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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Beethoven: Violin Sonatas – Andrew Wan, Charles Richard-Hamelin
Analekta presents the release of the second volume of Beethoven’s complete Violin Sonatas, performed by two of the most outstanding musicians of their generation: Andrew Wan, concertmaster of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra since 2008, and Charles Richard-Hamelin, winner of the silver medal at the 2015 International Chopin Piano Competition. This album holds the three sonatas of Opus 12 and Sonata ...
Bach at the Mendelssohn’s
Flutist Mika Putterman and fortepianist Jory Vinikour present Bach at the Mendelssohn’s, their new album where they explore the largely uncharted territory of how the Baroque repertoire was interpreted during the Romantic period. When 19th-century musicians performed Baroque music, they paid little interest to what performance practice norms of the Baroque period might have been and instead used the expressive ...
Daniil Trifonov: Silver Age
Daniil Trifonov’s latest album for Deutsche Grammophon, recorded with Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra, recalls a time when Russia’s composers, poets, artists, dramatists, and star performers were among the most original anywhere in the world. Silver Age illustrates the artistic audacity and brilliance of a turbulent era in the country’s history with works by three of its most pioneering ...
Benedict Sheehan: Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom – Saint Tikhon Choir
Cappella Records has released Benedict Sheehan’s Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, the world premiere recording of a major new choral work of elegance and beauty, reminiscent of medieval Eastern chant, minimalism, American folk singing, with hints of Arvo Pärt and late Romanticism. The Liturgy is performed by the Saint Tikhon Choir, conducted by the composer. The Choir was founded in ...
Michel Dalberto: Ravel
Heir to a true French pianistic tradition, Michel Dalberto studied with Vlado Perlemuter, who was a favorite pupil of Alfred Cortot and was coached by Maurice Ravel. Dalberto reveals that precious legacy here, in the fourth part of his cycle devoted to French music. Each program in the series will be recorded on a different piano (Steinway, Fazioli, Bechstein, etc.) ...
Gautier Capuçon: Emotions
Emotions, a selection of pieces dear to their interpreter and recorded shortly before the onset of the global pandemic, seems to foreshadow all the states of mind of the months to follow. From Debussy’s Clair de Lune to Fauré’s Pavane, from Schubert’s Ave Maria to Tchaikovsky’s Valse sentimentale, via Édith Piaf’s Hymne à l’Amour, Piazzola’s Oblivion, and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah ...
Mozart: Complete Piano Sonatas, Volume 1 – Orli Shaham
Over the past year, Orli Shaham recorded all 18 piano sonatas by Mozart at historic Mechanics Hall in Worcester, Massachusetts. The first volume holds the three sonatas (Nos. 3, 13, and 17) in the key of B-flat. In the words of Shaham, these works “are so varied and different in their inventive brilliance. Each has a truly individual and distinct ...
Schola Cantorum: In Paradisum
The Schola Cantorum of the Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School, London, has a tradition of fine choral singing that dates back over a hundred years. Its principal duty is that of serving the liturgy of the school. The Schola has appeared at the BBC Proms and the Aldeburgh Festival and its voices feature on numerous film soundtracks including one of the ...
Louis Lortie Plays Chopin, Volume 6
For the sixth volume of his Chopin project, the Canadian pianist Louis Lortie has built a program that includes works from the earliest to the latest periods in the composer’s life, all of which have connection with or focus on Chopin’s Polish identity. The Hommage à Mozart, Op. 2 is a brilliant set of variations on Là ci darem la ...
The Kanneh-Masons: Carnival
Carnival is collaboration between Academy Award-winning actor Olivia Colman, children’s author Michael Morpurgo, and the seven “extraordinarily talented” (Classic FM) Kanneh-Mason siblings – Isata, Braimah, Sheku, Konya, Jeneba, Aminata, and Mariatu. The release includes new poems written by Morpurgo to accompany Saint-Saëns’ beloved musical suite Carnival of the Animals. The poems are read by the author himself, joined by Colman, ...
