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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The Classical Piano Concerto: Johann Baptist Cramer
Born in Mannheim, Johann Baptist Cramer (1771–1858) was a child prodigy who grew up in a ‘hot-house’ environment of musicians which included his father, a celebrated violinist. Cramer’s family moved to London in the 1770s to join an already substantial population of immigrant musicians. A prolific composer for the piano, Cramer was much admired by Beethoven, Moscheles, and Schumann. Cramer’s ...
Bach: Motets – Pygmalion
The absolute summit of polyphonic art, Bach’s motets exult with a joy that may be found surprising when one knows their most frequent liturgical use: at funeral ceremonies. Taking up the invitation of the Motet BWV 225, Raphaël Pichon and his musicians draw us into their jubilant interpretation, a true hymn to the dance skillfully juxtaposed with the great tradition ...
Debussy & Ravel – London Symphony Orchestra, François-Xavier Roth
François-Xavier Roth, Principal Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, displays his deep affinity with the music of Debussy and Ravel on his latest LSO Live album. A fascination with his Spanish heritage would be a recurring theme in many of Ravel’s creations. Mysterious melodies weave delicately throughout his early work Rapsodie espagnole, punctuated by bursts of Spanish-inspired fanfares and ...
Prokofiev: Symphonies Nos. 1-3 – Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Andrew Litton
Sergei Prokofiev was so versatile that audiences never quite knew what to expect. As a strategy, this could misfire, but with his first symphony he got things just right. He once described what he wanted to achieve: “If Haydn had lived into this era, he would have kept his own style while absorbing things from what was new in music.” ...
Beethoven: Violin Concerto, Romances – Midori
Midori has been a celebrated violinist for more than 35 years. Her new recording of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, complemented by his two Romances, marks the composer’s 250th birthday in December 2020. This album, on which Midori plays with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, was made in early March 2020. The sessions were originally planned around a concert performance at Lucerne’s impressive ...
Bruckner: Mass in E Minor, Motets – Choir of King’s College, Cambridge
Bruckner’s Mass No. 2 in E minor and a selection of his profoundly beautiful motets were selected by Sir Stephen Cleobury as his last album at King’s College, recorded only a few months before his death. Perhaps the deepest and most spiritual of Bruckner’s masses, the Mass in E minor is unusual in its scoring for choir, winds, and brass. ...
Amsterdam Sinfonietta: Lento Religioso
On Lento Religioso, Amsterdam Sinfonietta brings together several romantic works, each with a very specific expressive power of its own. Some are genuine pieces for string ensemble, others are adaptations created for this recording. Some arrangements are simple: the four parts of a string quartet are played by all the strings of a string orchestra and have a bass part ...
Ammann, Ravel & Bartók: Piano Concertos – Andreas Haefliger
When Andreas Haefliger conceived this unusual combination of concertos, it was with the aim of putting into perspective three pieces, each a unique and highly expressive highlight from the composers’ output. That Maurice Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand and Béla Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto fulfilled the requirements was a given: towards the end of his life, Bartók wrote his ...
Marine Band of the Royal Netherlands Navy: Rhapsody in Navy Blue
What makes American music so recognizably American, including the compositions for wind instruments on this recording? Is it because it mirrors a multicultural nation? In American music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, these cultures and styles encounter one another and intermingle, stretching from Charles Ives through Aaron Copland to John Adams. This recording by the Marine Band of the ...
Mobili: Music for Viola and Piano from Chile
Violist Georgina Isabel Rossi and pianist Silvie Cheng release Mobili, an overview of Chilean repertoire featuring viola. Compiling six works by five composers, including five world-premiere recordings, the album highlights the rich tapestry of influences that have shaped Chilean concert music, from European high modernism to Indigenous music of the Andean region. It is a project that is both deeply personal ...
