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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Irina Muresanu: Four Strings Around the World
“Four Strings Around the World” by Romanian-born violinist Irina Muresanu is a program celebrating the diversity of cultures refracted through the unifying voice of solo violin. The album is organized into two sections – “Music from Western and Eastern Europe” and “Music from the Middle East, South and North America.” The recording includes two world premiere recordings: Vák by Indian-born ...
Alessio Bax: Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto & Solo Piano Works
Pianist Alessio Bax returns to recording with the Southbank Sinfonia under Simon Over, in a new album of works by Beethoven centered around the majestic “Emperor” Piano Concerto No. 5. Combining exceptional lyricism and insight with consummate technique, Bax is without a doubt “among the most remarkable young pianists now before the public” (Gramophone). He is now a familiar face ...
The Nash Ensemble: Chamber Music of Dohnányi
The name of Ernő Dohnányi (1877-1960), the Hungarian composer, pianist and conductor, almost disappeared completely a couple of decades after his death, and with it his works were nearly forgotten. Admired by figures as disparate as Brahms and Bartók, Dohnányi’s music embodies virtues of taste, humor, impeccable control of form, and beauty of style. All those qualities are relished by ...
Angela Hewitt: Beethoven Piano Sonatas, Volume 7
One of the world’s leading pianists, Angela Hewitt appears in recital and with major orchestras throughout Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Her career has been established at the highest level, not least through her award-winning recordings for the Hyperion label. This latest installment in Hewitt’s survey of Beethoven’s piano sonatas is bookended by the ‘Tempest’ and Op. 109 sonatas. The ...
Circles: Piano Concertos by Bach & Glass
Grammy-nominated string orchestra A Far Cry and pianist Simone Dinnerstein have teamed up on a new recording of keyboard concertos by Philip Glass and J.S. Bach. The album features the world premiere recording of Glass’s Piano Concerto No. 3, a new concerto for piano and strings co-commissioned by A Far Cry and composed by Glass specifically for Dinnerstein, whom the New ...
Duo Gazzana: Music of Ravel, Franck, Ligeti & Messiaen
A sense of discovery is a key theme in the third ECM recital of sisters Natascia and Raffaella Gazzana. Alongside a landscape of French music for violin and piano, drawing on a multiplicity of inspirations, the album includes a premiere recording of György Ligeti’s Duo, dedicated to Kúrtag. Duo Gazzana plays César Franck’s epic A major Sonata of 1886, and Maurice Ravel’s Sonate ...
Stephen Hough’s Dream Album
Pianist Stephen Hough’s Dream Album, which casts him in the role of performer, composer, and transcriber, is the seventh in a series of “Album” releases from Hough that began with The Piano Album in 1993 and continued most recently with the French Album in 2012. Like all of his Albums, this collection juxtaposes works by different composers, in this case ...
Anne-Marie McDermott: Haydn Piano Sonatas, Volume 2
The esteemed American pianist Anne-Marie McDermott has played concertos, recitals, and chamber music in hundreds of cities in the United States, Europe, and Asia. On this release, McDermott has once again chosen the sonatas of Haydn, making this her second volume of the composer’s work for Bridge Records. “McDermott plays with tremendous wit, bringing out the geniality and humor of Haydn with great ...
Bruckner: Symphony No. 7 – Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Andris Nelsons
This release is the continuation of Andris Nelsons’s much-admired Bruckner symphony cycle with the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig. Here they play the Seventh Symphony – premiered in 1884 by this orchestra and now recorded live to mark its 275th anniversary. Nelsons brings youthful energy, fluidity and rhythmic impulse, while still leaving room for Bruckner’s music’s monumental sound blocks that give ...
Jean-Guihen Queyras: CPE Bach Cello Concertos
Why should music before Mozart now be the sole preserve of period-instrument orchestras? For some years now, Ensemble Resonanz has challenged this idea, without ever neglecting the notion of the sheer pleasure to be derived from the concertos and symphonies of the great Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Like their guest soloist Jean-Guihen Queyras, all the musicians possess equal virtuosity in ...
