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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Music of Charles Villiers Stanford – Ulster Orchestra, Howard Shelley
During his lifetime, the Irishman Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (1852–1924) was possibly the most distinguished composer of English church music. His influence upon English musical life was enormous and long-lasting. The Ulster Orchestra and conductor Howard Shelley give us a sampling of some of Stanford’s finest occasional pieces – from the charming whimsy of Fairy Day to the dignified ceremony ...
Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen Sings Gluck, Handel & Vivaldi
Acclaimed as a “young star” and “complete artist” by the New York Times and “extravagantly gifted… poised to redefine what’s possible for singers of this distinctive voice type” by the San Francisco Chronicle, American countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen has quickly been identified as one of opera’s most promising rising stars. A long history of collaborations with American Bach Soloists and ...
Dzmitry Ulasiuk: Music of Prokofiev & Rachmaninoff
Two major piano works by Sergei Prokofiev and Sergei Rachmaninoff are presented on this album by Dzmitry Ulasiuk, who brings these masterpieces to life. Ulasiuk has emerged on the American scene after winning over audiences in Europe with his ferocious technical skills yet quietly refined ability to coax every detail, every note, and every lyrical phrase out of the keyboard. ...
Mahler: Symphony No. 1 – Minnesota Orchestra, Osmo Vänskä
The Minnesota Orchestra has released the fourth album in their ongoing Mahler series – a recording of the First Symphony, the Titan, conducted by Music Director Osmo Vänskä. Considered one of the most impressive first symphonies ever written, Mahler’s First, begun when the composer was just 24, contains a wide sound world featuring evocations of birdsong and nature, rustic dance ...
El Chan: Music of Bryce Dessner
The new album from pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque is dedicated to American composer Bryce Dessner and Academy Award-winning film director Alejandro Gonzales Iñarittú, who created the cover art. Following in the footsteps of minimalist composers such as Glass, Adams, and Reich, Dessner composed the Concerto for Two Pianos for the sisters. Recorded in 2018 with the Paris Orchestra conducted ...
Schumann: Works for Cello & Piano – Brian Thornton, Spencer Myer
Cellist Brian Thornton and pianist Spencer Myer have a long history of performing together, going all the way back to 2005. Myer was a finalist in the Cleveland International Piano Competition and performed with the Cleveland Orchestra, where Thornton is a member of the cello section. The two stayed in touch and Thornton even reached out to Myer when he ...
Dance – Jason Vieaux & Escher Quartet
Grammy Award winner Jason Vieaux joins forces with the esteemed Escher Quartet to produce a recording of new and old works with dance themes in common: Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Guitar Quintet, Kernis’s 100 Greatest Dance Hits, and Boccherini’s Guitar Quintet No. 4. These three works may share elements of dance-inspired music, and contain allusions to specific dances in the titles of certain ...
Jae-Hyuck Cho: Beethoven Piano Sonatas
Acclaimed pianist Jae-Hyuck Cho is one of the most active concert pianists in South Korea, making over sixty appearances on stage annually. He has been described as “a pianist who is nearing perfection with extraordinary breadth of expression, flawless technique and composition, sensitivity and intelligence, insightful and detailed playing without exaggeration.” On this Sony Classical release, Cho performs three of ...
A Warm Day in Winter: Music of Truman Harris
The chamber music of contemporary American composer Truman Harris is informed by his experience as an orchestral musician; it is idiomatic, exciting, and frequently cast for unusual combinations of instruments. One such example is the unique Sonata for Two Bassoons and Piano, flavored with jazz, romance, and waltz-like elegance. Rosemoore Suite is a captivating story without words moving from nostalgia ...
Mozart: New Cello Duos
Blaise Déjardin is the principal cellist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Kee-Hyun Kim is the cellist of the Grammy-winning Parker String Quartet. Friends since their student days at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, they are partnering on this first recording project for Opus Cello. Déjardin’s transcriptions for cello duo of three works by Mozart highlight the ...
