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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Igor Levit: Encounter
Pianist Igor Levit has released a very personal double album marked by a desire for encounter and togetherness. The program includes rarely played arrangements of Bach and Brahms by Ferruccio Busoni and Max Reger, as well as Palais de Mari – Morton Feldman’s final work for piano. “Encounter” is the pianist’s sixth disc released on the Sony Classical label and ...
Ground Floor: “Il genio inglese”
The figure of the prodigiously gifted violinist Nicola Matteis, who left his native Italy for London, looms large in this program featuring composers active during Restoration England. He was one of a host of artists and performers from across Europe who flocked there and made a crucial impact on the country’s musical culture. The artistry of violinist Alice Julien-Laferrière, joined ...
Kastalsky: Requiem – Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Leonard Slatkin
This is the world-premiere recording of Alexander Kastalsky’s Requiem in its complete and revised version for orchestra, choir, and soloists. The album was recorded live in Washington’s National Cathedral in 2018 during a performance commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Armistice. Kastalsky was director of the Moscow Synodal School until the Bolshevik regime banned all sacred music, including the extraordinary ...
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 – Kristian Bezuidenhout, Freiburg Baroque Orchestra
In their own way, Beethoven’s five piano concertos each relate to a part of their composer’s life. In the previous volume of this complete series, pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout, conductor Pablo Heras-Casado, and the musicians of the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra explored the beginning (Concerto No. 2) and the end of the story (Concerto No. 5). For Volume 2, they turn to ...
Ives: Complete Symphonies – Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel
Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic present a rare complete set of the symphonies by Charles Ives. These critically acclaimed live performances were recorded at Walt Disney Concert Hall in February 2020. Ives was an American original, an artist ahead of his time who explored novel combinations of traditional classical forms and American vernacular music, pioneering and exploiting techniques ...
Jake Runestad: Sing, Wearing the Sky
The prolific young composer Jake Runestad has won numerous awards for his music, ranging from opera to works for chamber ensemble. He is particularly valued for his choral compositions, which exemplify a desire to write expertly crafted, socially conscious, and emotionally potent music. On this album, Runestad explores a profound life journey in The Secret of the Sea and projects a ...
Mozart: Violin Concertos – Baiba Skride
Mozart composed his violin concertos in 1773 and 1775. These five works and the three single movements recorded here have been passed down complete and verified as authentic. Violinist Baiba Skride says about her new album: “I know that there are so many different and super recordings of Mozart, but I think it is important to enjoy the music you ...
Alexandre Kantorow Plays Brahms, Bartók & Liszt
In 2019, at the age of 22, Alexandre Kantorow became the first French pianist to win the prestigious Tchaikovsky Competition. Before then he had released three acclaimed albums, awarded distinctions such as Diapason d’or de l’Année and Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice and earning Kantorow descriptions ranging from “Liszt reincarnated” to “a fire-breathing virtuoso with a poetic charm and innate stylistic mastery.” ...
Kete: Piano Music of Africa and the African Diaspora – William Chapman Nyaho
William Chapman Nyaho maintains a diverse and distinguished career as a performer and educator. In his recitals all around the world, Nyaho advocates music by composers of African descent. He says that this album “consists of music from the first two volumes of Piano Music of Africa and the African Diaspora, which I compiled and edited for Oxford University Press ...
Monteverdi: Vespers of the Blessed Virgin – Green Mountain Project
The Green Mountain Project began with a 400th anniversary performance of Monteverdi’s Vespers of the Blessed Virgin in 2010. It was a momentous occasion that brought together a cast of 29 musicians and 800 audience members at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in New York City. Spearheaded by co-directors Jolle Greenleaf and Scott Metcalfe, the concert was offered ...
Aaron Tindall: Yellowbird
“Yellowbird” features the sensational tuba virtuoso Aaron Tindall in an album that defies categorization. Tindall’s latest recording includes jazz pianist Shelly Berg on the ballad The Peacocks, Claude Bolling’s Suite for Cello and Jazz Trio in Tindall’s breathtaking transcription for tuba, and a swinging rock band accompaniment to Fred Tackett’s Yellowbird. Prepare to be entertained and astonished!
