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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Komitas: Divine Liturgy – Latvian Radio Choir
It is impossible to overstate the significance of Komitas Vardapet’s music to the Armenian identity. A priest and eminent ethnomusicologist, Komitas was a victim of Mets Yeghern, the 1915 genocide in which 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey were either slaughtered or died on forced marches into exile. Though he survived, his psyche was shattered, and he spent most of his ...
Camerata Tchaikovsky: Russian Colours
Following the huge success of their debut album on Orchid Classics, Yuri Zhislin and Camerata Tchaikovsky return with a sumptuous program of Russian delights. This release boasts richly Romantic works by composers from the different musical schools of thought blossoming in 19th-century and early 20th-century Russia. Borodin was one of the nationalist “Russian Five,” and the Nocturne from his String ...
Beethoven: Bagatelles – Paul Lewis
In our collective idea of the piano, Beethoven’s name is associated with the monument of the thirty-two sonatas, which have often been elevated to the status of the ‘”New Testament” beside the “Old Testament” of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. Yet, over a period of decades, the composer of Für Elise constantly returned to the genre of the bagatelle, which he called ...
Inferno: Music of Orlande de Lassus – Cappella Amsterdam
Inferno consists of works by the composer Orlande (Roland) de Lassus (1532-1594), which he wrote in the last phase of his life. The twelve motets assembled on this album bespeak a profound melancholy and show not only his ability to make use of a wide range of stylistic devices, but also great subtlety in the art of rhetoric. In this ...
Schubert: Violin Sonatas – Peter Sheppard Skærved, Julian Perkins
Franz Schubert had two approaches to the violin – one a particularly virtuosic and fiendish style which evolved from his earliest orchestral works through to his late G major String Quartet. The other is far more subtle, using a narrower range of notes and extremes, and here in the 1816 Sonatas, revealed in a perfect balance between the two instruments ...
Vadym Kholodenko Plays Prokofiev
After recording the complete Prokofiev concertos, Vadym Kholodenko returns to his favorite composer. These pieces reveal several facets of Prokofiev: an outstanding melodist, a “classicist” on the fringes of the avant-garde, and eventually the herald of a Soviet realism. The freedom peculiar to the composer-pianist “with fingers of steel” is brought out in all its vitality by the subtle yet ...
Bach: Concertos for Harpsichord and Strings, Volume 1
The extant concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach for one harpsichord and strings were all composed before 1738, which makes them some of the first, if not the first keyboard concertos – a genre destined to become one of the most popular within classical music. In all likelihood Bach wrote them for his own use (or that of his talented sons) ...
Echoes of the Mountains
Showan Tavakol and Federico Tarazona, two musicians with deep roots in the rich traditions of Iran and Peru, met in Montreal and formed Duo Perse-Inca. In combining languages, techniques, and aesthetics, they create a music that invokes a dialogue between two ancestral peoples, embodied by two of their iconic instruments, the Iranian kamancheh and the Andean charango. Some of the ...
Augustin Hadelich: Bohemian Tales
“Augustin Hadelich increasingly seems to be one of the outstanding violinists of his generation,” wrote the New York Times after Hadelich played Dvořák’s Violin Concerto under Czech-born Jakub Hrůša’s baton in 2017. The violinist and conductor have now recorded the concerto with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Bohemian Tales pairs the concerto with works for violin and piano by Dvořák ...
Jupiter String Quartet: Metamorphosis
On their new album, Metamorphosis, the Jupiter String Quartet juxtaposes Beethoven’s Quartet Op. 131 with György Ligeti’s Quartet No. 1, Métamorphoses nocturnes. To celebrate Beethoven’s 250th birthday year, the quartet performed a series of live concert programs called Beethoven’s Orbit. In each set of repertoire, the Jupiters highlight emotional and structural themes – such as Humor, Fate, Lyricism, and Joy ...
