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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Haydn: Concertos for Esterházy
Joseph Haydn spent much of his career as music director for the wealthy Esterházy family at their remote estate in Hungary. This isolated him from other composers and trends in music to such an extent that Haydn said it, ”forced him to become original.” He wrote many works specifically for the Esterházy orchestra, including the three concertos featured here. The ...
New Latin American Music for Guitar and String Quartet
Guitarist Fareed Haque and the KAIA String Quartet shine together in a variety of pieces by Latin American masters ranging from Astor Piazzolla to Eduardo Angulo to Leo Brouwer, drawing influence from the Caribbean and Mexico to the Río de la Plata. The collaboration offers a new flavor to jazz, Latino, and chamber music. Haque’s formidable experience in those fields ...
Anne Akiko Meyers: Mirror in Mirror
Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers is one of today’s most in-demand classical performers. Beloved by audiences around the world, she has a reputation for innovative programs and ground-breaking commissions. ‘Mirror in Mirror’ is one of the most personal recordings to date by Meyers — a reflective and spiritual journey that weaves a beautiful story through commissions and arrangements by Philip Glass, ...
Hilary Hahn Plays Bach
When Hilary Hahn Plays Bach came out in 1997, critics were astounded that a performer would choose solo Bach for her debut album. They were further confounded by Hahn’s elegant approach to this music’s technical and interpretive challenges at the age of 17. Now 38, she completes her recording of the Bach sonatas and partitas for solo violin with her Decca label debut, ...
Daniil Trifonov: Destination Rachmaninoff – Departure
Grammy winner Daniil Trifonov presents a cycle of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s highly virtuosic piano concertos. Trifonov performs with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra, the orchestra with which Rachmaninoff himself famously recorded the works over 80 years ago. The two-part journey begins with “Destination Rachmaninoff – Departure,” including the great Piano Concerto No. 2, probably his best-loved work, paired with the ...
C.P.E. Bach: Cello Concertos – Guy Fishman, Handel and Haydn Society
Cellist Guy Fishman releases a follow-up to his critically acclaimed album of Vivaldi Concertos on Olde Focus with this recording of the concertos by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Along with his colleagues from the Handel and Haydn Society, Fishman’s performance underscores the angularity, unpredictability, and most of all the unique creativity of this music by Johann Sebastian Bach’s unconventional son.
Blue Violet Duo: American Souvenirs
The Chicago-based Blue Violet Duo of violinist Kate Carter and pianist Louise Chan makes its recording debut with an album of jazz, blues, and dance-influenced classical works from the mid-to-late 20th century by four American composers – Norman Dello Joio, William Bolcom, John Adams, and Paul Schoenfield. The artists say, “We love performing lesser-known works that are fun and playful, ...
Music of Ravel, Debussy & Bizet – Prague Philharmonia, Emmanuel Villaume
A French orchestral program par excellence, marking 100 years since the death of Claude Debussy. The relative absence of the Fantaisie for piano and orchestra from concert halls today is something of a mystery. All the color and inventiveness that characterize Debussy’s music can be heard here. Bizet’s Symphony in C reveals the directness and passion that would later be ...
American Classics: Barber & Copland – Sean Kennard
For his debut album on Delos, the brilliant emerging virtuoso Sean Kennard has chosen a captivating program featuring solo piano music by two of America’s most iconic composers: Samuel Barber and Aaron Copland. While neither composer’s body of work includes a great many pieces for solo piano, each has left a legacy of superb compositions to memorable effect. Of the ...
Brahms: Waltzes & Hungarian Dances – Hélène Mercier & Cyprien Katsaris
Following their musical collaboration on a recording of Brahms and Schumann, pianists Hélène Mercier and Cyprien Katsaris decided to take on the complete cycles of Brahms’s 21 Hungarian Dances and 16 Waltzes, Op. 39. Katsaris says, “It was extremely important to both of us that the gypsy spirit was to the fore in the Hungarian Dances, likewise Viennese elegance in ...