Hélène Grimaud: The Messenger
For her latest studio album, pianist Hélène Grimaud travels to Salzburg where she creates a fascinating juxtaposition between the eternal Mozart and the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov. In selecting the music for this album, Grimaud has carefully chosen music by Mozart that fits into an overall dramaturgy: from his famous unfinished D minor Fantasy, she transitions seamlessly into the great D minor concerto, K. 466. The C ...
Vivaldi: Lost Concertos for Anna Maria – Modo Antiquo
The so-called “Anna Maria Partbook” consists of an elegantly bound volume in red leather containing the violin parts of 31 violin concertos, of which 26 are by Antonio Vivaldi. It was the personal repertoire of Vivaldi’s most gifted pupil – the famous “Anna Maria della Pietà.” 20 of the 26 Vivaldi concertos are also known from other manuscript sources. The ...
Sarah Kirkland Snider: Mass for the Endangered
Composer Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Mass for the Endangered, with a libretto by Nathaniel Bellows, is a celebration of, and an elegy for, the natural world and an appeal for greater awareness, urgency, and action. Originally commissioned by Trinity Church Wall Street, this recording features the English vocal ensemble Gallicantus conducted by Gabriel Crouch. Snider explains, “The origin of the Mass ...
Bertrand Chamayou: Good Night!
The sixteen lullabies that Bertrand Chamayou has chosen for Good Night! form a captivatingly varied album. Embracing music from the Romantic era to the present day, the French pianist has shaped his program with care and imagination. Miniatures by masters like Chopin, Liszt, Grieg, and Brahms sit beside rarer treasures and a specially commissioned piece by the contemporary composer Bryce ...
Conspirare: The Singing Guitar
The Conspirare chamber choir, known for its interpretive depth and otherworldly sonic lushness, offers another of its captivating programs—this time joined by three superb guitar quartets—in a program remarkably relevant for our time. Conspirare’s debut album on Delos, The Hope of Loving, was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance in 2020. Here, the combination of guitar quartet ...
Beethoven: Variations – Angela Hewitt
One of the world’s leading pianists, Angela Hewitt appears in recital and as soloist with major orchestras throughout Europe, the Americas, Australia, and Asia. Her interpretations of the music of J.S. Bach have established her as one of the composer’s foremost interpreters of our time. For Hyperion, she has been recording the complete piano sonatas of Beethoven and adds to ...
Thibaut Garcia: Aranjuez
In combining Joaquìn Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez with a work by an adoptive Frenchman, Alexandre Tansman, guitarist Thibaut Garcia is making something of a personal statement: he is French, but his heritage is Spanish. “This album pretty much sums me up,” he says, “and I think it is vital if you want to make the best possible case for a ...
Corelli’s Band: Violin Sonatas
18th-century Italian violinists trained in the tradition of Arcangelo Corelli, spreading his elegant, expressive, and virtuosic style on their travels throughout Europe. Giovanni Mossi’s sonatas retain Corelli’s dramatic contrasts and structure, while Giovanni Stefano Carbonelli also incorporates features found in music by Vivaldi. Both composers’ works combine formal elegance with wild abandon, lyrical charm, and virtuosity alongside plenty of room ...
Schubert: Works for Solo Piano, Volume 5 – Barry Douglas
For his fifth volume of Schubert’s piano works, Barry Douglas turns to a contrasting pair of sonatas composed in the 1820s. The A minor, from 1823, was composed while Schubert suffered an episode of depression following the onset of (and harsh treatment for) syphilis. The D major sonata, however, was written in 1825 on a holiday to Gastein in the ...
Handel: Choruses – The Sixteen, Harry Christophers
Is there another composer who can match Handel’s genius for writing choruses? He is quite simply the master of chorus, and on this compilation, taken from The Sixteen’s award-winning Handel back-catalogue, there is much rejoicing. Revel in some of Handel’s finest writing, from the universally loved Hallelujah chorus to the exuberance of I will sing unto the Lord from Israel ...
