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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Flourish (EP)
Black Moon Trio’s sophomore album is an immersive journey into the heart of the natural world, where the trio is joined by author/scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer, a decorated professor and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Together, they explore the relationships between humans and the environment in a program that weaves together music and spoken word. The album features ...
American Dream
The “American dream” is the thread that connects two works for two pianos and orchestra with a third piece for piano duo, presented by pianists Ludmilla Berlinskaya and Arthur Ancelle with the Victor Hugo Orchestra. Dana Suesse was born in Kansas City in 1909. She played her own compositions on the radio from the age of thirteen and composed hit ...
Anna Clyne: Abstractions
The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) led by Marin Alsop present four orchestral works from the last two decades by Anna Clyne, the former Chicago Symphony Orchestra Mead Composer-in-Residence, including world premiere recordings of the title work Abstractions and Color Field. Alsop, a regular collaborator of Anna Clyne, commissioned both Abstractions (for the BSO) and Restless Oceans (for her Taki Concordia Orchestra); and ...
Butterworth & Holst
Following their acclaimed series of music by Ralph Vaughan Williams, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra led by Andrew Manze presents a collection of works by two composers influenced by Vaughan Williams. George Butterworth left a small but enduring body of work. He was introduced to folk music by Vaughan Williams, but he was also a dancer and collector of folk ...
John Rutter: A Clare College Celebration
Led by Graham Ross, the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge celebrates the 80th birthday of legendary English composer and conductor Sir John Rutter with an album of choral works. The album includes pieces that Rutter wrote when he was a student himself at Clare College, then director of the Choir in the mid-1970s. Also included are pieces commissioned or gifted ...
The Well-“Tampered” Clavier, Book 1 arr. Post
Washington, D.C.–based pianists—composer-performer Sam Post and his friend and colleague Ralitza Patcheva—have join forces to reimagine Bach’s iconic Well-Tempered Clavier. Their new recording, The Well-“Tampered” Clavier, Book 1, embraces the expressive possibilities of the modern piano and infuses the music with rhythmic vitality drawn from jazz, ragtime, folk, world music, and twentieth-century classical styles. In the Baroque era, improvising, ornamenting, ...
Bennett & Duke: Violin Works
The two concertos presented here by Chloë Hanslip with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra led by Andrew Litton have been neglected for the same reason: their composers were much better known for their achievements in musical theater than their works for the concert hall. Robert Russell Bennett studied composition in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, and his output includes seven symphonies. He ...
There I Long to Be
Ensemble Galilei is a small ensemble specializing in a wide range of music for their particular instrumentation, and includes Isaac Alderson (uilleann pipes, Irish flute, whistles, tenor saxophone), Jesse Langen (guitar), Kathryn Montoya (recorders, whistle, shawm), Jackie Moran (banjo, bodhrán, egg shaker), and founder Carolyn Surrick (viola da gamba). They celebrate their 35th anniversary with a double-album recorded over the ...
Telemann Violin Concertos, Overture, Suite, Fantasie
With more than 125 concertos to his credit, Telemann was one of the pioneers of this genre that had flowered in Italy. Combining daring, humor, and emotion, he particularly delighted in exploring the virtuosity of the violin, its gift for imitation and its lyricism. Alongside other works of his where the violin also takes center stage, Isabelle Faust and the ...
Clair de Lune
Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “brilliant” and “superb,” SAKURA Cello Quintet (Stella Cho, Michael Kaufman, Yoshika Masuda, Zachary Mowitz, and Peter Myers) explores great music of the past through dazzling arrangements on familiar works, and continually expands the five-cello repertoire through commissioning new works. The group’s name, SAKURA, is a tribute to their mentor, cellist Ralph Kirshbaum, whose ...
Dvořák: Slavonic Dances
The Czech Philharmonic led by Principal Guest Conductor Rattle present the set of sixteen pieces which Dvořák composed between 1878 and 1886, taking inspiration from Brahms’s Hungarian Dances. Originally written for piano four hands, the first set of Slavonic Dances were orchestrated soon after publication at the request of Dvořák’s publisher Simrock, who also commissioned the second volume; the pieces ...
Travels with Cello
Cellist Susanna Mendlow presents her debut solo album that offers a unique musical tour of select styles, guiding the listener through a blend of original arrangements, works infused with traditional folk idioms, and contemporary premieres. It features music by Sulkhan Tsintsadze, Noam Faingold, Julia Adolphe, Astor Piazzolla, and Felix Mendelssohn — much of it never-before recorded for cello and piano. ...
A Romantic From Kharkiv: Music of Sergei Bortkiewicz
Pianist Anna Shelest presents an album dedicated to her home city and the music of fellow Kharkiv-native Sergei Bortkiewicz (1877-1952). Anchored in a deep sense of nostalgia, Bortkiewicz’s works evoke a world imbued with dreams and elegance—a stark contrast to the chaos of the early 20th century that surrounded him (the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the unrelenting ...
Solitude
Countertenor Reginald Mobley’s Grammy-nominated (and Opus Klassik award-winning) album Because explored the roots of American music blending jazz, soul, blues, and classical genres. Collaborating with Chicago-based lutenist/guitarist Brandon Acker and double-bass and gamba player Doug Balliet, Mobley’s new album features English lute song by Purcell, Dowland, and Eccles, alongside song arrangements by Virginia-born guitar virtuoso, abolitionist, and composer Justin Holland ...
Piazzolla: Balada para un loco
Accordionist Théo Ould became, at the age of 24, the first accordionist to be shortlisted as a “Newly Discovered Talent” at the Victoires de la Musique Classique awards. Le Monde raved: “Served by a masterly technique (an unbelievably supple left hand and an inexhaustible wealth of phrasing), Théo Ould’s interpretations show a personality expressing itself naturally in terms of the ...
Paris – Hollywood
Alexandre Desplat, the Academy Award-winning modern master of the film score, presents a double-album souvenir of concert performed at the Philharmonie de Paris in January 2025. The concert program featured new arrangements from 15 of his best-known film scores including a suite from three Wes Anderson films (Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and The French Dispatch); a “Royal ...
Kevin Puts: Concerto for Orchestra, Silent Night Elegy & Virelai
St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s first album with Music Director Stéphane Denève comprises three world premiere recordings by native St. Louisan and Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy-winning composer Kevin Puts. Dedicated to this orchestra and conductor, Concerto for Orchestra was written in response to the school shooting that occurred in Uvalde in 2022. “Silent Night Elegy” is drawn from Put’s acclaimed opera, ...
Passing Fancy: Beauty in a Moment of Chaos
New York City-based period instrument ensemble Sonnambula’s debut album on Avie Records traverses music by several Renaissance composers who were forced to conceal their identities for social, religious, or ethnic reasons. Yet their music transcended the disorder surrounding them, flourishing in the intersection of beliefs and styles. The program features works by William Byrd and Richard Dering, two Catholics composing ...
Birds of Paradise
Ember – a trio comprising harpist Emily Levin, violinist Julia Choi, and cellist Christine Lamprea – releases its debut album celebrating both historical and contemporary women composers while addressing the cultural significance of the contributions of women in classical music. The program showcases three compelling works: French harpist and composer Henriette Renié’s groundbreaking Trio in B-flat Major (1901), the first ...
Symphonic Chronicles, Vol. 5
Navona Records continues its series of world premiere recordings of orchestral works by celebrated living composers from a wide variety of backgrounds and influences. Volume five includes Kim Diehnelt’s With Courage, Dear Heart. Diehnelt, currently a resident of Burlington, Vermont, was previously active in the Chicago scene leading such groups as Sounds of the South Loop, the South Loop Symphony, ...