Dana Zemtsov: Essentia
Winner of numerous competitions and developing an outstanding career, Dana Zemtsov is one of the most promising viola soloists of her generation. Highlights in the past seasons include a performance of the Bartók Viola Concerto in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, playing at the Utrecht Chamber Music Festival, and a recital in New York’s Carnegie Hall. In 2012, she signed an exclusive record ...
Chopin: Ballades and Nocturnes – Leif Ove Andsnes
Leif Ove Andsnes, “a pianist of magisterial elegance, power and insight” (New York Times), intersperses Chopin’s four Ballades – works immense in the range and power of their expression – with three of his nocturnes. The new album represents the Norwegian pianist’s first recording of Chopin’s music in more than a decade. “There were quite a few years where I ...
Quartet San Francisco: A QSF Journey
Founded in 2001 by violinist and composer Jeremy Cohen, Quartet San Francisco expresses itself in its agility and standout virtuosic playing. These crossover specialists excel in multiple styles, from jazz to tango, pop to funk, blues to bluegrass, gypsy swing to big band and beyond. On this new release, they take a journey into chamber music of the 21st century. ...
Tengyue Zhang: Guitar Recital
Tengyue Zhang won the 2017 Guitar Foundation of America’s International Concert Artist Competition, one of the world’s most prestigious events. His debut recital illustrates the moods, colors and techniques of the concert classical guitar from Baroque transcriptions to masters of the 20th century such as Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Tansman, and Brouwer. Despite being from very different backgrounds and time periods, several of ...
Rimsky & Co. Originals – Marine Band of the Royal Netherlands Navy
As early as the 17th century, music has played an important role in the Dutch Navy. Transforming from ships’ bands and ensembles into a land-based full-sized orchestra, the Marine Band became a musical ambassador for the Royal Netherlands Navy. From military marching formation, intimate accompanying ensemble, extended big band and classic symphonic wind band to a stunning cover band, no music ...
Piano Music of Debussy – Nikolai Lugansky
A century after his death on March 25, 1918, many Harmonia Mundi artists are eager to pay tribute to Claude Debussy, the magician of melody and timbre, the great ‘colorist’ and father of modern music. Pianist Nikolai Lugansky wanted to present a finely nuanced portrait of the composer who was fond of travel. Whether it ranges over time (Hommage à ...
Vaughan Williams: A Sea Symphony
The nine symphonies of Ralph Vaughan Williams were composed over more than half a century. He began sketching ideas for A Sea Symphony in 1903, two years after the death of Queen Victoria, and completed the ninth in 1958, two years before John F. Kennedy was elected 35th President of the United States. During this long period, Vaughan Williams became one of ...
James Horner: The Classics
Multi-Academy Award winner James Horner was one of the most acclaimed composers in Hollywood history. He wrote scores and songs for iconic movies including Titanic, Avatar, Braveheart, Cocoon and The Mask of Zorro. This album is a unique tribute to one of the titans of film music. A stellar array of musicians such as 2Cellos, Lindsey Stirling, Tina Guo, and ...
Liszt: New Discoveries, Volume 4 – Leslie Howard
A citizen both of Britain and Australia, Leslie Howard has accomplished a feat unequaled by any solo artist in recording history — a 99-CD survey for Hyperion of the complete piano music of Liszt, including all 17 works for piano and orchestra. Accomplished within 14 years, it encompasses more than 300 world premieres, with many works prepared from Liszt’s unpublished ...
Viktoria Mullova: Music of Arvo Pärt
The works on Viktoria Mullova’s new album devoted to Arvo Pärt’s music for violin stem from the composer’s study of medieval church music. They are products of what Pärt himself describes as a ‘tintinnabuli’ style, developed by the composer in the 1970s through studying medieval church music. He says, “I have discovered that it is enough when a single note ...