Alessio Bax: Beethoven Emperor Concerto & Solo Works
Alessio Bax returns to recording with the Southbank Sinfonia under Simon Over, in a new album of works by Beethoven centered around the majestic “Emperor” Piano Concerto No. 5. Combining exceptional lyricism and insight with consummate technique, Alessio Bax is without a doubt “among the most remarkable young pianists now before the public” (Gramophone). He catapulted to prominence with First ...
Boris Giltburg: Music of Rachmaninoff
Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 is a complex, epic narrative that moves from a simple opening melody to the triumphant apotheosis at its conclusion. In the Variations on a Theme of Correlli, Rachmaninoff reworks the original theme using his unique harmonic language until there is no trace left of its Baroque or Renaissance origins. Pianist Boris Giltburg was born in ...
Francisco Fullana: Through the Lens of Time
“Through the Lens of Time” brings together four modern perspectives re-imagining the Baroque tradition: a dialogue between Old and New that prompts both composers and performers to explore music from giants of the past and its place in their own lives. Spanish violinist Francisco Fullana has received international praise as a “rising star” (BBC Music Magazine) and an “amazing talent” (Gustavo Dudamel). His 2016 recital debut ...
Vivaldi: Gloria & Other Sacred Works
Soprano Julia Lezhneva, “a serene, sleek voice” (Financial Times), and countertenor Franco Fagioli, “one of today’s great vocal technicians” (The Guardian), partner with today’s premier Vivaldi interpreters, Diego Fasolis and I Barocchisti, for an all-Vivaldi album. The new Decca album features the Baroque composer’s Gloria, complemented by Nisi Dominus with Fagioli and Nulla in mundo pax sincera with Lezhneva.
Victoria: Tenebrae Responsories – Stile Antico
The office of Tenebrae, from the liturgy of Holy Week, has always fascinated the public and, above all, offered a fertile terrain for composers to exercise their gifts. Such was the case with Tomás Luis de Victoria, whose exclusively sacred output was nourished by multiple influences during his years in Rome. These Responsories, performed by the world-renowned vocal ensemble Stile ...
Blake Pouliot: Ravel & Debussy
One of Canada’s fastest rising and most promising young artists, 23-year-old violinist Blake Pouliot has been described by the Toronto Star as “one of those special talents that come along once in a lifetime.” On his first album, Pouliot and pianist Hsin-I Huang perform works by two great French composers of the first half of the 20th century – Maurice ...
George Szell in Europe
With Fritz Reiner, Georg Solti and Ferenc Fricsay, George Szell (1897-1970) was one of several great Hungarian conductors who deeply influenced the art of conducting in the 20th century. He left Europe in 1939 for the United States, where he had a brilliant career. With the Cleveland Orchestra, which he conducted from 1946 until his death in 1970, he achieved ...
Pavel Kolesnikov: Music of Louis Couperin
Pavel Kolesnikov, 2012 Laureate of the Honens Prize for Piano, gave his Wigmore Hall debut at the beginning of 2013. Equally well-suited to the demands of the French Baroque as to the high Romanticism of Tchaikovsky and Chopin, his attentive musicianship yields revelatory results in the music of Louis Couperin. A composer, harpsichordist, organist, and viol player, Couperin was, after ...
The Royal Wedding: The Official Album
Decca Records has released the official recording of the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Ms. Meghan Markle. Having recorded the entire service live at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, every piece of music, the readings, blessings and the vows are included. The musical highlight of the moving and joyous ceremony was British cellist, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, one of the most exciting ...
Vaughan Williams: Symphonies Nos. 5 & 6 – Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Andrew Manze
Andrew Manze’s interpretations of Vaughan Williams’ symphonies have met with acclaim from audiences and critics alike. This third album in the series contains two masterpieces. The Fifth Symphony draws on material from The Pilgrim’s Progress. The Sixth Symphony stunned the audience at its premiere – some tried to explain the work’s last movement as depicting a nuclear wasteland. Vaughan Williams responded, ...