Host Lisa Flynn curates the best new classical recordings to share with you each day of the week at 10:00 am. There’s always wonderful music discover on New Releases, from instrumental to vocal music, new recordings of old favorites, or albums featuring cutting-edge contemporary works. Discover more about each of Lisa’s daily selections below. Share how you feel about the new release of the day by commenting.
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David Aaron Carpenter: Motherland
For his second Warner Classics album, David Aaron Carpenter – “a star violist” in the words of the Los Angeles Times – brings together concertos by Dvořák, Bartók, Walton and a dance cycle by contemporary composer Alexey Shor. Carpenter identifies a connecting theme of “a longing for the homeland … a reverence for native musical folk tunes and language.” He ...
Anderson & Roe Piano Duo: Mother, A Musical Tribute
Described as “the most dynamic duo of this generation” (San Francisco Classical Voice), “rock stars of the classical music world” (Miami Herald), “exhilarating” (Gramophone), and “the very model of complete 21st century musicians” (The Washington Post), Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe are revolutionizing the piano duo experience for the 21st century. Their album “Mother” features musical compositions that pay tribute to ...
Frederic Hand: Samatureya
Longtime Metropolitan Opera guitarist and lutenist, versatile and award-winning composer, and mentor and teacher to generations of guitarists, Frederic Hand has enjoyed an impressive and impactful career on many levels. His latest release, “Samatureya,” features his signature brand of compositions and his fluid, expressive playing. His compositions defy easy categorization – they draw from various styles including early music, Irish ...
Bach: Mass in B minor – Les Arts Florissants
One of the supreme monuments of western sacred music, Bach’s Mass in B minor has been constantly re-examined by successive generations of performers. The questions it raises for musicologists and conductors are many and varied. Each of them strives to give his or her own reading with the necessary humility. It was in this frame of mind that William Christie ...
Marc-André Hamelin: Late Works of Schubert
Pianist Marc-André Hamelin is ranked among the finest pianists in the world for his unrivaled blend of musicianship and virtuosity. He has been acclaimed not only for his intrepid exploration of rarities from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, but also for his probing insights into the standard repertoire. On this recital featuring Schubert’s sublime last piano sonata and second ...
Mahler: Symphony No. 6 – Minnesota Orchestra, Osmo Vänskä
Albert Camus once wrote, “when I describe what the catastrophe of modern man looks like, music comes into my mind – the music of Gustav Mahler.” If asked to specify a particular work, it is quite possible that Camus would have proposed his Symphony No. 6. Conductor Osmo Vänskä has a reputation for engaging with even the most iconic scores at ...
Nikolai Lugansky: Rachmaninoff 24 Preludes
Rachmaninoff took the genre of the prelude to its highest degree of perfection with his boundless musical invention and fearsome technical demands. In his first recording for Harmonia Mundi, Russian pianist Nikolai Lugansky brilliantly meets the challenge, offering a program of the finest gems in his repertory of choice. BBC Music Magazine said, “Lugansky captures the depth of emotion and ...
Grigory Krotenko: Travels with Goliath
Josef Kämpfer (1735–?1810) was a cavalry officer in the Hungarian army and a self-taught double bass virtuoso and double bass designer. He led a peripatetic life moving through musical circles at the highest levels in Austria, Germany, Paris, London and St. Petersburg. Kämpfer met Leopold Mozart, the Haydn brothers, Vaňhal, and many of the most famous musicians of the day. Russian ...
Liza Ferschtman: Music of Korngold & Bernstein
Dutch violinist Liza Ferschtman is known for her passionate performances, interesting programs and communicative qualities on stage. She is equally at home on the concert stage with concertos, chamber music, recitals, and solo works. In 2006, she received the highest accolade awarded to a musician in the Netherlands, the Dutch Music Prize. On this album, Ferschtman pairs Korngold’s late-Romantic Violin ...
Trio Vitruvi: Schubert
Schubert’s great E-flat major piano trio had its first performance in 1827 in Vienna. Trio Vitruvi returns to Schubert’s gem, giving us the original (longer) version of the score in an impassioned reading, along with the beautiful “Notturno.” Violinist Niklas Walentin, pianist Alexander McKenzie, and cellist Jacob la Cour have performed critically acclaimed concerts around the world. They won both ...
