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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Diderot String Quartet: Dissonance
The Diderot String Quartet – named after the eighteenth-century French philosopher and Boccherini enthusiast Denis Diderot – brings a fresh approach to works of the 18th and 19th centuries. The group came together in 2012 after having first met at Oberlin Conservatory and the Juilliard School. The four musicians share a background in historical performance and a passion for the ...
Seattle Symphony: Music of Berio, Boulez & Ravel
Each of the three compositions recorded here entails, among other things, an ingenious transformation of pre-existing musical material or styles. The eight-voice, Grammy Award-winning vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth joins the Seattle Symphony and Music Director Ludovic Morlot in an exhilarating live performance of Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia. The program combines Berio’s groundbreaking work with Boulez’s Notations and Ravel’s La valse. Morlot says, ...
Kirill Gerstein: Music of Gershwin
In this album recorded live, pianist Kirill Gerstein explores the music of George Gershwin. Together with conductor David Robertson and the St. Louis Symphony he plays the Concerto in F as well as the original jazz band version of the Rhapsody in Blue. The program also includes a selection of Gershwin songs in solo piano arrangements by the American pianist Earl ...
The Best of Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein unquestionably was one of the most astonishing and magnetic personalities in the world of music. He bestrode the musical scene in the second half of the 20th century like few others: composer, conductor, pianist, educator; but it was as a great communicator – of music and through music – that every facet of his life and legacy is ...
Ronn McFarlane: The Celtic Lute
For ‘The Celtic Lute,’ Ronn McFarlane turns to one of his earliest musical influences, and the music of his ancestors: folk music of Scotland and Ireland. He says, “I’ve had a great love of Celtic music since the 1970s, hearing groups like the Chieftains and The Bothy Band. I was delighted to find Scottish tunes in lute manuscripts from the ...
Bach: Dialogue Cantatas – Berlin Academy of Ancient Music
As the title implies, the soprano and the baritone soloists in Bach’s three Dialogue Cantatas are partners in conversation. The works, also designated as concertos, feature sacred dialogues between the soul and Christ presented in glorious musical settings that allow the vocalists to shine. This recording features soprano Sophie Karthäuser and bass Michael Volle, backed by the Berlin Academy of Ancient ...
David Quigley: Piano Nocturnes
Award-winning Irish pianist David Quigley, heralded by The Birmingham Post as a musician of “amazing maturity and concentration,” makes his Avie label debut with a stunning and beautiful recital that takes the listener on a moonlit journey of the solo piano nocturne. The album begins and ends with Quigley’s compatriot and the genre’s originator, John Field, and traverses the highways ...
Brahms: The Symphonies – Berlin Staatskapelle, Daniel Barenboim
The first orchestral recording from Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal, ‘Brahms: The Symphonies’ is a four-CD set featuring Boulez’s beloved friend and colleague Daniel Barenboim conducting the Berlin Staatskapelle in all four symphonic masterpieces from the great Romantic composer. “Daniel Barenboim no longer needs to assert himself. To my mind, this is virtually an ideal prerequisite for interpreting Brahms’s symphonies, along ...
Ukrainian Rhapsody: Anna & Dmitri Shelest
This release from the Shelest Piano Duo presents pieces for piano solo and piano four hands by Ukrainian composers from the 19th and 20th centuries. Having established themselves as solo artists, while garnering prizes and awards along the way, the Ukrainian-born husband and wife Shelest Piano Duo brings to the performance stage inventive programs of not only solo repertoire, but ...
Beau Soir: French Music for Oboe and Piano
The Lumina Duo is comprised of oboist Merideth Hite Estevez and pianist Jani Parsons. Hite Estevez serves as director of Lumina Arts Incubator, an arts service organization in Wilmington, Delaware. Parsons is an active soloist and collaborator and a member of the keyboard faculty at Baylor University. They’ve gathered together a program of favorite music from French composers of the Impressionist era. ...
Gisle Kverndokk: Symphonic Dances
In 2013, the Norwegian Ministry of Culture challenged the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Norwegian Constitution by addressing the concept of cultural diversity. SSO commissioned a work by Gisle Kverndokk, who created “Symphonic Dances” by weaving together a diverse musical narrative based on folk music from the different ethnic groups living in the Stavanger area. ...
Perpetual Night: 17th Century Ayres & Songs
The circulation of artists and sovereigns between France and England in the 17th century resulted in the establishment of highly original genres in England. The first recitatives, large-scale airs from masques and dramatic ‘scenes’ provided fertile ground for experimentation and prepared the way for the birth of semi-opera. Sébastien Daucé explores this English vocal art in a program tailor-made for ...
Mozart: The Piano Quartets – Joyce Yang, Alexander String Quartet
Some have claimed that Mozart invented the piano quartet, but he did not. Other composers — including the fourteen-year-old Beethoven — had written quartets for piano and strings earlier, but Mozart was the first to face squarely the challenges of this difficult form, and he wrote the first two great piano quartets. Members of the Alexander String Quartet join with pianist Joyce Yang ...
Binchois Consort: The Lily and the Rose
The Binchois Consort presents a celebration of the Virgin Mary in sound and stone on ‘The Lily and the Rose.’ Following the success of its predecessor, ‘Music for the 100 Years’ War,’ this release further explores the artistic parallels between music and alabaster sculpture in late medieval England. Through a shared exploration in partnership with museums, curators, scholars, artists and ...
Music for Cello by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
Inspired by the personality, prodigious technique, and musicality of the cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Cello Concerto is a work of imposing scale and demanding virtuosity, but also with a rare beauty and warmth of expression. This live recording documents the first professional performances of the concerto in more than 80 years, and is paired with playful and virtuosic freely ...
Michael Torke: Unconquered
Composer Michael Torke writes of his four-movement symphonic tone poem Unconquered: “The Battle of Saratoga was a decisive turning point of the Revolutionary War, when, after General Burgoyne surrendered his British army, France entered the war, and her support was crucial to the eventual victory, establishing our independence. The title speaks of Saratoga’s victory – an ‘invictus’ – a resolve ...
Seducción: Music for Flute & Piano
“Music is language,” said the legendary French flutist and inspirational teacher, Marcel Moyse, “the flute is one of its mediums of expression, and when I play I try to convey the impression of laughing, of singing, of talking through the medium of my instrument in a manner almost as direct as that expressed by the human voice.” His insight is ...
Dallas Winds: John Williams At The Movies
John Williams is one of the best known, most awarded and most successful composers in history, and his name is inextricably connected to outstanding music for films. He has written scores for over 100 films, and his massive list of awards includes 51 Academy Award nominations and five wins, as well as 24 Grammy awards. This collection of some of ...
Max Emanuel Cencic: Opera Arias by Nicola Porpora
Countertenor Max Emanuel Cencic presents a generous selection of fine opera arias by Baroque master Nicola Porpora, including seven world premiere recordings. A celebrated Neapolitan composer and singing teacher, Porpora’s ability to set the Italian language to music was internationally acknowledged during his lifetime. Cencic has been at the forefront of rediscovering this neglected composer’s operatic legacy. He is joined by ...
Waller & Maxwell Guitar Duo: Favorites
Praised for “their absolutely sublime touch” (La Sicilia), Anne Waller and Mark Maxwell have toured the United States and Europe for over 35 years as energetic proponents of guitar duo playing. Their unique programming of works for both nineteenth-century and modern guitars provides rare insight into the evolution of this captivating art. Waller and Maxwell perform both historical transcriptions as ...