from the 13th-century collection Laudario di Cortona. Ars Nova Copenhagen was founded in 1979 and is widely recognized as one of the world’s finest vocal ensembles. The ensemble’s chief conductor and artistic director since 2003 is the acclaimed British conductor Paul ...
Ludwig van Beethoven: Late Piano Sonatas – Nikolai Lugansky
Édouard Herriot once said: “‘In Beethoven, everything comes from within.” This is particularly true of the late piano sonatas, which contain elements of both intimate journal and total experimentation before attaining the mystical serenity of the last sonata, Op. 111. Here is Nikolai Lugansky’s long-awaited vision of this pianistic Everest. The recording session took place from July 11 to 14, ...
Thomas Dunford & Théotime Langlois de Swarte: The Mad Lover
Frequent partners on the current Baroque music scene illuminate aspects of the 17th-century English notion of melancholy. The inconsolable “Mad Lover” of the album title is reimagined by violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte and lutenist Thomas Dunford as a character from the reign of Charles II: a tale told through music from the pen of such violin virtuosos as the ...
Pablo Sáinz-Villegas: Soul of the Spanish Guitar
Regarded as one of the world’s leading soloists on his instrument, Pablo Sáinz-Villegas embodies “the soul of the Spanish guitar” and has long been internationally acclaimed as an ambassador of Spanish culture. For his latest album, this exceptional artist has chosen ten works that are especially close to his heart: “Spanish music represents a blend of different influences,” he explains, ...
Between the Clouds – Charlie Siem, Itamar Golan
Internationally-acclaimed violinist Charlie Siem and pianist Itamar Golan release their debut album on Signum including works by Kreisler, Sarasate, Paganini, Elgar, and Wieniawski, showcasing Siem’s versatility and virtuosity in an intimate Parisian-style ‘salon’ program. Siem has appeared with many of the world’s finest orchestras and chamber ensembles and is passionate about bringing classical music to new audiences. He plays the ...
David Greilsammer: Labyrinth
In “Labyrinth,” pianist David Greilsammer brings his “extraordinary sensitivity and dramatic flair” (BBC Magazine) to a project that he has been developing since 2017 through a number of concerts. The album is an intimate new recital born out of a dream that had haunted Greilsammer for many years. Instead of allowing the dream to dominate his life, Greilsammer “decided to start searching ...
Carolyn Surrick & Ronn McFarlane: Fermi’s Paradox
Sono Luminus presents “Fermi’s Paradox,” a new album from viola da gambist Carolyn Surrick and lutenist Ronn McFarlane, with guest percussionist Jackie Moran. The album is Surrick and McFarlane’s first together and was created and recorded during the Covid-19 pandemic. Surrick is well-known for her many recordings with the group she founded in 1998, Ensemble Galilei. McFarlane is the founder ...
Errollyn Wallen: Peace on Earth – Choir of King’s College, Cambridge
Three enchanting choral works from one of the United Kingdoms’s most accomplished contemporary composers: Errollyn Wallen’s new release on the King’s College label depicts the mystery and exhilaration of faith. In the three works (Peace on Earth, See that I am God, and Pace), Wallen reaches across centuries of traditions and cultures to create a journey of human reflection like ...
Avi Avital: Art of the Mandolin
“Art of the Mandolin” is a celebration of the mandolin and its diverse repertoire, offering a guided tour of the instrument’s rich history and a star performer’s personal selection of some of its greatest compositions. However, as Avi Avital comments: “This is not an introduction to the mandolin. It’s the essence of the mandolin.” Avital, who has commissioned and premiered ...