Rachmaninoff: Symphonies – London Symphony Orchestra, Valery Gergiev
Rachmaninoff’s three symphonies reflect different stages of his life and creative development, with the later Symphonic Dances proving to be his last work. United by their unashamed romanticism, they also share his signature “tag” – the Dies irae plainchant, a grim reminder of mortality that pervades Rachmaninoff’s music. They are accompanied here by two works of his fellow countryman, Mily ...
Orion Weiss: Presentiment
Presentiment by Orion Weiss is an album of large-scale works by Granados, Janáček and Scriabin directly and indirectly addressing a world about to be catapulted into the dread of global war, despair and triumph. “The new century,” Weiss says, “had already flooded the romantic aesthetic of the old with anxiety, nostalgia, and confusion. These ominous musical stories go even further, with some ...
Mendelssohn: Complete Music for Cello & Piano
Paul Mendelssohn, Felix’s younger brother, was a banker by profession but an accomplished amateur cellist, and it is to him that we owe Felix Mendelssohn’s three major compositions for cello and piano. This new recording presents Mendelssohn’s complete output for cello and piano, and includes the three large scale works, as well as two short pieces, performed by cellist Marcy ...
Cello Music of Myaskovsky, Prokofiev & Taneyev
Myaskovsky’s two Cello Sonatas are woefully neglected works and deserve far wider circulation – romantic and passionate, they make a worthy alternative to Rachmaninoff’s famous sonata. Coming from the early and late years of the composer’s life, the second sonata was written for Rostropovich, who championed it and ensured all his pupils studied and learned it. Prokofiev’s Ballade is an ...
Berlioz: Harold in Italy
“Wine, blood, joy and rage mingle in mutual intoxication and make music together” was Berlioz’s description of the finale of “Harold in Italy.” He wrote the piece on commission from the virtuoso Niccolò Paganini. Upon seeing Berlioz’s first movement, however, Paganini found the piece to be insufficiently flashy for his own performance, and he never played it, though he confessed to admiring ...
Beethoven: Seiji Ozawa & Martha Argerich
Pianist Martha Argerich and conductor Seiji Ozawa have had long, distinguished careers and have performed together on the concert stage, but this is their first recording collaboration. Joined by the Mito Chamber Orchestra, the album holds Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and his Symphony No. 1. The recordings were made in concert in Japan. Gramophone magazine said, “Seiji Ozawa is ...
Martha Argerich & Sergei Babayan: Prokofiev for Two
Pianists Martha Argerich and Sergei Babayan have recorded selections from Prokofiev’s music for stage and screen in magnificent two-piano transcriptions by Babayan. “Prokofiev for Two” captures for posterity the sense of mutual inspiration felt by these kindred spirits, palpable in their live performances together. The album features Babayan’s twelve-movement transcription of music from the ballet Romeo and Juliet and arrangements of Prokofiev’s incidental music for Hamlet ...
The Cardinall’s Musick: Votive Antiphons of Thomas Tallis
Andrew Carwood and The Cardinall’s Musick continue their series of recordings of choral music by Thomas Tallis. This latest release features his votive antiphons – devotional texts in honor of the Virgin, Christ, or the Saints used as additions to the daily office or for a special occasion. These settings are among the highlights of the composer’s evolving style which responded ...
Liquid Melancholy: Clarinet Music of James Stephenson
Liquid Melancholy, featuring virtuoso clarinetist John Bruce Yeh of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, exudes a kaleidoscope of colors and moods while showering listeners with attractive melodies in a program of music by James M. Stephenson, one of America’s most popular and prolific present-day composers. The Boston Herald has praised Stephenson’s “straightforward, unabashedly beautiful sounds.” The Minnesota Star Tribune calls him “a composer of real ...
The Romantic Piano Concerto: Sir William Sterndale Bennett
Sir William Sterndale Bennett was an English composer, pianist, conductor and music educator. He had a significant influence on English music in the 19th century, not solely as a composer but also as a teacher and as an important figure in London concert life. In recent years, appreciation of Bennett’s compositions has been rekindled and a number of his works have ...
