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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Sharon Isbin: Affinity
On her latest release, multiple Grammy winner Sharon Isbin performs multi-faceted and virtuosic new works for guitar, written for her by four leading composers. From the Africa-influenced El Decameron Negro by iconic Cuban guitarist/composer Leo Brouwer, through the Chinese and Spanish-inspired Seven Desires by Tan Dun, to Richard Danielpour’s sensual song cycle Of Love and Longing, and the jazz and world music-influenced Affinity by Chris Brubeck, Sharon Isbin gives her ...
Les Barricades – Thomas Dunford, Jean Rondeau
Harpsichordist Jean Rondeau is joined by Thomas Dunford on lute to explore the music from the court at Versailles during the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XV. The album also features mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre, baritone Marc Maullion, and Myriam Rignol on viola da gamba. Rondeau says, “Both of us have grown up with this music from the cradle of ...
Elgar: Violin Concerto – Nicola Benedetti
Elgar’s Violin Concerto is considered to be one of the most technically demanding violin concertos and is a marathon for the soloist at just under an hour in length. Nicola Benedetti performs this masterpiece with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Jurowski. Pianist Petr Liminov joins Benedetti for three short works by Elgar for violin and piano: Sospiri, Salut ...
Elgar & Beach: Piano Quintets – Takács Quartet, Garrick Ohlsson
Amy Beach’s Piano Quintet of 1907 proved a deservedly popular success in its early years. Critics found it “truly modern” and “distinctly rhapsodic…in the fashion of our time.” On this recording from the Takács Quartet and pianist Garrick Ohlsson, it makes a compelling, and surprising, match for Elgar’s own Piano Quintet. A late work by the composer, written around the ...
Seong-Jin Cho: The Wanderer
The Romantic theme of the wanderer, a free spirit undertaking a journey into the self, runs through Seong-Jin Cho’s latest solo album. The globetrotting Korean pianist’s program includes two monuments of the 19th-century repertoire – Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy and Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B minor. The album also contains Alban Berg’s Piano Sonata, Op. 1, a single-movement work of extraordinary ...
Richard Rodney Bennett: Orchestral Works, Volume 4
In this fourth volume in their Richard Rodney Bennett series, John Wilson and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra turn to his Piano Concerto of 1968. The soloist here, Michael McHale, gives a virtuosic performance. Commissioned in 1982 for the sixtieth anniversary of the BBC, Anniversaries is the other major work on this recording. A brilliantly virtuosic concerto for orchestra, the ...
Haydn: String Quartets, Op. 76, Nos. 1-3 – Chiaroscuro Quartet
The Chiaroscuro Quartet made their first appearance on BIS with acclaimed recordings of Haydn’s Sun Quartets, Op. 20, described in The Strad as “period-instrument performances of the utmost subtlety and refinement.” The four musicians now return to Haydn with his last complete set of quartets, begun in 1796 when he was 64 years old. The six quartets of Op. 76 ...
C.P.E. Bach: Piano Concertos
Pianist Michael Rische is one of a group of artists who consistently enrich the music scene with their discoveries. Since 2011, he has been renewing interest in the nearly forgotten keyboard concertos of Carl Philipp Emanuel through a series of recordings. On his latest volume, Rische is joined by the Berlin Baroque Soloists in three concertos. He writes, “The musician ...
Schubert: Trout Quintet, Waltzes, Ländler
Christoph Eschenbach reunites with the Paris-based Thymos Quartet in Schubert’s triumphant chamber work, the Trout Quintet, a recording that celebrates the 80th birthday of the great pianist/conductor. From babbling brook and leaping fish, this present-day Schubertiade relocates to a 19th-century Viennese salon, with a selection of the composer’s waltzes in unique chamber music arrangements and concludes with selected Ländler, performed by pianist ...
Opéra-Comique Overtures
Opéra-Comique emerged in the 19th century as an intermediary between grand opera and operetta. This album charts its progression as a distinct genre, tracing the origins from Boieldieu and Méhul early in the century via the classic vitality of masters such as Hérold and Maillart into the operetta style of Offenbach and Lecocq. With innovative features, colorful orchestration, drama, wit, ...
