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Celebrated for his visionary interpretations of J.S. Bach, Víkingur Ólafsson, one of the greatest pianists and musical minds of today, now embraces Bach’s monumental Goldberg Variations. Ólafsson devotes his entire next season to touring the work globally across six continents,...
Note:This is EXPERIMENTAL music. If this is not your "cup of tea", just skip it. No need to complain about it.Thank you.Prolific jazz trumpeter and composer Nate Wooley today released a four-disc box set, Four Experiments– a boundary-defying “anti-instruction-manual” to...
One of the leading sopranos of her generation, Ekaterina Siurina enjoys an international career that takes her to the top opera houses in Europe and America. She made her professional debut as Gilda in Rigoletto, singing opposite the world-renowned baritone...
When the American composer Jack Stamp was appointed International Composer-in-Association to the Grimethorpe Colliery Band in 2019, he conceived a recording project focused on works written explicitly for the GCB, including compositions by himself and Liz Lane, the other GCB...
The figure of George Frideric Handel cast a long shadow over musical London in the first half of the eighteenth, condemning many of his contemporaries – fine composers themselves – to long years of obscurity. In Handel’s Shadow throws light...
SOMM RECORDINGS announces a tribute, marking the centenary of his birth, to the English baritone John Carol Case with the first release of his performance of Schubert’s Winterreise, accompanied by Raymond Calcraft.Help support our show by purchasing this album at:Downloads...
SOMM Recordings announces Cascade, the exhilarating new recital by pianist Cordelia Williams featuring music by Beethoven, Schumann, and Prokofiev.TracksLudwig van BeethovenBagatelle in C Major, WoO 56 (2:13)Sergei ProkofievVisions fugitives, Op. 22 (23:25)Lentamente (1:20)Andante (1:27)Allegretto (0:58)Animato (0:59)Molto giocoso (0:26)Con eleganza (0:28)Pittoresco...
Composer and librettist John Aylward today releases the soundtrack for his one-act chamber opera Oblivion on New Focus Recordings, with a feature-length film through Graham Swon’s Ravenserodd Productions scheduled to follow in fall 2023. With a portfolio of work called...
Alpha Classics today releases esteemed Brazilian conductor Simone Menezes’ new album, Amazônia, the capstone to a project celebrating the music of Philip Glass and the great Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. Pairing musical selections with striking images by Brazilian social documentary...
Eclipse is a piece that has grown and taken on a life of its own. Revisited after the last solar eclipse in the US, this piece contains classical fingerstyle right-hand technique but with influences of the Blues, Rock, and Flamenco....
Winner of 21 national awards, including the “X Eldorado Music Prize” in 1999, Karin dedicated herself to a deep and meticulous recording of Chiquinha's waltz repertoire, initially inspired and struck by one of her pieces, Harmonias do Coração. The breadth...
Conspirare’s founder and leader, Craig Hella Johnson, commissioned many of the pieces on House of Belonging and composed the opening track himself. The album’s texts convey and explore themes about spirituality, philosophy, the natural world, and the human need for...
Australian composer Timothy Collins has crafted a setting of the poem 'Sea Song' by New Zealand poet Katherine Mansfield. The single is released to coincide with the centenary of Mansfield’s death which is being notably marked in her native New...
Scott Robert Shaw's debut "The English Tenor" takes us on a beautifully performed journey through a who's who of great English composers and their vocal works. The names Ivor Gurney, Benjamin Britten, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gerald Finzi and Roger Quilter...
Some Favored Nook TracklistEric Nathan – Some Favored Nook (2019)Part I 1. To tell me what is true? [4:49] 2. The nearest dream recedes unrealized [2:45] 3. Could you tell me how to grow? [3:01] 4. They shut me up...
In celebration of Gwyn Pritchard’s 75th birthday, Métier releases Features and Formations: a fascinating insight into Pritchard’s creative process. This is contemporary, seemingly mercurial work, rich in structure. Starting from pre-compositional planning and techniques, the composer subtly evolves rhythm and...
