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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Ensemble Dialoghi: Quintets for Piano & Winds
Ensemble Dialoghi makes their Harmonia Mundi debut with this program of quintets for piano and winds. A work of ‘maturity,’ which the twenty-eight year-old Mozart considered ‘among his best,’ is paired with a ‘youthful effort’ penned by a twenty-six year-old Beethoven. Dating from an auspicious phase in each composer’s career, both pieces were met with an enthusiastic reception. Beethoven, it ...
Briggs Piano Trio: Music of Gál & Shostakovich
Continuing Avie’s acclaimed and influential series of recordings of the music of Austrian émigré Hans Gál, this latest release brings together two of today’s most eminent Gál interpreters, pianist Sarah Beth Briggs and cellist Kenneth Woods with violin virtuoso David Juritz for a recording of Gál’s breathtakingly lyrical Piano Trio in E major and his witty Variations on a Popular ...
Jean-Guihen Queyras: Vivaldi’s Cello Sonatas
Antonio Vivaldi’s six sonatas for cello and continuo were written between 1720 and 1730 and published in Paris in 1740. Although a staple of the cello repertoire, these works are not often played in public recitals. When they were composed, the cello was just emerging as a solo instrument, and Vivaldi took full advantage of the instrument’s expressive capabilities. These ...
Igor Frolov and Friends
Who is Igor Frolov, and who are his friends? One of Frolov’s best friends is violinist Piet Koornhof. Always on the lookout for unusual and appealing repertoire, Koornhof heard a recording of Frolov’s “Piece in Blues Style” and began his search for more music. Koornhof located many delightful pieces by Frolov, a Soviet composer and professor of violin at the ...
Harmonie du soir: Songs of Debussy
A century after his death on March 25, 1918, many Harmonia Mundi artists are eager to pay tribute to Claude Debussy, the magician of melody and timbre, the great ‘colorist’ and father of modern music. The key word is ‘mélodie’ in this generous joint song recital presented by soprano Sophie Karthäuser and baritone Stéphane Degout with pianists Eugene Asti and ...
Songs for Strings: Arrangements by Donald Fraser
In the 1990s, Donald Fraser scored a hit with his orchestral arrangement of Marin Marais’ Baroque classic The Bells of St. Genevieve, which remains a radio evergreen to this day. Numerous commissions for arrangements followed for musicians such as The King’s Singers, Yehudi Menuhin and the English Chamber Orchestra. Fraser returns to the art of arranging smaller scale, classic works by John Dowland, Henry Purcell, ...
Zhenni Li: Mélancholie
Zhenni Li’s riveting personality and passionate performances have brought audiences to their feet around the world. She has been hailed as a “magnetic pianist – with fire and poetry” by music critic David Dubal and for her “big, gorgeous tone and a mesmerizing touch” by The Philadelphia Inquirer. ‘Melancholie’ is Li’s recording debut, and features works by Schumann, Lourié, and Bartók. ...
Tesla Quartet: Music of Haydn, Ravel & Stravinsky
The great inventor and futurist Nikola Tesla, from whom the Tesla Quartet takes its name, talked of the invisible yet inseparable ties which bind people together. Through performance, teaching and outreach, the Tesla Quartet has for ten years strived to tap into this palpable feeling, using music to create meaningful connections with their audiences. Celebrating this first decade together, the ...
Music of Owain Park – Choir of Trinity College Cambridge
Owain Park was born in Bristol, England, in 1993. While at Cambridge University, he studied composition and orchestration with John Rutter. Park’s works are performed internationally by ensembles including the Tallis Scholars and the Aurora Orchestra. Rutter has written an introduction for a new recording of Park’s choral music performed by the Choir of Trinity College Cambridge. He says Park ...
The Classical Piano Concerto: Jan Ladislav Dussek
The Hyperion label presents another volume in a series devoted to rarely heard piano concertos of the Classical period. Howard Shelley’s earlier release of concertos by the Bohemian composer Jan Ladislav Dussek was described as ‘a real find’ (BBC Music Magazine). This successor is, if anything, even more impressive, culminating in one of the finest unknown piano concertos from the ...
