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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Liquid Architecture
Legendary bass trombonist Randall Hawes (35 years with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra; four years as guest with The Cleveland Symphony Orchestra; and eight years as a member of the Saito Kinen Orhcestra) and his longtime collaborator, pianist Kathryn Goodson present a new album featuring 15 works that span the history of their musical relationship. The title work, David Biedenbender’s Liquid ...
Corea – Higdon – Warnaar: Brass Concertos
Conductor Giancarlo Guerrero is on a mission with the Nashville Symphony to expand the contemporary American concerto repertoire. Each of the three works on their new release spotlights a different facet of the relatively underexplored brass instrument family. Brad Warnaar’s Cornet Concerto is a witty and heartfelt homage to the rich heritage of 19th-century band music. Chick Corea’s Trombone Concerto, ...
Haydn 2032, Vol. 18: Il maestro di scuola
Joseph Haydn gave lessons in singing, keyboard instruments, theory, and composition throughout his life. His pupils included Ignaz Pleyel, Sigismund Neukomm and the Pole Franciszek (Franz) Lessel. In October 1805, Lessel received from his teacher the autograph score of his Symphony No. 56, dating from 1774. This symphony forms a pair with Symphony No. 55, known as “The Schoolmaster” and ...
Schubert: Four Hands
Composed in 1828, the final year of the composer’s short life, Schubert’s Fantasia in F minor is often described as the greatest of all works for piano, four hands. The Fantasia forms the centerpiece of the collaborative all-Schubert album from pianists Leif Ove Andsnes and Bertrand Chamayou, who first performed it together in 2016. The recording includes Andsnes performing the ...
Benedict Sheehan: A Christmas Carol
Skylark Vocal Ensemble’s A Christmas Carol represents the culmination of nearly a decade of innovative storytelling concerts that began in 2016. The original concept for this musical interpretation of A Christmas Carol was developed during the COVID-19 pandemic and first recorded in 2021. Working from Dickens’s original 30,000-word manuscript, Artistic Director Matthew Guard carefully abridged the text to preserve its ...
Hearth
The Miró Quartet’s first holiday album is an assemblage of classical music’s top living composers, each of them contributing an original arrangement of a beloved holiday song. Drawing from diverse traditions and memories of holidays past, the recording also brings together new arrangements of “In Dulci Jubilo” by Clarice Assad; “The First Noël” by Kevin Puts, “Jingle Bells” by Michi ...
On Christmas Night
One of the UK’s foremost recording choirs, The London Choral Sinfonia marks its tenth anniversary with On Christmas Night, a festive collection of classic carols in vivid new orchestrations. Led by conductor Michael Waldron, highlights include star treble Malakai Bayoh as soloist in Howard Blake’s “Walking in the Air,” and British soprano Emma Bell singing a new arrangement of “O ...
Rose Ever Blooming
Composers Jocelyn Hagen and Timothy C. Takach partnered with the VOCES8 Foundation Choir and Orchestra and violinist Jack Liebeck to create and record Rose Ever Blooming, a new 55-minute Christmas oratorio featuring SATB choir, violin solo, and orchestra. The libretto is inspired by Patricia Monaghan’s poetry, featuring twelve poems woven together with traditional Christmas carols as musical touchstones. Rose Ever ...
Louis Coperin: The Complete Works
In 2024, the French harpsichordist Jean Rondeau devoted eight months to recording Louis Couperin: The Complete Works. The monumental project features all his works, plus works selected by Jean Rondeau composed by the masters and students of Couperin. “There is something in the music of Louis Couperin that transcends the instrument and proves inspiring in an absolutely unique way,” says ...
Winner of the 19th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition Warsaw 2025: Eric Lu
Deutsche Grammophon presents a live album by Eric Lu, winner of this year’s 19th International Chopin Piano Competition, recorded earlier this year. The album captures highlights from Lu’s performances in various rounds of one of the most prestigious competitions in the world. A graduate of Curtis Institute, Eric Lu became the first pianist to win the International Chopin Piano Competition ...
