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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Christmas with True Concord: Carols in the American Voice
Every December, True Concord presents its popular Lessons and Carols by Candlelight concerts in the Tucson area. With this album, the ensemble captures the essence of the much-loved concerts with the mostly familiar carols presented here, but in musical settings by American composers that are new or not widely known.
Herman van Veen and Ton Koopman: Weihnachtslieder
Dutch singer-songwriter Herman van Veen tells the Christmas story in a delightfully fresh form that sounds as if he had written the songs himself. His version, now joyful, now reflective, includes arrangements featuring strings, flutes, oboe, lute, and organ under the musical direction of Ton Koopman.
The Gesualdo Six: Christmas
The Gesualdo Six is a vocal ensemble comprised of some of the United Kingdom’s finest young singers, directed by Owain Park. From the timeless plainchant Veni Emmanuel to a riotous Jingle Bells, The Gesualdo Six present a program of Christmas treats effortlessly spanning the centuries.
Margaret Bonds: The Ballad of the Brown King & Selected Songs
Margaret Bonds receives long overdue recognition with the world-premiere recording of her crowning achievement, The Ballad of the Brown King. With a libretto by Langston Hughes, this Christmas cantata focuses on Balthazar, the dark-skinned king who journeyed to Bethlehem to witness the birth of Jesus Christ.
Stile Antico: A Spanish Nativity
Focusing on works for Christmas and Epiphany, Stile Antico explores musical treasures of the Spanish Renaissance, drawing together an irresistible mix of sumptuous polyphony and infectiously joyful folk dances. The centerpiece of the album is the rich and luminous Missa Beata Dei genitrix Maria by Alonso Lobo. Interspersed between its movements are motets by Victoria, Guerrero, and Morales, an exuberant ...
Christmas with The Five Browns
Closing in on 15 years since their self-titled 2005 debut heralded them as a revolutionary force in classical music, The Five Browns share the joys of the season on their first-ever holiday collection. The five sibling pianists perform fresh, dynamic arrangements of both familiar and lesser-known pieces.
Christmas at St. George’s Windsor
The Choir of St. George’s Chapel, world famous through its royal patronage, is one of this country’s foremost vocal ensembles, participating in daily services throughout the year at its Windsor Castle home. This program collects a wide range of music appropriate to the seasons of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany.
A Festival of Nine Lessons & Carols: The Centenary Service
In 2018, Sir Stephen Cleobury and the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, celebrated 100 years of Nine Lessons and Carols, the iconic festival that is enjoyed by millions around the world. The performance marked the final time that Cleobury, who passed away on November 22, 2019, would lead the service.
Schütz: The Christmas Story
Yale Schola Cantorum presents Heinrich Schütz’s dramatic retelling of the birth of Christ in a charming tableau of angels, shepherds, and wise men. Designed to be performed as part of the Christmas Vespers service in Dresden, The Christmas Story is the jubilant climax to a program of music from the mid-1600s.
Fernando Sor: The 19th-Century Guitar – Gianluigi Giglio
The acclaimed Italian guitarist Gianluigi Giglio makes his debut on Somm Recordings with The 19th-Century Guitar, a scintillating recital of music by Fernando Sor, a pioneering champion of the guitar in the vanguard of raising its profile out of the tavern and into the concert hall. Giglio’s wide-ranging recital explores Sor’s innate feeling for the guitar and charts the increasing ...
Music of Saint-Saëns – Utah Symphony, Thierry Fischer
These performances of the Symphony No. 1 and the Symphony in A Major from conductor Thierry Fischer and the Utah Symphony showcase the work of the young Camille Saint-Saëns, spreading his compositional wings and displaying a technical fluency far beyond his teenage years. In between the symphonies is his famous musical menagerie – Carnival of the Animals.
Beethoven Violin Sonatas – James Ehnes, Andrew Armstrong
Violinist James Ehnes and pianist Andrew Armstrong release the second volume in their cycle of Beethoven’s complete Violin Sonatas, following the critically acclaimed release of Sonatas Nos. 6 and 9. This album contains the three early Op. 12 Sonatas (which Beethoven dedicated to his teacher Antonio Salieri) and ends with the early Variations on a Theme From Mozart’s Marriage of ...
George Li: Tchaikovsky & Liszt
George Li gained international attention in 2015 when he won the silver medal in the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. Now, he has recorded one of Tchaikovsky’s greatest and best-loved works, the Piano Concerto No. 1 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Vasily Petrenko. The New York Times has called him a “real revelation” in the work. It is ...
Hamlet Piano Trio Plays Schubert
Three world-class musicians join forces in the Hamlet Piano Trio – pianist Paolo Giacometti, violinist Candida Thompson, and cellist Xenia Jankovic. All three have earned their stripes, both as soloists and as chamber musicians. Their latest album features Schubert’s Notturno and monumental Piano Trio No. 2, exploring the music’s different dimensions, sound colors, dynamics, and moods on instruments from Schubert’s ...
Bach: Six Flute Sonatas – Michala Petri, Hille Perl, Mahan Esfahani
Recorder soloist Michala Petri makes a return visit to Bach’s Flute Sonatas. Her famous 1992 recording with Keith Jarrett has long since attained legendary status. Just as her collaboration with Jarrett unveiled a new approach to Bach, this new recording is likewise revelatory and transcendent. Joining Petri on this journey are harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani and viola da gambist Hille Perl.
Bruckner: Symphony No. 6 – London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Simon Rattle
Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony is one of the most original of all the composer’s works. Its contrasting moods and overarching theme moving from darkness to light can be haunting one moment and ecstatic the next, culminating in one of the most enigmatic symphonic conclusions of the 19th century. For this recording with the London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Simon Rattle conducts the Benjamin-Gunnar ...
Emmanuel Pahud: Dreamtime
Dreamtime is a spellbinding collection of works for flute and orchestra which, in Emmanuel Pahud’s words, “expresses and gives form to the composers’ most personal, spiritual, or dreamlike visions.” The album ranges wide both culturally and chronologically, embracing works by Mozart, Reinecke, Busoni, Takemitsu, and Penderecki, and inhabits a dimension “populated by incantations and prayers, in which imagination is woven ...
The Russian Album – Christoph Croisé, Alexander Panfilov
In the spring of 2019, Christoph Croisé scored a breakthrough with his critically acclaimed recording of Haydn’s Cello Concertos. With pianist Alexander Panfilov, he turns his attention to two towering 20th-century masterpieces: the cello sonatas by Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich. Croisé also offers his own transcriptions of the March from Prokofiev’s opera The Love for Three Oranges and Shchedrin’s flamboyant In ...
The John Adams Album – Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Kent Nagano
“The John Adams Album” continues the award-winning series of recordings from the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and Kent Nagano on Decca, released in time for Nagano’s final, triumphant season with the orchestra. The recording contains the composer’s key orchestral works, including Common Tones in Simple Time and Harmonielehre, conducted by one of his greatest champions.
Bach: The Six Partitas – Angela Hewitt
“Brilliant, well-sounding, expressive and always new” was the verdict of Bach’s first biographer on the six Partitas, a description which applies equally to Angela Hewitt’s wonderful new recording of what Bach designated his “Opus 1.” Hewitt describes a lifetime of living with Bach’s music as “a great gift and a lifelong adventure” – an adventure in which we are fortunate ...