Louis Couperin: Harpsichord Suites – Christophe Rousset
The new Stradivari series from Harmonia Mundi allows listeners to explore the unique instruments lovingly preserved at the Philharmonie de Paris’s Museum of Music. Thanks to the skill and commitment of the museum’s conservators, these instruments are given a new life. On this release, the great Christophe Rousset plays a rare harpsichord crafted in 1652 by Ioannes Couchet. Through his ...
Nadine Sierra: There’s A Place For Us
Nadine Sierra, 2018 winner of the Metropolitan Opera’s prestigious Beverly Sills Artist Award, has made her first album for Deutsche Grammophon and Decca Gold, having signed an exclusive contract with the labels. “There’s A Place For Us” marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Leonard Bernstein. The album presents Sierra’s stunning voice in an eclectic choice of music – ...
A Far Cry: Visions and Variations
A Far Cry is a chamber orchestra based in Boston. With no conductor, and every single musician a full artistic partner, the result is a huge variety of programming, a high standard of excellence, and national and international recognition. “Visions and Variations” includes some of their signature pieces: Benjamin Britten’s Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, Ethan Wood’s arrangement ...
Yo-Yo Ma: Six Evolutions – Bach’s Cello Suites
Yo-Yo Ma’s new album “Six Evolutions” is his third and final recording of Bach’s Cello Suites. These works entered Ma’s life when he was four, when he learned the first measure of the Prelude to Suite No. 1 under his father’s instruction. Ma has never lost his initial fascination. “Bach’s Cello Suites have been my constant musical companions,” Ma writes ...
Brahms: A German Requiem – Yale Schola Cantorum
Johannes Brahms’s German Requiem is given a performance which reveals a quite different dimension to this monumental work. Iain Farrington’s arrangement—the orchestral forces distilled down to an instrumental octet inspired by the composer’s own piano reduction—is a perfect match for the glorious young voices of Yale Schola Cantorum. This chamber version highlights the sense of intimacy and personal expression inherent ...
Pavel Kolesnikov: Piano Music of Beethoven
London-based Pavel Kolesnikov was born into a Siberian family of scientists and studied both the piano and violin for ten years, before concentrating solely on the piano. He went on to study at the Moscow State Conservatory, London’s Royal College of Music, and at Brussels’ Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel. Since becoming Prize Laureate of the Honens Prize for Piano in ...
Jeff Beal: House of Cards Symphony
This release grew out of the fascination of Robert von Bahr, founder and managing director of BIS Records, for the television series House of Cards. It wasn’t only the script or the acting that grabbed him, however, but just as much the music. Jeff Beal, the composer of the soundtrack, was contacted and it was soon decided that he should ...
Alla Zingarese: Civitas Ensemble & Gipsy Way Ensemble
The Civitas Ensemble, an enterprising chamber group founded by Chicago Symphony Orchestra musicians, teams up with Czech violin virtuoso Pavel Šporcl and his wildly popular Gipsy Way Ensemble for a groundbreaking collaboration at the crossroads of Western classical and Romani musical traditions. Alla Zingarese (“in the Gypsy style”) embraces the past with new arrangements of well-loved, Gypsy-infused works by Brahms, Enescu, Hubay, ...
The Clarion Choir: Music of Alexander Kastalsky
In the face of the devastation wrought by the First World War, Alexander Kastalsky conceived a musical service of remembrance for the fallen. A pivotal figure in Russian musical life – he was a student of Tchaikovsky and acclaimed as the founder of a new, national church music – Kastalsky composed a choral-orchestral Requiem, for the concert stage. Simultaneously, he ...
Orfeo Amoroso: Music for Decacorde
The decacorde, or the 10-string guitar, is a rare variation of the classical guitar, relatively unknown even to many professional guitarists. The extra strings added to the usual 6-string instrument are no novelty but have a long history in many cultures. Thus, the evolution of this variation of the guitar shows influence from a number of different string instruments, the ...