Today's new releases include the New Year's Day concert from Vienna (conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin) on Sony, late Brahms from Piotr Anderszewski on Warner, a second volume of Edward MacDowell's orchestral works from the BBC Philharmonic, John Wilson and pianist Xiayin Wang on Chandos, and a box-set of Angela Hewitt's complete Bach recordings on Hyperion.
Brahms: Late Piano Works
Piotr Anderszewski (piano)
One of the Polish pianist's earliest triumphs on record was a 1995 set of Brahms's three violin sonatas with Viktoria Mullova, when Gramophone noted that 'with his carefully balanced chords and restrained use of the pedal he makes the most complex Brahmsian textures sound rich, not thick'. Three decades on, he presents a selection from the composer's Opp. 116-119, which he likens to 'a last will and testament'; Anderszewski will perform this programme at Wigmore Hall on 27th February alongside Schubert's Piano Sonata in C minor D958, which he sees as a direct influence on Brahms's late works.
Please note short playing-time of 48 minutes.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
New Year's Concert 2026
Wiener Philharmoniker, Yannick Nézet-Séguin
The Canadian conductor presided over the New Year's Day concert in Vienna for the first time, having previously conducted the orchestra's Summer Night Concert in 2023. The programme included an arrangement of Florence Price's Rainbow Waltz, Hans Christian Lumbye's Copenhagen Steam Railway Galop, the Overture to Suppé's operetta Die schöne Galathée, and the traditional favourites by the Strauss family.
The Blu-ray and DVD versions will be released on 30th January.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
MacDowell: Orchestral Works Vol. 2
Xiayin Wang (piano), Peter Dixon (cello), BBC Philharmonic, John Wilson
The first half of this programme is devoted to works which grew out of MacDowell's visits to the Lyceum Theatre to see performances of Shakespeare during his honeymoon: the portraits of Hamlet and Ophelia (part of a projected series of six sketches which he never completed) were composed the following year, whilst the Piano Concerto No. 2 (1889) draws on material which he wrote to depict Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing. The album also includes the Romanze which he composed for David Popper, and the Suite in A minor (written shortly after the MacDowells relocated from Germany to Boston).
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Prime Donne
Marina Viotti (mezzo), Orchestre de l'Opéra Royal, Andrés Gabetta
Although there were heavy restrictions on female singers giving public performances in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italy, Venice was relatively liberal in that women were allowed to sing sacred music in concert at selected venues. Viotti's programme features several works which were composed for female voices rather than castrati: Porpora's Salve Regina (written for contralto Elisabetta Mantovani), Giovanni Porta's motet Volate Gentes, and Vivaldi's Canta in prato, ride in monte and Ascende læta. The album also includes his violin concerto 'Per Signora Anna Maria', and two arias from his sole surviving oratorio Juditha triumphans.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Angela Hewitt: The Bach Recordings
Angela Hewitt (piano)
Hailed by The Times as 'one of the record glories of our age', Hewitt's survey of Bach's keyboard music was recorded between 1994 and 2018, and is presented here as a 27-CD original-jackets collection. The accounts of the Six Partitas, English Suites and Two-Part Inventions have all featured as top choices on Radio 3's Building A Library, whilst the Gramophone Guide applauded her 'lightly articulated and elegantly phrased' playing in Book Two of The Well-Tempered Clavier and BBC Music Magazine deemed her interpretation of The Art of Fugue as 'unparalleled' for its 'sheer beauty of sound'.
Available Format: 27 CDs
Weill: The Seven Deadly Sins
Wallis Giunta (mezzo), Jennifer France (soprano), Katarina Andreasson (violin), Benjamin Herzl (violin), Swedish Chamber Orchestra, HK Gruber
Three years on from their much-praised recording of Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2 and excerpts from the opera Der Silbersee, Gruber and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra continue their exploration of Kurt Weill with the satirical 'ballet-chanté' The Seven Deadly Sins (premiered in 1933 with the composer's wife Lotte Lenya in the lead role), the 1925 cantata The New Orpheus and the Concerto for Violin & Wind Orchestra, which Weill composed for Joseph Szigeti.