Monteverdi: Third Book of Madrigals – Concerto Italiano
“There are few performers better-versed in the music of Claudio Monteverdi than Rinaldo Alessandrini and the ensemble he founded 30 years ago, Concerto Italiano,” says The Guardian. Alessandrini has dedicated a major part of his work and recordings over the past thirty years to the Monteverdi Madrigals, works that above all, Alessandrini believes, are texts to which music is the ...
Rückblick: New Piano Music Inspired by Brahms – Ann DuHamel
How would you re-imagine Brahms? What does transformation sound like? Pianist Ann DuHamel posed these questions to five composers—the result is her debut album Rückblick, a wide-ranging anthology of new piano music. Edie Hill’s intimate title track borrows from early and late piano works of Brahms to create a nostalgic piece that looks forward and backward in time. The miniatures ...
Cantus: COVID-19 Sessions
Recorded in early March 2020 at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the COVID-19 Sessions came together quickly for the vocal ensemble Cantus as society began to shut down amidst the growing outbreak in the United States. Tenor Paul Scholtz summed up the goal of the project: “Cantus’ vision is to give voice to shared human experiences and what better ...
Beethoven: Duos & Piano Trios – Isabelle Faust, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Alexander Melnikov
This generous boxed set gathers together all the Beethoven chamber recordings made by three outstanding soloists, on both period instruments (the last two piano trios) and modern ones, with two complete cycles coupled here for the first time. The cello sonatas splendidly illustrate the first two stylistic periods of a master who literally created the genre. The ten violin sonatas ...
Tanbou Kache – Diana Golden, Shawn Chang
After a decade of performance and research of Haitian art music, New York City-based cellist Diana Golden releases Tanbou Kache (Hidden Drum), an album that celebrates Haiti’s rich and fascinating traditions and outlines the stylistic and chronological trajectory of key composers within this tradition from the 20th century to the present. Recorded with pianist Shawn Chang, the recording highlights Haitian cello and ...
Strauss: Tanzsuite, Divertimento – New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Jun Märkl
Richard Strauss was appointed co-director of the Vienna State Opera in 1919 and soon set about composing a new ballet for the refurbished historic Redoutensaal in the city. In February 1923, the work was unveiled – a delectable series of eight arrangements of music by François Couperin called Tanzsuite. For the Divertimento, an orchestral suite that includes characteristic Straussian orchestration, ...
Anna Clyne: Mythologies
Anna Clyne’s enormous palette of colors and special effects coalesce into an aural three-dimensional experience of striking originality. Equally, there’s a comforting familiarity to her music, as she draws inspiration from historic styles that she transforms into a new musical dialect. Clyne’s background in electro-acoustic music and her fascination with a variety of multi-media – including poetry, visual art, and ...
Eric Whitacre: The Sacred Veil
Composer Eric Whitacre and poet Charles Anthony Silvestri, longtime collaborators and close friends, come together for their most personal and expansive work to date. Whitacre has created a powerful score for Silvestri’s heartfelt poetry in the 12-movement work The Sacred Veil. Silvestri’s wife, Julie, died of ovarian cancer at age 36 in 2005, leaving two young children. His texts, written ...
Music of Bernard Herrmann – PostClassical Ensemble
Bernard Herrmann was famous for his film scores, but he was also a leading figure in music for radio, to which he brought his inimitable palette of mood and sonority. Whitman, whose subject is Walt Whitman’s collection of poems Leaves of Grass, was a 1944 radio drama, a genre now much neglected but revived in this newly restored version. Psycho: A Narrative for String ...
Schumann: String Quartets – Emerson String Quartet
The Emerson String Quartet, widely regarded as one of the world’s premier chamber music ensembles since its founding in 1976, makes its Pentatone label debut with a recording of Schumann’s three string quartets. The artistic power of Schumann, whose life was dominated by alternating periods of depression and manic creativity, seems particularly fitting during the uncertain times of a global ...