Schumann: Liederkreis, Kernerlieder – Matthias Goerne, Leif Ove Andsnes
In the miraculous year of 1840, Robert Schumann composed nearly 150 lieder, including the two outstanding cycles presented here, based respectively on poems by Heinrich Heine (Liederkreis, Op. 24) and by Justinus Kerner (twelve Kernerlieder, Op. 35). In the hands of two such outstanding artists as baritone Matthias Goerne and pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, these two masterpieces invite us, performers ...
Wynton Marsalis: Violin Concerto, Fiddle Dance Suite – Nicola Benedetti
Violinist Nicola Benedetti’s new album features premiere recordings of two works written especially for her by Wynton Marsalis: Violin Concerto in D and Fiddle Dance Suite. In the concerto, Benedetti performs with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Cristian Măcelaru, who has collaborated with her on the work six times. It explores Benedetti’s and Marsalis’ common musical heritage in Celtic, Anglo, and ...
Music of Richard Strauss – Daniel Müller-Schott, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Sir Andrew Davis
During his long and exceptionally fruitful creative life, Richard Strauss composed only a few works for the cello. Only three have survived and small as that number may seem, those works are critical to the composer’s development. Daniel Müller-Schott sees the early Sonata and the late tone poem Don Quixote as marking the path that was to lead Strauss within ...
Bion Tsang: Cello Concertos by Dvořák & Enescu
A new recording from Sony Classical pairs two concertos for cello and orchestra in the hands of award-winning cellist Bion Tsang with conductor Scott Yoo and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Tsang gave the U.S. premiere of George Enescu’s Symphonie Concertante in 2000. He immediately fell in love with the work, finding in it many similarities to his long-time favorite concerto, the much-celebrated work ...
Dohnányi: Complete Solo Piano Music, Volume 4 – Martin Roscoe
With an extraordinary career spanning over four decades, Martin Roscoe is one of the United Kingdom’s best-loved pianists. This disc concludes his survey of the complete works for solo piano by Ernö Dohnányi. The works on the album demonstrate Dohnányi’s lifelong efforts to solidify his place in the great lineage of composer-pianists by writing in genres in which his predecessors ...
Mahler: Symphony No. 4 – London Philharmonic Orchestra, Vladimir Jurowski
“No worldly commotion is heard in Heaven! All live in gentlest peace.” Such is the child-like innocence which permeates Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, and yet beneath the surface there is more than meets the eye: an undercurrent of mysticism; a momentary glimpse behind the curtain at something timeless and unsettling. Russian soprano Sofia Fomina joins the London Philharmonic Orchestra and its ...
Robert Palmer: Piano Music – Adam Tendler
Robert Palmer (1915-2010) produced more than ninety symphonic, choral, chamber and solo works throughout his career, earning a reputation in the mid-twentieth century as one of the country’s leading, most daring, and, at the same time, appealing modernists. Palmer’s unique musical language combined a deeply emotional impulse with complex counterpoint and rhythmic structures. This recording by Adam Tendler, the first ...
Lise Davidsen: Music of Wagner & Strauss
Described as possessing “a voice in a million” (Telegraph), soprano Lise Davidsen makes a fiery debut with her self-titled album, released on Decca Classics. With works including Strauss’ Four Last Songs and arias from Ariadne auf Naxos and Wagner’s Tannhäuser, the record celebrates the legacy of opera and song throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Davidsen is the first Scandinavian soprano to sign exclusively ...
Bernstein: Complete Solo Piano Music – Michele Tozzetti
Leonard Bernstein’s piano output reflects the various strands of his multifaceted personality, in works as different as Touches and, at the other end of the scale, his often tender, sentimental Anniversaries. Taken together his piano works form a musical diary tracing the breadth of his experiences and ideas. To play these works well requires an understanding of the various elements ...
Haochen Zhang: Concertos by Tchaikovsky & Prokofiev
Since winning the gold medal at the 2009 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, Haochen Zhang has captivated audiences in the United States, Europe, and Asia with a unique combination of deep musical sensitivity, fearless imagination, and spectacular virtuosity. Zhang made his BBC Proms debut in 2014 to rave reviews. In past seasons, he has performed with the London Symphony Orchestra, ...