Not Our First Goat Rodeo – Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile
Not Our First Goat Rodeo is the long-awaited follow-up album to the Grammy Award-winning Goat Rodeo Sessions with Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile. Both albums combine the talents of the four solo artists to create a singular sound that’s part composed, part improvised, and uniquely American. The music is so complex to pull off that the ...
Rosa Mystica – Musical Portraits of the Virgin Mary
Conductor Paul Spicer and the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir present a ravishing, centuries-spanning recital of musical portraits of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Rosa Mystica takes its title from Benjamin Britten’s passionate setting of Gerard Manley Hopkins which forms the centerpiece of the album. The rest of the program ranges from the glorious Tudor polyphony of Nicholas Ludford’s motet Ave ...
Justin Badgerow: Reminiscences of Brazil
The debut album from American pianist Justin Badgerow is a program of rich dance rhythms, textures, and colors from four Brazilian composers together with the exquisite Saudades do Brasil of Milhaud. Highly influenced by traditional and indigenous music and the landscapes of Brazil, this is music of infectious delight, and includes both well-known works from Villa-Lobos and sparkling miniatures from ...
Joaquín Turina: Piano Works – Martin Jones
Joaquín Turina’s principal works are conceived for large forces and on a broad canvas, but he turned to the piano for the creation of suites of evocative miniatures throughout his life. Martin Jones has been one of Britain’s most highly-regarded pianists since first coming to international attention in 1968 when he received the Dame Myra Hess Award. He is a ...
The Romantic Piano Concerto, Volume 81 – Music of Rubbra & Bliss
The latest installment in the Romantic Piano Concerto series from Hyperion presents two very different takes on the form, both equally successful. The concerto by Arthur Bliss—written in 1939 for the World’s Fair in New York—is extroverted, exuberant, and virtuosic. While the work by Edmund Rubbra is a profound reflection on, and continuation of, the English pastoral tradition. Pianist Piers ...
Four Seasons: Vivaldi & Piazzolla – Arabella Steinbacher
Star violinist Arabella Steinbacher presents Antonio Vivaldi’s world-famous Four Seasons alongside Astor Piazzolla’s Four Seasons in Buenos Aires, creating a lively combination of Baroque and tango. The enormous popularity of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons tends to make us forget the original and ground-breaking nature of these violin concertos. Coupling them with Piazzolla’s tango-inspired Four Seasons of Buenos Aires makes both pieces ...
Camille Thomas: Voice of Hope
Voice of Hope is Camille Thomas’s second album for Deutsche Grammophon. The Franco-Belgian cellist’s program pays tribute to people’s ability to triumph over adversity, create harmony in place of chaos, and overcome hatred with love. The album presents the world-premiere recording of Fazil Say’s concerto Never Give Up, a response to terrorist attacks in Paris and Istanbul written for and ...
Music of William Dawson & Ulysses Kay
William Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony was premiered by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1934 to huge enthusiasm. Its traditional form houses a continuous process of variation and introduces little-known spirituals in fragmentary form, while the work’s recurring motifs, remarkable transitions, and syncopations are enhanced in Dawson’s 1952 revision heard here. The Fantasy Variations by Ulysses Kay employs dissonance ...
Johannes de Cleve: Missa Rex Babylonis & Other Works
Comprising five professional singers from five European countries, Cinquecento takes its name from the Italian term for the 16th century. The pan-European structure of the ensemble harks back to the imperial chapel choirs of the time, whose members would have been chosen for their musicianship from Europe’s most prized musical establishments. Their ongoing exploration of Franco-Flemish repertoire from the 16th ...
Sarah Beth Briggs: The Austrian Connection
Much lauded for her interpretations of Hans Gál’s piano concerto and chamber music works, pianist Sarah Beth Briggs presents the composer’s beguiling Three Preludes alongside well-loved works by three of his greatest Austrian forebears – Haydn, Mozart and Schubert. Following meticulous examination of the original scores, Briggs sensitively translates the authentic character of each work to the resources of a ...
