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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London Philharmonic Orchestra: Music of Rachmaninoff
The works on this disc were recorded live in concert with the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Principal Conductor, Vladimir Jurowski. The Isle of the Dead, Rachmaninoff’s dramatic tone poem, inspired by a reproduction of Austrian painter Arnold Böcklin’s work of the same name, darkly charts a soul’s journey to its final rest. In contrast, much of the drama of the First Symphony ...
20th Century Oboe Sonatas – Alex Klein, Phillip Bush
Alex Klein, former principal oboist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, performs sonatas that signify the oboe’s 20th-century reemergence as a brilliant solo instrument. One of the world’s most famous oboe players, Klein says he waited to acquire a professional lifetime’s worth of experience before putting his stamp on the six works heard here. With pianist Phillip Bush, Klein plays works ...
Couperin: Concerts Royaux – Les Talens Lyriques, Christophe Rousset
François Couperin’s four Concerts Royaux were published in 1722 as a supplement to his third anthology of harpsichord pieces. While the score doesn’t mention any instrumentation, we know the composer envisaged them as ensemble pieces for a mixed consort of instruments. This is how they were performed at the Sunday concerts at Versailles for Louis XIV between 1714 and 1715. ...
Andreas Ottensamer & Yuja Wang: Blue Hour
Recording for the first time together, clarinetist Andreas Ottensamer and pianist Yuja Wang perform beloved Romantic chamber repertoire by Brahms, Mendelssohn, and Weber in new arrangements. For Weber’s Clarinet Concerto No. 1 in F minor, Ottensamer is joined by one of the leading orchestras in the world, the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of Mariss Jansons.
Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 5 – London Philharmonic Orchestra, Kurt Masur
The two symphonies on this disc, recorded live during his tenure as Principal Conductor (2000-07), are the fruits of Kurt Masur’s 25-year relationship with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. A pre-eminent interpreter of Beethoven, Masur conducted from memory, bringing to the performances a special energy and insight. The result is a mighty celebration and sense of rediscovering the drama and euphoria ...
Sistine Chapel Choir: O Crux Benedicta
This recording made in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel by its resident choir is devoted to music for Ash Wednesday and Holy Week. Presented in liturgical order, every piece in this compilation of chant and sublime settings by Palestrina, Lassus, Victoria, and other Renaissance masters was written for and is still performed in papal liturgies celebrated in the chapel. “The exciting ...
Haydn: Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross – Ensemble Resonanz
For several years now, under the direction of its inspired conductor Maestro Riccardo Minasi, Ensemble Resonanz has taken up the challenge of playing contemporary instruments with complete mastery of historically informed performance practice. Their latest album features the original orchestral version of Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross, commissioned in 1786 for the Good Friday service at Oratorio de la ...
Christina & Michelle Naughton: American Postcard
Twin sisters Christina and Michelle Naughton pay tribute to their homeland with the album American Postcard. It offers music by four composers: John Adams (his Roll Over Beethoven, a work the Naughtons premiered in 2016), Aaron Copland, Conlon Nancarrow and Paul Schoenfield. As the sisters explain, “These pieces show the diversity and variety of American music. But one thing that ...
John Tavener: Angels – Winchester Cathedral Choir, Andrew Lumsden
The Winchester Cathedral Choir presents a collection of some of Sir John Tavener’s most enduring – and endearing – choral music. Angels, Song for Athene, and The Lamb are among the highlights on this remarkable program. Tavener loved Winchester Cathedral, which became one of his spiritual homes. As this album shows, the cathedral and its choir under Andrew Lumsden are ...
The Romantic Piano Concerto, Volume 78
No fewer than four composers vie for attention in Volume 78 of the Hyperion label’s ongoing series devoted to the Romantic Piano Concerto. There’s only one official piano concerto here, but it’s a remarkable work from a composer in her mid-teens – Clara Schumann. Howard Shelley also presents single-movement rarities from three other great pianist/composers of the 19th century – ...