A gratifyingly inventive listening experience, Ispilu marks the first recording of Basque accordionist Lore Amenabar Larrañaga's self-designed quarter-tone accordion, custom-built by Bugari Armando.Claudia Molitor (b. 1974) Fleeting Puddles (2022)David Gorton (b. 1978) Barafostus’ Dreame (2020)Donald Bousted (1957-2021) My Time is...
Exploring the myriad ways that classical music is being created today, Perspectives features four new works written for – and with – Third Coast Percussion by Danny Elfman, Philip Glass, Jlin, and Flutronix. Third Coast Percussion tours the program this...
The raw intensity of emotions in works like Aretusa, Satya I, and Il faudrait d’abord désespérer, where each note unfolds with hypnotic allure, envelops the listener in a world of transcendental states. Dive into the depths of Camus' "The Stranger"...
A captivating new album from the extraordinary talents of Edward Cowie, a true master of multiple disciplines. This remarkable polymath, renowned as a composer, visual artist, and natural scientist, has gifted us his exhilarating third epic cycle of 'bird portraits'...
Frederick Septimus Kelly, born in Sydney in 1881, was on the way to becoming one of Australia’s most important early composers when he was killed during the Battle of the Somme in 1916. The three works recorded here – for...
Another source of pride and pleasure is that our September releases, between Toccata Classics and Toccata Next, bring our fourth release featuring the Swedish organist and composer Gunnar Idenstam, whose music I find enormously attractive. In 2019 Gunnar was commissioned...
Virko Baley was born in Ukraine in 1938, suffered a tumultuous childhood of displacement during the Second World War, and came to the USA as a refugee, with his family, in 1949, eventually making his home in Las Vegas. He...
Likewise with the Anglo-Scottish composer William Wordsworth (1908–88), great-great-grandnephew of the poet, with whom I occasionally exchanged letters and phone calls in the pre-e-mail late 1970s and early 1980s: I never could have predicted that his reputation might be restored...
While Rachel Barton Pine is widely known for her virtuosic and expressive performances of works from the Western classical music canon, she is also a heavy metal enthusiast and performer of the genre. Pine discovered her love for heavy metal...
Quiet Rhythms is a piano cycle at once sprawling in scope and introspective in practice. Quiet Rhythms has the warmth and immediacy of a late-night improvisation—an artist following the melodies where they lead him. Quiet Rhythms brings together traditions Susman...
For the first time in history, a ‘Concerto for Portuguese Guitar and Orchestra’ has been composed and recorded, with the composer, Pedro Henriques da Silva, performing as soloist. The whole album “Transclassical Concertos” will be released on August 25th 2023...
Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 8 in C minor, WAB 108, is the last symphony the composer completed. It exists in two major versions of 1887 and 1890. It was premiered under conductor Hans Richter in 1892 at the Musikverein, Vienna....
After a Dream is dedicated to French masters of the 19th and 20th centuries. They include César Franck (1822-1890), Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924), Claude Debussy (1862-1918), Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), and Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921).In the interpretation of Meneses and Budu, Fauré's Après...
Miami’s renowned orchestra NU DECO ENSEMBLE release their major label debut Duende, via Sony Music Masterworks, available now – listen here. Known for blending genres and bringing fresh energy to orchestral music, Nu Deco showcases gentle plucking that tiptoes towards...
Philharmonic, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin with Mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca as soloist. The Summer Night Concert was performed this year on June 8th, 2023. It is an annual open-air event, which has been held since 2008. The park of Schönbrunn Palace in...
The Kyiv Patriarchate, established in 1992, was denounced by Moscow and the schism between the two Orthodox churches has become part of the geopolitical confrontation between Russia and Ukraine since 2014. Warlike, incendiary speeches made by Moscow Patriarch Kyrill, some...
Sviatoslav Richter (1915–97), who several times played all three wartime sonatas during the 1945-6 concert seasons, gave his first public recital in Odessa in 1934 and was taught by Heinrich Neuhaus at the Moscow Conservatory. Having played Prokofiev’s Fifth Piano...
