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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Winner of the 19th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition Warsaw 2025: Eric Lu
Deutsche Grammophon presents a live album by Eric Lu, winner of this year’s 19th International Chopin Piano Competition, recorded earlier this year. The album captures highlights from Lu’s performances in various rounds of one of the most prestigious competitions in the world. A graduate of Curtis Institute, Eric Lu became the first pianist to win the International Chopin Piano Competition ...
Avril Coleridge-Taylor: Piano Concerto & Orchestral Works
The BBC Philharmonic led by John Andrews present a landmark recording, the first album devoted entirely to the music of Avril Coleridge-Taylor (1903–1998), daughter of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. A composer, conductor, pianist, and singer of remarkable versatility, she long remained in the shadow of her father, but as the album reveals, she had a distinctive, eloquent, and assured musical voice. Her ...
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: Orchestral Works
The Ulster Orchestra conducted by Chales Peebles with violinist Ioana Petcu-Coland soprano Rebecca Murphy mark the 150th anniversary of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912) with a selection of his orchestral works, reflecting both his Afro-British parentage and a musical milieu that included Holst and Vaughan Williams. Five of the seven works presented here are first recordings including his first work for voice ...
All the Stars Looked Down: A John Rutter Celebration
The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge presents a new Christmas album with the Britten Sinfonia under the direction of Daniel Hyde recorded in the beloved Chapel of King’s College. The program features beautiful orchestral arrangements of carols by John Rutter alongside a selection of both well-loved and lesser-known carols by the great choral composers who have influenced him, including Philip ...
Violin Café
Nicola Benedetti’s new album brings together music that represents the different musical strands of the Scottish violinist’s career, from virtuosic showpieces to French romance, contemporary favorites, and Scottish folk, freshly arranged for a mixed chamber group (violin, guitar, accordion, cello, and small pipes). “This inventive new line-up of instruments delivers a communal, conversational ‘evening cafe appropriate’ sound,” says Benedetti. “A ...
She Composed: The Holidays
Crossover classical pianist, arranger, and composer Chloe Flowers presents her first Christmas album. While planning this release, Flowers discovered that works by women composers represented less than 1% of the music performed during the holiday season. “There are just so many Christmas pieces that are known, which are stunning, but there’s actually so many women-composed holiday music out there that ...
Michael Torke: Last
The latest album from the prolific American composer Michael Torke’s features violinist Siwoo Kim and the East Coast Chamber Orchestra performing Torke’s violin concerto Last. Torke describes the work as “twelve slow, moody compositions for solo violin and strings, that are almost like 2nd movements of violin concertos.” Each movement – with names such as “Last Night”, “Last Month”, “Last ...
The Korngold Collection
GRAMMY Award-winning Pacifica Quartet presents a landmark recording featuring the Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s complete string quartets and rarely heard chamber works. The album traces the composer’s remarkable evolution from a prodigy of post-imperial Vienna to a pioneering film composer in Hollywood. “It’s amazing to see how well the music is written,” says Pacifica Quartet cellist Brandon Vamos. “It has emotion ...
Bach: The 7 Toccatas
Francesco Tristano’s latest album, the third in the pianist’s “great life project” to record Johann Sebastian Bach’s complete catalogue, features the seven Toccatas, BWV 910-916. The Toccatas probably date to around 1707-1715, though no autograph manuscript has survived and their precise origins remain unknown. It is not clear if the Toccatas were written to provide training materials for his pupils, ...
Grace Williams: Violin Concerto, Elegy for String Orchestra & Sinfonia concertante for Piano & Orchestra
Violinist Geneva Lewis and pianist Clare Hammond are soloists join the BBC National Orchestra of Wales for another released this calendar year celebrating the music of Grace Williams. The Welsh composer held herself and her art to the highest standards, withdrawing and destroying scores which failed to live up to her ideals. Her Violin Concerto was only performed a few ...
