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.
Stay on top of New Releases with WFMT's curated Spotify and Apple Music playlists
Miyako Arishima: Music of Takemitsu, Szymanowski, Chopin & Serocki
Steinway & Sons has released the debut album from up-and-coming Japanese pianist Miyako Arishima. The album blends two vastly different, yet kindred worlds: the Romantic, embodied by the music of Frédéric Chopin, and the 20th century, represented by the the works of Toru Takemitsu, Karol Szymanowski, and Kazimierz Serocki.
Souvenirs of Spain and Italy – Sharon Isbin, Pacifica Quartet
The Grammy Award-winning Pacifica Quartet and multiple Grammy-winning guitarist Sharon Isbin join forces for an album of music for strings and guitar from the Baroque to the mid-20th century. Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Quintet is a seldom-heard gem demanding virtuosity from every player. Isbin and the Pacifica play Emilio Pujol’s guitar arrangement of Antonio Vivaldi’s Lute Concerto in D Major. Luigi Boccherini’s ...
Baltimore Consort: The Food of Love
Known for their lively renditions of Renaissance tunes, the Baltimore Consort presents a new album featuring their core repertory – music of the Elizabethan era, with songs and music from the Shakespeare plays. Soprano Danielle Svonavec performs some of the greatest hits from the Bard’s songbook and the Consort instrumentalists play sparkling arrangements of dances and consort music related to ...
Albrecht Mayer: Longing for Paradise
Star oboist Albrecht Mayer’s new release, Longing for Paradise, contains one of the most demanding works in the repertoire for his instrument: Richard Strauss’s first and only Oboe Concerto. Augmenting the Strauss concerto is a new arrangement of Ravel’s famous Le Tombeau de Couperin for oboe and orchestra, as well as less familiar masterpieces by Edward Elgar and Eugène Goossens. Mayer ...
Mari Samuelsen
Norwegian violinist Mari Samuelsen’s debut for Deutsche Grammophon is entitled simply MARI. Recorded with the Berlin Konzerthaus Orchestra and conductor Jonathan Stockhammer, the album explores the contradictions of contemporary life – the fact that, despite the excitement of city life and the convenience of instant communication and express travel, many of us still feel a need to ground ourselves in ...
Tchaikovsky: Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5 – Mariinsky Orchestra, Valery Gergiev
Valery Gergiev is widely recognised as the greatest modern interpreter of Tchaikovsky’s music and the Mariinsky Orchestra holds a peerless reputation in the repertoire. Together, they deliver definitive interpretations of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth and Fifth symphonies, recorded at Salle Pleyel in Paris during January 2010.
The Jupiter Project: Mozart in the 19th-Century Drawing Room
This is an intriguing recreation of how Mozart’s large-scale orchestral works might have been encountered in Georgian Britain. Pianist David Owen Norris, flutist Katy Bircher, violinist Caroline Balding, and cellist Andrew Skidmore join forces to form an ensemble representative of the kind that played such a prominent role in the musical landscape of the time, playing chamber arrangements of recent ...
The Romantic Piano Concerto, Volume 79
The latest installment in Hyperion’s ongoing series of the Romantic Piano Concerto brings together works by Hans Pfitzner and Walter Braunfels dating from the twilight of German Romanticism. The Braunfels work, Tag- und Nachtstücke, is a concerto in all but name. Pfitzner’s concerto stands as one of his most impressive orchestral works. Both are heroically dispatched by pianist Markus Becker, ...
Music of Dan Locklair
This world premiere recording of four recent orchestral works by acclaimed composer Dan Locklair opens with the powerful Symphony No. 2, America, the orchestral fireworks of which celebrate three significant American holidays. Hail the Coming Day is a festive celebration of the consolidation of the towns of Winston and Salem in 1913, while the antiphonal dialogues of PHOENIX celebrate new life. The Concerto for ...
Michael Torke: Sky
Acclaimed composer Michael Torke has brought fresh life to an old, but popular form, as these four concertos demonstrate. For Sky, a concerto for violin, Torke imposed classical forms on Bluegrass, evoking the music of the people who settled Kentucky. The other three concertos (for bassoon, oboe, and clarinet) test the limits of the instruments with innovative musical expression.