Keith Jarrett’s account of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Württemberg Sonatas is a revelation. “I’d heard the sonatas played by harpsichordists, and felt there was a space left for a piano version,” says Jarrett today. This outstanding recording, made in May...
Ernest Bloch's music is unabashedly pictorial and emblematic of late Romantic-era expressionism, with an impressive catalog of works, many of which draw deeply on his Jewish faith. Alto Records returns these benchmark recordings of three of Ernest Bloch's greatest works,...
After dedicating past ECM New Series recordings to the works of contemporary composers Arvo Pärt, Erkki-Sven Tüür, Helena Tulve, and most recently Cyrillus Kreek, the Vox Clamantis choir, under the direction of Jaan-Eik Tulve, turns its attention towards Norwegian composer...
Mieczysław Weinberg (1919–1996) was one of the most prolific composers of the Soviet era. He enjoyed a period of popularity in Russia during the 1960s (he called them his ‘starry years’), but his music has only been widely heard in...
Earlier this year, pianist Alice Sara Ott became the face of the Apple Music Classical app when she starred in its launch video, performing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 15 with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and its Chief...
Parnassus returns to international availability these extraordinary recordings by the Czech Philharmonic and the founding father of the modern Czech orchestral sound, Václav Talich. Drawing on Mark Obert-Thorn’s superb transfers and using Urlicht AudioVisual’s state-of-the-art restoration system to abate shellac...
Parnassus Records presents its latest release in the “Black Swans” series, returning to international availability a pioneering recording of Schubert’s best-known song cycles, Die schöne Mullein and Winterreise, sung by American soprano Inez Matthews accompanied by Lowell Farr. The recordings...
The astonishing young singer and Britain’s Got Talent 2023 finalist, Malakai, has secured a record deal with Universal Music, the record company home of Pavarotti, and today announces his debut album, to be released on Universal Classics and Jazz in...
What is the sound of one hand clapping? We may never know. What does the Eiffel Tower sound like? Hah! There’s an answer to that one.Never one to shy away from a compositional challenge, Joseph Bertolozzi undertook what became a...
Deutsche Grammophon introduces the Sphinx Virtuosi to a global stage via the release of its debut album, Songs for Our Times. Hailed as “topnotch” by The New York Times, this groundbreaking self-conducted American string ensemble comprises 18 exceptional Black and...
Decca Classics is thrilled to announce the new album from Australian-Chinese violinist Christian Li. Having topped the UK Classical Charts with his debut album in 2021 (with which he became the youngest artist ever to record Vivaldi’s Four Seasons) the...
Music to celebrate Utah's Pioneer Day.1 | | Ashokan Farewell | 5:102 | | Bound For Another Harvest Home | 4:053 | | Prairie Spring | 3:424 | | Haymaker's Hoedown | 2:455 | | Solstice Hymn | 2:546 | ...
On 30 March 2023, Deutsche Grammophon announced the signing of an exclusive agreement with Joe Hisaishi, the revered Japanese composer whose work has become synonymous with the magical Studio Ghibli animations of director Hayao Miyazaki. Spanning the full spectrum of...
One World deals with a fractured world (populist governments, plagues, climate change, human trafficking, disrespect for basic human rights, terrorism, war) and heralds a vision of a peaceful and egalitarian planet. The work is best encapsulated by one of the...
Celebrating its 30th anniversary this season, New Century Chamber Orchestra has been resident in San Francisco’s Bay Area since its founding in 1992. One of just a handful of conductorless chamber orchestras in the world, the ensemble makes collaborative musical...
How far is jazz from classical music? Do they really speak radically different languages? Michael Bates’ Acrobat and Lutosławski Quartet are ensembles from different musical environments. They have established an artistic dialogue focusing on the oeuvre of one of Poland’s...
In Brazilian Music for Oboe and Piano, oboist Alexandre Ficarelli and pianist Marcos Aragoni present a refined selection of works by Brazilian composers active in the 20th and 21st centuries. These composers include Camargo Guarnieri, Osvaldo Lacerda, Ernst Mahle, Mario...