Guitar Duos of Kemal Belevi
Kemel Belevi’s music is steeped in the colors and atmosphere of the eastern Mediterranean, and his aim is ‘to create beautiful music’ based on melodies and rhythms that have been absorbed from the folk music of Greece, Turkey, and the Middle East. Belevi’s own arrangements of works such as the evocative Suite Chypre and the richly varied Cyprian Rhapsodies have ...
Valls: Missa Regalis – Academy of Ancient Music
Much of the music of Baroque Spain remains obscure, despite the fact that many Spanish composers of a previous era have retained greater notoriety. During the 16th century, Spain benefited from a rich musical interchange with Italy, but that ran drier by the end of the century and musical influences faded. Spanish music continued to develop from its own resources ...
Ébène Quartet: Beethoven Around the World
Beethoven’s sixteen string quartets occupy a place of honor in the chamber repertoire and, like his symphonies and piano sonatas, trace his progression through his creative life. 2020 marks the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth, and the Ébène Quartet is recognizing this with Beethoven Around the World, encompassing live recordings of the complete cycle made in seven of the ...
Music@Menlo Live 2019: Incredible Decades
The 2019 edition of Music@Menlo Live illustrates the evolution of chamber music over three hundred years, by focusing on seven Incredible Decades. Each volume explores a specific chapter in which composers chronicled the shifts in the world around them. Many of history’s finest composers have captured the spirit of their times in sound, and in this collection of recordings, Music@Menlo ...
Clara, Robert, Johannes: Darlings of the Muses
Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, under the direction of Alexander Shelley, presents its new album as part of a recording cycle themed Clara, Robert, Johannes. Darlings of the Muses is the first of four albums to be released over the next two years in this cycle that explores the closely intertwined personal and artistic connections between three musical giants: Clara Schumann, ...
Sean Shibe: Bach
One of the foremost guitarists of his generation, Sean Shibe brings a fresh and innovative approach to the traditional classical guitar by experimenting with instruments and repertoire. Born in Edinburgh in 1992 of English and Japanese heritage, Sean Shibe studied at the Royal Conservatory of Scotland and with Paolo Pegoraro in Italy. On his latest album, Shibe turns to the ...
British Violin Sonatas, Volume 3 – Tasmin Little, Piers Lane
Violinist Tasmin Little and pianist Piers Lane complete their three-album overview of British violin sonatas with works by York Bowen, John Ireland, William Alwyn, Eric Coates, and the world premiere recording of James Francis Brown’s The Hart’s Grace. Composed for the inaugural Hertfordshire Festival of Music, the work was premiered by Little in Hertford in June 2016.
Music of César Franck – Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Jean-Luc Tingaud
César Franck is perhaps best known for his organ works and late masterpieces such as the Violin Sonata. The Royal Scottish National Orchestra and conductor Jean-Luc Tingaud have recorded three of Franck’s lesser-known works. Le Chasseur maudit (The Accursed Hunter) tells the story of a count who dares to go hunting on a Sunday morning. Les Éolides and Psyché are ...
Dawn Chorus: Music Inspired by Our National Parks
The New Music Ensemble at Grand Valley State University (Allendale, Michigan) takes inspiration from National Parks in the United States on its recording Dawn Chorus. In an ongoing project, the ensemble, under Director Bill Ryan, has commissioned over twenty composers to explore and “respond” to these incredible American treasures. This album features eleven of these new works by composers including ...
Haydn and Hummel: Double Concertos for Violin and Piano
Violinist Solomiya Ivakhiv teams up once again with pianist Antonio Pompa-Baldi and the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra, Theodore Kuchar conducting, for an album of double concertos by Haydn and Hummel. The modern view of the concerto is dominated by the great 19th and 20th-century staples that showcase a single soloist, but from the invention of the concerto in the late ...
