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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2020 New Year’s Concert in Vienna
There are few concerts in the world that are awaited with as much excitement as the annual New Year’s Concert from Vienna. Directed by Andris Nelsons, the Vienna Philharmonic ushered in 2020 with music from the Strauss family and more in the magnificent Golden Hall of the Vienna Musikverein. In celebration of the 250th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s birth, ...
Escales: French Orchestral Works
John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London explore the unique sound world of French orchestral music of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The program juxtaposes well-known favorites, such as Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune and Massenet’s ‘Méditation’ from Thaïs, with pieces far more rarely heard, for example Duruflé’s Trois Danses and Saint-Saëns’s Le Rouet d’Omphale.
The Long 17th Century – Daniel-Ben Pienaar
The ever-inquisitive pianist Daniel-Ben Pienaar presents “The Long 17th Century: A Cornucopia of Early Keyboard Music.” The title refers to the period from the late 1500s to the early 1700s, an era noted for forward-thinking individuality and invention in all areas of life. This two-and-a-half hour recital surveys a pan-European variety of styles, genres, and techniques, and comprises 36 works, ...
Bach: Harpsichord Works – Jory Vinikour
Presenting four masterworks by Johann Sebastian Bach, Jory Vinikour performs on a harpsichord modeled after German instruments of the time. Speaking with richness and clarity, the harpsichord was built by Tom and Barbara Wolf. The Italian Concerto and the French Overture, both published by Bach in the second volume of his Clavierübung, are paired with two other great works – the Chromatic Fantasy and ...
Emanuele Segre: Italian Guitar Concertos
Spain may be the ancestral home of the guitar, but Italy has produced wonderful guitarists and guitar music—witness Italian virtuoso Emanuele Segre and his new release on Delos, Italian Guitar Concertos. Segre brings his “rhythmic buoyancy,” “delicate touch,” and “persuasive playing” to a delightful program ranging from Vivaldi and Giuliani concertos to new creations.
Jean-Guihen Queyras & Alexandre Tharaud: Complices
Jean-Guihen Queyras and Alexandre Tharaud are reunited here for an album conceived as a collection of short stories, presenting both celebrated and little-known masterpieces of the repertory. If the art of transcription is the hallmark of great performers, these friends and frequent recital partners are true masters. Throughout this lyrical yet virtuosic program, music lovers will meet one surprise after ...
The King’s Singers: Finding Harmony
The King’s Singers see their new album Finding Harmony as part of a new campaign to harness the positive power of music to bring people together and effect social change. The recording explores the development of Western harmony over the last 800 years, celebrating music that has united different people all over the world, particularly in the face of oppression.
Louise Farrenc: Etudes & Variations for Solo Piano – Joanne Polk
Pianist Joanne Polk highlights the works of the prolific composer Louise Farrenc, one of a handful of 19th-century women who enjoyed success during their lifetime. Farrenc rose to prominence in the male-dominated world of music by virtue of her talent and her family’s encouragement and support. Farrenc became the first female professor of piano at the Paris Conservatory. Throughout her ...
Ravel & Stravinsky – Chloé Kiffer, Alexandre Moutouzkine
French violinist Chloé Kiffer and Russian-American pianist Alexandre Moutouzkine bring compositions by Maurice Ravel and Igor Stravinsky to dazzling life in a collaboration rich in rarely explored musical and personal connections. Featured on the album are solo piano arrangements of Stravinsky’s Firebird and Petrouchka ballets. Kiffer and Moutouzkine also perform Ravel’s Violin Sonata No. 2 in G major, which was ...
C.P.E. Bach: Oboe Concertos & Symphonies – Berlin Academy of Ancient Music
The Berlin public of the mid-18th century was fascinated by the “original genius” of C. P. E. Bach, and never tired of listening to his concertos. These works call for a talented soloist capable of mastering the multiple facets of an original and finely worked musical texture: a challenge taken up with panache (and on a period instrument) by the ...