O Holy Night: Christmas Carols From St John’s
The St John’s College Choir Cambridge presents their second album led by their new music director Christopher Gray. At the center of the program are the atmospheric Quatre Motets pour le temps de Noël by Francis Poulenc, and the heartfelt Three Carol-Anthems by Herbert Howells who directed the St John’s Choir during the Second World War. Other selections include the ...
Songs of the Season: A Choral Celebration of Christmas
Under the direction of Christopher Bell, the Grant Park Chorus presents a heartfelt collection of carols and contemporary choral favorites for the holiday season. From the quiet reflection of “Silent Night” and “In The Bleak Midwinter” to the shimmering mystery of “O Magnum Mysterium” in two settings (Tomás Luis de Victoria and Morten Lauridsen), the album offers movements of both ...
The Living Spiritual
Baritone Kenneth Overton won a GRAMMY Award for his performance in the title role of Richard Danielpour’s The Passion of Yeshua with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by JoAnn Falletta; and can be heard as soloist on Chamber Works of Adolphus Hailstork with The Harlem Chamber Players. In addition to his international career in opera and concert, Overton ...
Mahler: Symphony No. 8
Recorded during two sold-out performances in May of 2025 at the Mahler Festival in Amsterdam, this new album captures Klaus Mäkelä leading the Concertgebouw Orchestra, joined by five choirs – the Choeur de l’Orchestre de Paris, Netherlands Radio Choir, Laurens Symfonisch, and the Dutch National Children’s and Boys’ Choirs – and soloists Hailey Clark, Golda Schultz, Miriam Kutrowatz, Jennifer Johnston, ...
Chamber Works By Ernest Kanitz
The ARC Ensemble’s “Music in Exile” series continues with an exploration of chamber works by Ernest Kanitz. Born into a wealthy Viennese family in 1894, he was encouraged in music by his mother and started composing at a young age. Though his parents persuaded him to study for a degree in Law, he also studied piano, music theory, and composition ...
Kristina Arakelyan: A Christmas Offering
Rising star Armenian-British composer and pianist Kristina Arekelyan is the winner of the 2010 BBC Proms Young Composers Competition. She completed her PhD in Composition at King’s College London where she was a student of Joseph Fort. Her compositions have already been featured on the BBC Proms and she has collaborated with the BBC Singers, BBC Concert Orchestra, the Choir ...
Passages: French Cello Works
Cellist Louise Dubin is a renowned performer and champion of the music of cellist-composer Auguste Franchomme (1808-1884). Following her acclaimed album The Franchomme, which included world premiere recordings of works by Franchomme and Chopin that she discovered in archives in France, Dubin presents her new album featuring cello duos by Franchomme, Fauré, and contemporary composer Philippe Hersant with Julia Bruskin ...
Alessandro Scarlatti: Christmas at the Bethlehem of the West
In the heart of Baroque Rome, the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore is the principal Marian sanctuary of the Eternal City. For centuries it has guarded not only the relics of Jesus’s cradle and swaddling-clothes, but also the celebrated marble Nativity Scene by Arnolfo di Cambio (1291), the first of its kind in the history of art, thus earning it ...
Baltic Soundscapes
Cellist Gleb Pyšniak and pianist Rokas Zubovas present works by Lithuanian composer, choirmaster, painter, author, and cultural figure Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (arranged for cello and piano by Lithuanian cellist Juozas Čelkauskas). Čiurlionis composed in a style that blended late Romanticism with early modernism, incorporating Lithuanian folk music into his works and foreshadowing atonal techniques like serialism. His music is often ...
Gaïa
A celebration of nature and renewal, cellist Gautier Capuçon’s new album brings together works that reflect the beauty and resilience of our world. With his signature warmth and intensity, Capuçon invites listeners on a journey that is both intimate and universal: music that resonates deeply with today’s need for harmony and hope. The album features 17 works from 16 contemporary ...
