Thomas Adès: Orchestral Suites
London Philharmonic Orchestra; Thomas Adès, conductor (London Philharmonic Orchestra)
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music Classical or YouTube Music
Composers don’t always make the best conductors, but happily that does not apply to Thomas Adès. In a program of pieces that adapt his stage works into visceral orchestral suites, he conjures alchemical splendor with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, from the redoubtable sleaze of “Powder Her Face” to the earthy magic of “The Tempest.”
— Oussama Zahr
Bach: Mass in B minor
Pygmalion; Raphaël Pichon, conductor (Harmonia Mundi)
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music Classical or YouTube Music
I praised this stunning recording to the heavens when it was released, but every time that I have listened to it since — and there have been many — my admiration has deepened. Raphaël Pichon makes the ancient sound urgently, utterly contemporary: This is the kind of thing that we listen to classical music for.
— David Allen
Donnacha Dennehy: ‘Land of Winter’
Alarm Will Sound (Nonesuch)
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music Classical or YouTube Music
At once vigorously abstract and vividly atmospheric, this musical almanac by Ireland’s most important living composer evokes the changing seasons with glinting high harmonics, restless bass wanderings and shifting soundscapes. Austere on the surface, the music shimmers with subtle energy — like a gray sky that reveals unexpected gradations of color.
— Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim
Field: Complete Nocturnes
Alice Sara Ott, piano (Deutsche Grammophon)
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music Classical or YouTube Music
Before Chopin’s Nocturnes came John Field’s, and the pianist Alice Sara Ott treats them with such tender care and such appreciative spirit that it is easy to forget any comparison with their darker, more profound successors. Joyfully ornamented and played with exquisite control, this is a gorgeous, buoyant release.
— David Allen
Michael Finnissy: Piano Works
Ian Pace, piano (Métier)
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music Classical or YouTube Music
This composer of the New Complexity movement admires avant-jazz. He also digs 19th-century classics. So, when adapting Verdi, he does it via the spirit of Cecil Taylor. Near the midpoint of Finnissy’s “La Traviata” potpourri, you’ll find dense fireworks as well as tenderness deriving from a motif Verdi once assigned to Violetta.
— Seth Colter Walls
Ginastera: String Quartets
Miró Quartet; Kiera Duffy, soprano (Pentatone)
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music Classical or YouTube Music
The superb Miró Quartet shows how far-reaching Alberto Ginastera’s musical development was. Inventive as the first two quartets are, they pale next to the third, a work of stunning imagination and hallucinatory presence. The Miró’s fierce performance, along with Kiera Duffy’s ethereal singing, make a conclusive case for this unfairly neglected composer.
— David Weininger
‘Golden Age’
Erin Morley, soprano; Lawrence Brownlee, tenor; Munich Radio Orchestra; Ivan Repusic, conductor (Pentatone)
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music Classical or YouTube Music
Bel canto music gets a bad rap among some opera fans who sniff at its extravagantly decorated melodies and simple orchestrations. Lawrence Brownlee and Erin Morley defy the haters with a straight-up celebration of the genre’s lyric art: His hearty, rapid-fire indefatigability and her soignée style prove the expressive possibilities of good, old-fashioned polished singing.
— Oussama Zahr
‘The Golden Renaissance: Palestrina’
Stile Antico (Decca)
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music Classical or YouTube Music
The peerless vocal ensemble Stile Antico marks the quincentenary of Palestrina’s birth with a program centered around his quietly revolutionary “Missa Papae Marcelli,” interwoven with shorter works. The story about this Mass saving the fate of church music may be apocryphal, but hearing these flawless and affecting performances, you’re almost compelled to believe it.
— David Weininger
Sofia Gubaidulina: ‘Figures of Time’
Alice di Piazza, piano; NDR Bigband; Basel Sinfonietta; Titus Engel, conductor (Naxos)
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music Classical or YouTube Music
Sofia Gubaidulina’s musical voice is unmistakable not because it adheres to a formula, but because it insists on depth, the kind of existential intensity that wants beauty and danger. In “Revue Music,” this album’s highlight, themes emerge through stark contrasts, surprising juxtapositions and a dramaturgy that feels organic rather than theatrical.
— Arya Roshanian
‘Hallelujah Junction’
Lukas Geniusas and Anna Geniushene, pianos (Alpha)
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music Classical or YouTube Music
With this two-piano recording, two outstanding concert artists offer a bracing portrait of America that includes a vivid arrangement of Stravinsky’s “Dumbarton Oaks” Concerto, a thunderous reading of Frederic Rzewski’s “Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues” and a performance of John Adams’s “Hallelujah Junction” that’s gleaming with big-sky optimism and verve.
— Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim
Tania León: ‘Horizons’ and more
London Philharmonic Orchestra; various conductors (London Philharmonic Orchestra)
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music Classical or YouTube Music
Here’s the first recording of “Stride,” a patient-then-kinetic work that earned Tania León the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for music. (She dedicated the piece to the suffragist Susan B. Anthony.) After establishing some meditative opening airs, León adds growling, Louis Armstrong-style brasses — all before plotting Stravinsky-informed swagger for the full orchestra.