Ombra mai fu: Cavalli Opera Arias – Philippe Jaroussky
Francesco Cavalli (1602–76) is an important figure in the history of opera and his works, which first experienced a revival in the 1960s, have been growing in currency in recent years. The most prominent successor to Monteverdi, Cavalli was active in Venice at a time when opera was moving out of aristocratic palaces and into public theaters. “Beyond the great ...
Klara Min: Evocation
Turning away from the relentless control of daylight, poets have sought spiritual and poetic inspiration in the sublime darkness of mystery-inducing night. Klara Min’s album presents us with piano pieces intimating this dark but dazzling night. Its title, Evocation, suggests night’s musical power to awaken and stir subliminal feelings hidden at the depth of our souls. Klara Min is a ...
Music@Menlo Live 2018: Creative Capitals
Music@Menlo Live presents Creative Capitals, featuring live recordings from the acclaimed chamber music festival’s 2018 season. Available both online and in an eight-CD box set, the compilation celebrates urban locales that have inspired some of Western classical music’s greatest composers. The collection features music from seven capitals highlighted at the summer festival in the San Francisco Bay Area. The musical ...
Haydn: Cello Concertos – Christoph Croisé
Winner of the Berlin International Music Competition, cellist Christoph Croisé performs the two Cello Concertos by Franz Joseph Haydn. His fresh and fervent approach is matched by his collaborators, the Eurasian Soloists Chamber Orchestra, as they recreate the works’ first performances in the Esterházy Castle when the composer directed from the harpsichord. Croisé concludes the album with Vivaldi’s Concerto for ...
The Music of King’s: Choral Favorites from Cambridge
For more than half a millennium, King’s College Chapel in Cambridge has been home to one of the world’s most loved and renowned choirs. “The Music of King’s” features some of the choir’s contemporary favorites presented alongside other exceptional works that have stood the test of time. A celebration of choral music through the ages, the album traces choral styles ...
Music of Stravinsky & Debussy – New York Philharmonic, Jaap van Zweden
The New York Philharmonic’s third album on Decca Gold features performances of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps and Debussy’s La Mer from concerts in Jaap van Zweden’s opening weeks as Music Director in 2018. The New York Times wrote that in the opening performance of Le Sacre du printemps, “Mr. van Zweden drew incisive, blazingly powerful and vehement playing from the Philharmonic.” Two weeks ...
Barbara Strozzi: Voglio Cantar – Emöke Baráth, Il Pomo d’Oro
The Venetian singer and composer Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677) was probably the most remarkable, talented, famous, and successful woman of her time in the field of music. In 2019, the ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro celebrates her 400th anniversary with a program performed by soprano Emöke Baráth under the direction of Francesco Corti, the orchestra’s new principal guest conductor. Voglio Cantar presents some of Strozzi’s ...
Liszt: Late Piano Works – Cédric Tiberghien
Cédric Tiberghien’s new album focuses on late piano works by Franz Liszt, beginning with some of his most intriguing and unconventional miniatures. The main part of Tiberghien’s program is devoted to the third and final volume of Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage). The individual pieces were written in, and even inspired by, a single location: a suite of rooms ...
Bach: Violin Concertos – Isabelle Faust, Berlin Academy of Ancient Music
Violinist Isabelle Faust offers the next installment in a Bach recording adventure that began nine years ago with a set of the Sonatas and Partitas now regarded as a benchmark. Joined by Bernhard Forck and his partners at the Berlin Academy of Ancient Music, Faust explores a multitude of other works by Bach: harpsichord concertos, trio sonatas, instrumental movements from ...
Brian Thornton: Music of Brahms & Debussy
For his latest album on the Steinway & Sons label, cellist Brian Thornton continues his exploration of great sonatas, this time opening his album with Debussy’s Cello Sonata, which marked the composers first return to chamber music since the String Quartet of 1893. The second half of the album is devoted to Brahms’s Clarinet Trio, Op. 114. Thornton and pianist Spencer Myer, ...
