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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The Gesualdi Six: Fading
Since the fourth century, the service of Compline has marked the end of the day, ushering in the darkness of the night. Much of the music here on the Gesualdo Six’s third album is inspired by this ancient service. The first half features a selection of atmospheric works that relate to the transition between light and darkness. Then there is ...
Pedro Aguiar: Brazilian Guitar Music
Rooted in European music, native folk traditions, and often infused by jazz, Brazilian music encompasses a huge variety of dance forms and songs. Prize-winning guitarist Pedro Aguiar has selected a panoramic recital to illustrate these elements with music rich in melody and rhythmic vitality. From Villa-Lobos, whose Chôros No. 1 is one of the most popular guitar solos ever written, ...
Mussorgsky & Ravel – Les Siècles, François-Xavier Roth
Arturo Toscanini regarded Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition as a genuine treatise on instrumentation. Scored for the same instrumental forces as La Valse, Ravel’s version quickly established itself ahead of all the many competing orchestrations of Mussorgsky’s piano suite. In conductor François-Xavier Roth’s view, La Valse and Pictures together represent the peak of Ravel’s output for the ...
Schubert: Late Inspirations – Mathieu Gaudet
Mathieu Gaudet, concert pianist, full-time emergency physician, and father of three young children, says he is delighted by his work at the hospital as much as by his music projects. “Yes, it’s tiring. But it’s so great to do both. I don’t have to say yes to everything in music. I can choose my projects,” he said in a recent ...
Martin Fröst: Vivaldi
Martin Fröst’s new album is a Baroque adventure based on the question: What might Vivaldi have composed for the clarinet if it had been more fully developed? For this recording, three clarinet concertos have been newly composed, made up of music drawn from Vivaldi’s most beautiful opera and oratorio arias. Performed on the mellow, song-like chalumeau, the predecessor of the ...
Víkingur Ólafsson: Debussy & Rameau
After the remarkable global success of his award-winning Bach recording, celebrated Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson returns with his third solo album. Debussy · Rameau juxtaposes pieces by two of the greatest French composers – both musical revolutionaries – exploring the contrasts and common ground between them. Ólafsson says, “As extraordinary innovators of both harmony and form, with a unique ear ...
Stabat: Music of Pärt, Vasks & MacMillan – Choir of Clare College, Cambridge
Encompassing works by Arvo Pärt (Estonia), Pēteris Vasks (Latvia), and James MacMillan (Scotland), this album charts the evolution of choral music in three regions of Northern Europe that saw the rise of a startling new language beginning in the 1980s. Its subsequent development has had far-reaching implications well beyond the confines of a house of worship or the serial techniques current ...
Pascal & Ami Rogé: Les Six & Satie
Pascal Rogé, long considered among the greatest living exponents of French piano repertoire, is joined by his pianist wife Ami in a program devoted to works by Les Six. This group of composers, brought together by Jean Cocteau in 1917, was formed as a musical reaction to the strong influence of German Romanticism upon French musical culture. The album includes ...
Korngold: Violin Concerto, String Sextet
Violinist Andrew Haveron and conductor John Wilson deliver a fresh and intensely idiomatic reading of Korngold’s Violin Concerto, coupled with the formidable String Sextet. One of the most sought-after violinists of his generation and a laureate of some of the most prestigious international violin competitions, Andrew Haveron performs a broad range of well-known and less familiar concertos with many of ...
Beethoven: Complete Piano Concertos – Stewart Goodyear
Proclaimed “a phenomenon” by the Los Angeles Times and “one of the best pianists of his generation” by the Philadelphia Inquirer, Stewart Goodyear is an accomplished pianist as a concerto soloist, chamber musician, recitalist, and composer. Following the success of his previous Orchid Classics albums, Goodyear returns with his spirited, insightful interpretation of the complete Beethoven Piano Concertos, recorded with ...
Philon Trio: Max Bruch
Founded in Switzerland in 2011, the Philon Trio is a chamber ensemble, consisting of clarinetist David Dias da Silva, violist Adam Newman, and pianist Camilla Köhnke. Their latest recording features the music of Max Bruch, who was 72 when he composed Eight Pieces, Op. 83, for his son, Max Felix, a professional clarinetist. This work, composed in a late but ...
Niv Ashkenazi: Violins of Hope
“Violins of Hope” is an artistic and educational project composed of instruments that were owned by Jewish musicians before and during the Holocaust. Violins in the collection were played in the concentration camps and ghettos, providing a source of comfort for some and a means of survival for others. “Niv Ashkenazi: Violins of Hope” is the first solo album to ...
Messiah…Refreshed!
In 1959, the conductor Sir Eugene Goossens re-orchestrated Handel’s famous oratorio Messiah. He dramatically increased the size of the orchestra and added some new instruments. Recorded for the first and only time by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus under Sir Thomas Beecham, this version has stood as a landmark of the classical catalog for sixty years. Now, Goossens’ rich ...
Cappella Romana: Lost Voices of Hagia Sophia
Vocal ensemble Cappella Romana presents Lost Voices of Hagia Sophia, the world’s first vocal album recorded entirely in live, virtual acoustics. This release re-creates medieval sound and ritual in the monumental sixth-century cathedral as an aural virtual reality. For nearly a thousand years, the Hagia Sophia, in what is now Istanbul, Turkey, was the largest building in the world. With ...
Bach: St. Matthew Passion – Choir of King’s College, Cambridge
King’s College presents a new account of one of sacred music’s greatest masterpieces, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, recorded before Sir Stephen Cleobury’s untimely death in November 2019. For this recording, Cleobury conducted the King’s Choir and the Academy of Ancient Music alongside an outstanding team of soloists led by one of the finest Evangelists of our time, James Gilchrist.
Vision String Quartet: Memento
The Berlin-based Vision String Quartet gained notoriety for their original interpretations and innovative concert formats, winning awards in multiple competitions. Their album, Memento, thematically deals with the subject of death through the music of Schubert and Mendelssohn. Schubert’s Death and the Maiden, No. 14 in D Minor, has become a key piece in chamber music repertoire and was composed when ...
Strauss & Rimsky-Korsakov – London Philharmonic Orchestra, Zubin Mehta
Recorded live in concert at London’s Royal Festival Hall in 1988 and 1992 under the baton of Zubin Mehta, these recordings of Richard Strauss’s Symphonia Domestica and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade are now available from the London Philharmonic Orchestra archives.
Schubert: Piano Sonatas D. 894 & 958 – Adam Laloum
French pianist Adam Laloum achieved international recognition when he won First Prize at the prestigious Clara Haskil Competition in 2009. On his first recording for Harmonia Mundi, he performs two of Schubert’s piano sonatas. Barely two years separate the monumental Sonata in G from its sister in C minor, the first of a trilogy composed on the threshold of death.
Flute Passion: Bach – Nadia Labrie
Canadian musician Nadia Labrie returns with her second album in the Flute Passion series. This second recording features four of Johann Sebastian Bach’s key works for flute, which she performs with Luc Beauséjour on piano and Camille Paquette-Roy on cello.
Ashley Solomon: The Spohr Collection
Ashley Solomon is a British flute and recorder player and founder of the early music ensemble Florilegium. He says his latest album, The Spohr Collection, “came about through a chance encounter with a remarkable private collection of flutes, held in Frankfurt. This collection includes several hundred historical flutes, spanning the history of the instrument.” Solomon has recorded many of these instruments for the first ...