— Seth Colter Walls
‘Lines of Life: Schubert & Kurtag’
Benjamin Appl, baritone; various pianists (Alpha)
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music Classical or YouTube Music
A moving collection of vocal works, including world premiere recordings of music by the eminent Hungarian composer Gyorgy Kurtag, this album is as much a document of Kurtag and the baritone Benjamin Appl’s friendship as it is of some artistic endeavor. Touchingly, Kurtag even joins at the piano for Brahms’s “Sonntag.”
— Joshua Barone
Meredith Monk: ‘Cellular Songs’
Various vocalists (ECM New Series)
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music Classical or YouTube Music
Here, the composer and singer Meredith Monk plies some of the folk-like charm and wordless-yet-dramatic acumen of her vintage classics, like “Dolmen Music.” Though her style remains recognizable, the execution is always distinct. This edition of Monk’s vocal ensemble navigates her twists of rhythmic pattern and vocal timbre with comfortable mastery.
— Seth Colter Walls
Paganini: 24 Caprices and more
Maria Dueñas, violin (Deutsche Grammophon)
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music Classical or YouTube Music
Maria Dueñas’s treatment of Paganini is wondrous for its musicality. Even more of a pleasure, though, is this album’s second half highlighting other composers’ caprices, including Gabriela Ortiz’s recent “De Cuerda y Madera,” recorded with the pianist Alexander Malofeev. A rhapsodic journey, it grooves, seduces and sings. Above all, it inspires awe.
— Joshua Barone
‘Refound’
Hugh Cutting, countertenor; Audrey Hyland, piano (Outhere)
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music Classical or YouTube Music
Like a fugitive memory, “Refound” traces melodies that seem both familiar and unplaceable. Whether the literary consciousness of Amy Beach or the jarring humor of Tom Lehrer, each song that Hugh Cutting sings — his voice sumptuous, with plummy tones throughout — feels overheard rather than performed, intimate yet precise, resisting conclusion and commanding attention.
— Arya Roshanian
Steve Reich: Collected Works
Various artists (Nonesuch)
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music Classical or YouTube Music
Behold the grand arc of an American master’s composing career, from the early phase works of the 1960s to some of his newest works. This set is the story of how Steve Reich altered not just the course of Western music, but how we listen to and think about music in the first place.
— David Weininger
Shostakovich: The Piano Concertos; Solo Works
Yuja Wang, piano; Boston Symphony Orchestra; Andris Nelsons, conductor (Deutsche Grammophon)
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music Classical or YouTube Music
Yuja Wang’s ferocious technique and no-fuss class at the keyboard perfectly suit her to Shostakovich’s irony-laced piano concertos. She switches gears effortlessly between slyly dazzling puckishness and unsentimental legato, tucking the notes into place with a lot of finesse and a crooked little grin.
— Oussama Zahr
Shostakovich: String Quartets Nos. 2, 7 & 10
Jerusalem Quartet (Bis)
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music Classical or YouTube Music
In concert, this stellar ensemble has long made a specialty of Shostakovich’s brilliantly varied quartets. Here, finally, is a disc that captures the deep affinity these musicians have for this music, which balances fierce emotionality and Neo-Classical poise. The violinist Alexander Pavlovsky brings gorgeous, wrenching heat to his rhapsodic solos.
— Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim
‘Songs of Passion’
Jupiter; Lea Desandre, mezzo-soprano; Thomas Dunford, lute (Erato)
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music Classical or YouTube Music
“Songs of Passion” is like a series of rooms we keep returning to. Dowland’s melancholy and Purcell’s volatility are smoothed into elegance, a place where passion becomes posture. Desandre sings exquisitely, and Dunford plays immaculately, but it’s the raw ache infused in these intelligently curated interpretations that deeply moves.
— Arya Roshanian
Stravinsky: ‘Le Sacre du Printemps’ & Ravel: ‘Ma Mère l’Oye’
Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy, pianos (Harmonia Mundi)
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music Classical or YouTube Music
This program of contrasts from the pianists Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy, who are emerging as one of the great four-hands partnerships of our time, pairs the athletic ferocity of “The Rite of Spring” with the delicate, disarming beauty of the suite “Ma Mère l’Oye”: absolute terror followed by gentle consolation.
— Joshua Barone
‘Tchaikovsky’
Daniil Trifonov, piano (Deutsche Grammophon)
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music Classical or YouTube Music
What an illuminating artist the pianist Daniil Trifonov has become. This collection of typically ignored Tchaikovsky includes a student work, an album for children and a bold set of variations, but its highlight is a suite from “The Sleeping Beauty,” in which playing of delicacy and delight builds into fervent emotional force.
— David Allen
Verdi: ‘Simon Boccanegra’ (1857 Version)
The Hallé; various soloists; Mark Elder, conductor (Opera Rara)
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music Classical or YouTube Music
Verdi’s initial version of this opera has had its defenders. Julian Budden called its first-act finale, cut from the popular 1881 revision, “startlingly original.” Michael Finnissy likely agreed when adapting that 1857 “Simon” climax for his “Verdi Transcriptions.” Now you can grab this release’s libretto and judge for yourself. My verdict: It’s electric.
— Seth Colter Walls
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