Bach: Viola da Gamba Sonatas – Antoine Tamestit, Masato Suzuki
Antoine Tamestit and his artistic partner Masato Suzuki, Principal Conductor of the famous Bach Collegium Japan, immersed themselves in Bach’s three sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord in order to present this sublime interpretation using a modern viola. The change in instrumentation allows the artists total freedom to rediscover the exquisite qualities of these all too rarely played masterpieces.
Brahms: Violin Sonatas – Alina Ibragimova, Cédric Tiberghien
Violinist Alina Ibragimova and pianist Cédric Tiberghien first met as members of the BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists initiative in 2005. The duo have gone on to perform throughout Europe, Asia, and North America, appearing at major venues. This new release from Ibragimova and Tiberghien brings matchless accounts of Brahms’s three violin sonatas, with a Clara Schumann encore to ...
Max Richter: My Brilliant Friend
Max Richter (The Leftovers, Taboo, Waltz with Bashir, Hostiles) composed the music for the HBO and RAI series My Brilliant Friend (L’amica geniale). The drama is based on Elena Ferrante’s bestselling book of the same name and tells the story of an elderly woman who discovers the most important friend in her life seems to have disappeared without a trace.
Endeavor: Works for Oboe and Piano
Jeffrey Rathbun has served as assistant principal oboe of the Cleveland Orchestra since 1990 and was the principal oboe from 2001 to 2003. He was previously a member of the Atlanta, San Francisco, Oakland, and Honolulu symphony orchestras. Rathbun is joined on this recording by pianist Marc Shapiro in works by Schumann, Slavický, Stravinsky, and Howells. Frank Rosenwein, principal oboist ...
Mozart: Piano Concertos – Orli Shaham, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra/David Robertson
Orli Shaham revels in the theatrical richness and breathtaking invention of Mozart’s piano concertos, joining forces with David Robertson and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra for this recording of No. 17 in G Major, K. 453, and No. 24 in C minor, K. 491. Shaham says, “The hope is to be able to highlight some aspect of the work that ...
Choral Music of Gerald Finzi: Choir of Trinity College Cambridge
The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge comprises around thirty Choral Scholars and two Organ Scholars, all of whom are students at the University. The College’s choral tradition dates back to the all-male choir of the fourteenth century, when former Chapel Royal choristers studied in King’s Hall which later became part of Trinity College. The Choir’s latest recording features the music ...
The Fellini Album: Film Music of Nino Rota
Conductor Riccardo Chailly and La Scala Philharmonic present The Fellini Album, featuring iconic Nino Rota film scores from classic Federico Fellini films, capturing Italy in the 1950s and ’60s. A remarkable collaboration encompassing the giants of Italian film, composition, and classical music, the album includes new recordings of music from La Dolce Vita, Amarcord, 8 ½, The Clowns, and Il Casanova.
Gregory Hutter: Secular Choral Music
The exciting, genre-defying American composer Gregory Hutter wrote this selection of choral music between 2009 and 2014 — his intention being economic, direct, and tuneful music. The settings range from the English Renaissance to American poems of the early 20th century. Hutter served on the DePaul University School of Music faculty from 2002 to 2019, and he is currently on ...
Bruckner: Symphony No. 9 – Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Manfred Honeck
Reference Recordings presents Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony in a new and definitive interpretation from Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, in superb audiophile sound. This hybrid release was recorded live in Heinz Hall, home of the PSO. As an important added feature, in his deeply personal and scholarly music notes, Maestro Honeck gives great insight into the history and the ...
Petr Eben: In Heaven – Jitro Czech Girls Choir
The Jitro Czech Girls Choir, under the leadership of conductor and music director Jiří Skopal, presents yet another vivid exploration of the depths of Czech music on their fourth release with Navona, In Heaven. The album is devoted to works by Petr Eben (1929-2007), an icon of 20th-century Czech music. Despite his creative diversity in many different forms, Eben devoted ...
