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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Shostakovich: The Human Comedy, The Nose, The Shot
The Malmö Opera Chorus and Orchestra led by Mark Fitz-Gerald present reconstructions of previously unheard music from two significant theatre works by Shostakovich – The Shot and The Human Comedy – and rarely heard selections from his first serious opera The Nose. Shostakovich was known for his fun-loving attitude during his early years as a composer. The colorful incidental music ...
Bach: Christ Lag in Todesbanden. Cantatas Bwv 4, 106, 131
For their first recording exploring the world of Bach, Sébastien Daucé, and Ensemble Correspondances give new life to the young composer’s first sacred cantatas: Christ lag in Todesbanden, BWV 4; Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit (Actus tragicus), BWV 106; and Aus der TIefe rufe ich, Herr, zu dir, BWV 131. These three works were written in Mühlhausen, where he ...
Dear to Us
The debut album by violinist sisters Hina & Fiona showcases two rising stars of the classical music world. Born in New York, these gifted sisters have already achieved remarkable milestones individually: Hina recently won first prize at the 2023 Elmar Oliveira International Violin Competition, while Fiona debuted with the New York Philharmonic at 16, and respectively embarked on illustrious solo ...
Orfeo son io
Rolando Villazón has joins forces with period instrument ensemble L’Arpeggiata and its founder-director Christina Pluhar to present an album inspired by the myth of Orpheus. The recording is based on a conceptual program devised by Pluhar which the artists have also performed live to great acclaim. Villazón sings excerpts from Monteverdi’s Orfeo and operas on the same subject by Gluck, ...
Opus 109
The new album from Víkingur Ólafsson features music by Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert in a recital the Icelandic pianist presented at Symphony Center last June, named one of “Top Ten Performances of 2025” by Chicago Classical Review. At the heart of Opus 109 is Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 30 in E major, Op. 109, which Víkingur places in a musically ...
Sun Triptych
The recording of Dobrinka Tabakova’s Concerto for Cello and Strings on String Paths, her debut album for ECM New Series, brought international acclaim to the Bulgarian British composer. Her follow-up ECM album brings back some of the String Paths ensemble, including violist Maxim Rysanov, violinist Roman Mints, and cellist Kristine Blaumane. Friends and colleagues since conservatory days at the Guildhall ...
Pur ti miro
A Chinese-German-Finnish trio comprising sheng virtuoso Wu Wei, violist Martin Stegner, and double bass player Janne Saksala perform arrangements of works by Claudio Monteverdi, J. S. Bach, and Antonio Vivaldi with an additional non-Baroque bonus: “Buremarsj frå Beiarn,” a bridal march from Norwegian folk tradition. The sheng, whose history goes back three thousand years, is a free reed polyphonic instrument, ...
Jewish East
The Jewish Chamber Orchestra Munich, mezzo-soprano Shachar Levi, and conductor Daniel Grossmann present songs by Mieczysław Weinberg and orchestral works by two composers who have all but vanished from history. Jozef Koffler, a Polish Jew, was captured with his wife and young son by German troops in the city of Lwów in 1944, deported to the ghetto in Wieliczka and ...
Jane Austen’s Piano
In her new EP commemorating the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, rising star pianist Jeneba Kanneh-Mason ponders “with what music may Jane Austen have been familiar? Which pieces might she have performed privately?” The original Austen family music book collection dating from Jane Austen’s lifetime is extant and was able to provide some direction. Furthermore, Jane Austen is also ...
Organisms
With their latest album, reeed quintet Calefax explores the majestic and mysterious essence of the organ— without an organ in sight. Revoicing centuries of repertoire for their wind ensemble, they channel the instrument’s spiritual depth, improvisational roots, and theatrical flair through breath and reed instead of pipes. From Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck’s Fantasia Chromatica and Nicolaus Bruhns’s richly imaginative Prelude in ...
Richard Strauss: Eine Alpensinfonie; Vier Lieder Op. 27
The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Nicholas Collon present a new album of orchestral works by Richard Strauss. The program includes Strauss’s longest and final major orchestral work, the Alpine Symphony together with Four Songs, Op. 27 sung by Louise Alder, the star British soprano who made her Met debut this fall in Strauss’s Arabella. Strauss composed more than ...
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 ...
