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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Marcin Fleszar: Rameau & Schumann
In his debut album for Rubicon Classics, Polish pianist Marcin Fleszar performs Rameau’s timeless Suite in A minor. Performed on the piano, instead of the harpsichord as is traditional, the pieces take on new colors and shadings. The second half of the album transports the listener to the heights of 19th-century Romanticism with Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze. The work was inspired by ...
Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 5; Finzi: Clarinet Concerto – Philharmonia Orchestra
The distinguished clarinetist Michael Collins has recently gained recognition as a conductor, appearing with eminent orchestras across the world. The present disc sees his recording debut as a conductor of symphonic repertoire, from which he has chosen Vaughan Williams’s Fifth Symphony – one of the composer’s best-loved works. Written during the Second World War, the Fifth is surprisingly serene and ...
C.P.E. Bach & Beethoven Symphonies – Berlin Academy for Ancient Music
Beethoven’s first two contributions to the symphonic genre reveal the bubbling creativity of a 30-year-old composer determined to renew the genre. These works are combined with two symphonies by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach in lively performances by the Berlin Academy for Ancient Music. The ensemble was founded in 1982 in Berlin, and since its beginnings, has become one of the ...
James MacMillan: Symphony No. 4 & Viola Concerto
Directly communicative and emotionally affecting, James MacMillan’s music often has a strong sense of narrative inspired by history or theology. Even in his scores that are intended to be purely abstract, there is a distinct feeling of struggle and conflict between contrasting thematic materials. MacMillan’s Viola Concerto was written for Lawrence Power, who brings a unique authority to its first ...
Pina Napolitano: Tempo e Tempi
In Tempo e Tempi, pianist Pina Napolitano traces connections between Elliott Carter and Ludwig van Beethoven, composers whose music exhibits both power and playfulness, combining taut structures with the freedom of fantasy. Tempo e Tempi (Time and Times) takes its name from a poem by Eugenio Montale, set by Carter, that encapsulates two central aspects of the album: the relationships ...
John Williams in Vienna
John Williams has added to an already incredibly long list of achievements by making his conducting debut with the Vienna Philharmonic. Their two concerts at Vienna’s Musikverein in January 2020 were the first performances he had ever conducted in continental Europe. Williams and the orchestra were joined on stage for much of the first half by Anne-Sophie Mutter, continuing an ...
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 ...