Forgotten Treasures – Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, JoAnn Falletta
Grammy-winning conductor JoAnn Falletta’s recording Forgotten Treasures with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra honors her 20th anniversary as Music Director of the BPO and her gift for bringing forgotten musical treasures to light. The album features five of Falletta’s favorite little-known gems of the past, featuring music of Leo Weiner, Franz Schmidt, Ildebrando Pizzetti, Giuseppe Martucci, and Nikolai Tcherepnin.
Sheku Kanneh-Mason: Elgar
Award-winning young cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason presents a new recording anchored around Elgar’s Cello Concerto – arguably the best-known work in the classical canon for the cello, which saw the 100th anniversary of its first performance in 2019. Recorded at the famous Abbey Road Studios, the album features the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by one of Kanneh-Mason’s lifelong heroes, Sir Simon ...
Alexandre Tharaud: Versailles
Alexandre Tharaud pays tribute to composers associated with the courts of the French kings Louis XIV, XV, and XVI. Lully, Rameau, Charpentier, and François Couperin stand beside lesser-known masters: d’Anglebert, Forqueray, Royer, Duphly, and Balbastre. “I’ve always been attracted by French music of this period,” says Tharaud, adding that when he plays the album’s initial Rameau prelude, “it’s like being ...
Brabant Ensemble: Music of Hellinck & Lupi
The Brabant Ensemble is one of the most highly regarded professional vocal groups specializing in Renaissance polyphony, with a substantial discography including many premiere recordings. It takes its name from the Duchy of Brabant, an area now forming parts of northern Belgium and the southern Netherlands, from which the core of its repertory is drawn. Mining the rich musical seam ...
Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 2 & 5 – Kristian Bezuidenhout
Beethoven’s five piano concertos relate, in a sense, part of the composer’s life: some 20 years during which a young musician from Bonn made several revised versions of the first concerto he wrote (that ended up being called No. 2) before becoming the familiar ‘Emperor’ of music embodied by the brilliant inspiration of No. 5. It is with these two ...
Debussy: Etudes, Children’s Corner – Aleck Karis
This recording presents two of Claude Debussy’s enduring masterpieces – the Children’s Corner suite and his brilliant Études (Books 1 & 2), played by the American pianist Aleck Karis. Karis has performed recitals, chamber music, and concertos across the Americas, Europe, Japan, and China. He is a distinguished professor of music at the University of California, San Diego.
Eduardo Fernández: Guitar
For his debut on Delmark Classics, guitar virtuoso Eduardo Fernández put together a program covering two centuries of music and two continents. From Paganini to Brouwer, this album offers a variety of schools, tendencies, and techniques that very few performers can match. In addition to brilliant pieces by Denisov and Chávez, this album features rarely heard works by Mertz and ...
Bach: The Sonatas and Partitas for Violin Solo – Thomas Zehetmair
Thomas Zehetmair, one of the great violinists of our time, re-visits the solo works of Bach, the summit of the violin repertory. Using period instruments, Zehetmair plays the music with vividness and intelligence to produce a recording that is deeply steeped in the music and at the same time original. The album was recorded at Propstei St. Gerold in Austria.
The Romantic Piano Concerto, Volume 80 – Music of Auguste Dupont & Peter Benoit
The Hyperion label continues its ongoing project to document little-known works for piano and orchestra of the 19th century. The figures of Auguste Dupont and Peter Benoit may be unfamiliar outside their native Belgium, yet the two did much to generate a new Belgian national consciousness. Dupont wrote primarily for the piano, including three concertos. Benoit’s symphonic poem is a ...
Gesualdo: Madrigali – Les Arts Florissants
Following the success of their recordings of madrigals by Monteverdi, Paul Agnew and Les Arts Florissants embark on a survey of madrigals by Carlo Gesualdo – author of both some of the most traditional five-part madrigals ever written and of some of the most extreme vocal chamber works in the history of composition. Gesualdo’s music is intensely expressive. In his ...