Avril Coleridge-Taylor: Piano Concerto & Orchestral Works
The BBC Philharmonic led by John Andrews present a landmark recording, the first album devoted entirely to the music of Avril Coleridge-Taylor (1903–1998), daughter of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. A composer, conductor, pianist, and singer of remarkable versatility, she long remained in the shadow of her father, but as the album reveals, she had a distinctive, eloquent, and assured musical voice. Her ...
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: Orchestral Works
The Ulster Orchestra conducted by Chales Peebles with violinist Ioana Petcu-Coland soprano Rebecca Murphy mark the 150th anniversary of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912) with a selection of his orchestral works, reflecting both his Afro-British parentage and a musical milieu that included Holst and Vaughan Williams. Five of the seven works presented here are first recordings including his first work for voice ...
All the Stars Looked Down: A John Rutter Celebration
The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge presents a new Christmas album with the Britten Sinfonia under the direction of Daniel Hyde recorded in the beloved Chapel of King’s College. The program features beautiful orchestral arrangements of carols by John Rutter alongside a selection of both well-loved and lesser-known carols by the great choral composers who have influenced him, including Philip ...
Violin Café
Nicola Benedetti’s new album brings together music that represents the different musical strands of the Scottish violinist’s career, from virtuosic showpieces to French romance, contemporary favorites, and Scottish folk, freshly arranged for a mixed chamber group (violin, guitar, accordion, cello, and small pipes). “This inventive new line-up of instruments delivers a communal, conversational ‘evening cafe appropriate’ sound,” says Benedetti. “A ...
She Composed: The Holidays
Crossover classical pianist, arranger, and composer Chloe Flowers presents her first Christmas album. While planning this release, Flowers discovered that works by women composers represented less than 1% of the music performed during the holiday season. “There are just so many Christmas pieces that are known, which are stunning, but there’s actually so many women-composed holiday music out there that ...
Michael Torke: Last
The latest album from the prolific American composer Michael Torke’s features violinist Siwoo Kim and the East Coast Chamber Orchestra performing Torke’s violin concerto Last. Torke describes the work as “twelve slow, moody compositions for solo violin and strings, that are almost like 2nd movements of violin concertos.” Each movement – with names such as “Last Night”, “Last Month”, “Last ...
The Korngold Collection
GRAMMY Award-winning Pacifica Quartet presents a landmark recording featuring the Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s complete string quartets and rarely heard chamber works. The album traces the composer’s remarkable evolution from a prodigy of post-imperial Vienna to a pioneering film composer in Hollywood. “It’s amazing to see how well the music is written,” says Pacifica Quartet cellist Brandon Vamos. “It has emotion ...
Bach: The 7 Toccatas
Francesco Tristano’s latest album, the third in the pianist’s “great life project” to record Johann Sebastian Bach’s complete catalogue, features the seven Toccatas, BWV 910-916. The Toccatas probably date to around 1707-1715, though no autograph manuscript has survived and their precise origins remain unknown. It is not clear if the Toccatas were written to provide training materials for his pupils, ...
Grace Williams: Violin Concerto, Elegy for String Orchestra & Sinfonia concertante for Piano & Orchestra
Violinist Geneva Lewis and pianist Clare Hammond are soloists join the BBC National Orchestra of Wales for another released this calendar year celebrating the music of Grace Williams. The Welsh composer held herself and her art to the highest standards, withdrawing and destroying scores which failed to live up to her ideals. Her Violin Concerto was only performed a few ...
O Holy Night: Christmas Carols From St John’s
The St John’s College Choir Cambridge presents their second album led by their new music director Christopher Gray. At the center of the program are the atmospheric Quatre Motets pour le temps de Noël by Francis Poulenc, and the heartfelt Three Carol-Anthems by Herbert Howells who directed the St John’s Choir during the Second World War. Other selections include the ...