Daniel Hope: Hope@Home
“Hope@Home” features a selection of the livestream concerts that violinist Daniel Hope presented during his period of social distancing. Performed from his living room in Berlin as well as with an assortment of prestigious guests for Arte Concert, “Hope@Home” includes appearances from Christoph Israel, Max Raabe, Till Brönner, Joy Denalane, Matthias Goerne, and Jacques Ammon, among others. Hope comments: “This album ...
ARC Ensemble: Chamber Works by Walter Kaufmann
For the fourth installment in their “Music in Exile” series, the Toronto-based ARC Ensemble turns its attention to the music of Walter Kaufmann. Despite a promising start in Prague and then Berlin, and friendships with Albert Einstein and with Franz Kafka’s circle, Kaufmann’s career become a casualty of the Nazi regime that forced scores of Jewish musicians to flee Germany. ...
Alexandre Desplat: Airlines – Emmanuel Pahud
Flutist Emmanuel Pahud takes the music of Oscar-winning film composer Alexandre Desplat beyond the cinema. Airlines is entirely devoted to world premiere recordings – of original concert works and of re-imagined versions of Desplat’s film scores, including his Oscar-winners The Shape of Water (2018) and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). Pahud is accompanied by the French National Orchestra, conducted by ...
Brahms: Cello Sonatas – Daniel Müller-Schott, Francesco Piemontesi
The two Cello Sonatas by Johannes Brahms are in very stark contrast to each other. This is not solely due to the more than twenty years separating the works. Brahms had a preference for pairs of works with the same instrumentation, which he frequently composed according to the principle of contrast. A cello version of the Violin Sonata Op. 78 ...
Beethoven Philharmonie: Voices
Pianist Javier Negrín and conductor Thomas Rösner are joined by the Beethoven Philharmonie, soprano Chen Reiss, tenor Jan Petryka, and baritone Paul Armin Edelmann to celebrate Beethoven’s 250th anniversary year with a sumptuous album of rarely heard works. The collection opens with Beethoven’s vocal trio Tremate, empi, tremate and ends with the Piano Concerto arrangement of his Violin Concerto. These ...
Liszt & Thalberg: Opera Transcriptions & Fantasies – Marc-André Hamelin
No matter the repertoire, pianist Marc-André Hamelin never ceases to astonish. This recital, featuring high-octane transformations of nineteenth-century operatic favorites, is electrifying. The featured work, Liszt’s Hexaméron, was dubbed “a monster” by the composer. It certainly holds no terrors for this virtuoso pianist, and instead makes for some thrilling listening.
David Chesky: Abreu Dances
Meticulously designed, intense, and streetwise, David Chesky’s music proposes a variation on an old musical gambit. Classical composers have long drawn from their national folk music for their work. Chesky’s source for The Abreu Danzas is the sound and energy of New York City or, to be precise, a Latin New York City. The centerpiece of the album is a five-movement ballet ...
Beauty Crying Forth: Flute Music by Women Across Time
On “Beauty Crying Forth,” flutist Sarah Frisof presents repertoire spanning one and half centuries for flute by female composers, including Clara Schumann, Lili Boulanger, Kaija Saariaho, Tania León, Shulamit Ran, and Amy Williams. Frisof, with cellist Hannah Collins and pianist Daniel Pesca, charts two parallel lineages – the evolution of flute repertoire from the Romantic era to the current day, ...
Sergei Babayan: Piano Music of Rachmaninoff
Sergei Babayan is one of the leading pianists of our time, hailed for his emotional intensity, bold energy, and remarkable levels of color. Le Figaro has praised his “unequaled touch, perfectly harmonious phrasing, and breathtaking virtuosity.” Following the 2018 release of Prokofiev for Two with Martha Argerich, Babayan’s latest album features Rachmaninoff’s short-form gems, including selections from the Études-Tableaux, the Préludes and Six Moments Musicaux.