Available Format: SACD
Symbiosis: Tribute to Bill Evans
Thomas Clausen Trio, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Jean Thorel
This celebration of Evans opens with jazz trumpeter and composer Palle Mikkelborg's Bill Evans Suite from 1969, which was commissioned by Danish Radio and includes themes from 'Waltz for Debby', 'Time Remembered', 'My Bells' and 'Walkin’ Up'. German composer-arranger Claus Ogerman's Symbiosis was written for a 1974 album on the MPS label; the full score was not preserved, but has been reconstructed by Singaporean composer Ding Jian Han in collaboration with the orchestra's Director of Artistic Planning Hans Sørensen. The piece received its first live performance in January 2023, which is captured on this recording.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Vivaldi: Masques
Paul-Antoine Bénos-Djian (countertenor), Café Zimmermann, Pablo Valetti
This programme from the French Baroque ensemble and Bénos-Djian comprises the Sinfonia from Bajazet, the Violin Concerto in D minor RV241, the Concerto for Two Horns in F major RV538, the Flute Concerto in F major RV434, the sacred aria 'Longe mala, umbrae, terrores', and arias from Orlando Furioso, La verità in cimento and Motezuma. The group's 2013 recording of L'estro armonico was described as 'pungent, shapely, and to-the-point' (BBC Music Magazine) and 'good company...easy to live with' (Gramophone).
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res+ FLAC/ALAC/WAV, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Constellations
Ensemble Ouranos
Founded at the Paris Conservatory in 2014, the French wind quintet makes its debut on Alpha Classics with a programme centring on two works which pay homage to friends lost during World Wars I and II respectively: Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin and Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8 (both (given here in new transcriptions by David Walter). The recital also includes Samuel Barber's Summer Music and two shorter works by Ravel and Shostakovich: the Pavane pour une infante défunte and the Elégie from Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
With All My Breath and All My Blood
Giorgi Gigashvili (piano), featuring Lisa Batiashvili (violin)
For his second album on Alpha, the Georgian pianist presents Prokofiev's 'War Sonatas' (Nos. 6-8), composed between 1939 and 1944: Gigashvili declares that 'this music became the place where I poured my rage' regarding the current political crisis in his homeland. His compatriot Lisa Batiashvili joins him for the 'Dance of the Knights' from Romeo and Juliet and a new work written for them by Josef Bardanashvili (b.1948): To Giya, a tribute to the late Giya Kancheli. Gigashvili's debut recording of Beethoven's Eroica Variations plus works by Scriabin, Messiaen, Scarlatti and Brahms was nominated for an International Classical Music Award.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
A Thousand Charms
Grace Davidson (soprano), Julian Perkins (harpischord)
Taking its title from a song by John Blow (whose possessor of those 'thousand charms' is named 'Sabina' rather than Purcell's 'Celia'), this recital spans two centuries of English music, taking in excerpts from Handel's Semele and Purcell's The Indian Queen, keyboard works by Arne and Purcell, and songs by Blow, Eccles, Campion, and Pelham Humfrey. Primarily a Baroque specialist, Davidson is also closely associated with the music of Eric Whitacre, who enthuses that she possesses 'one of the most beautiful and pure soprano voices on earth'.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Igor Stravinsky: Late Works
Cappella Amsterdam, Noord Nederlands Orkest, Daniel Reuss
The Igor Stravinsky Foundation writes: 'This recording finally sheds light on a still too little known aspect of Stravinsky’s oeuvre: that of his late creative years, marked by a serial writing of profound inwardness.' The programme includes In Memoriam Dylan Thomas (1954), Threni (1958), Introitus (1965) and the Requiem Canticles (1966), with mezzo Marianne Beate Kielland joining for the 1968 arrangements of two sacred songs by Hugo Wolf: 'Herr, was trägt der Boden hier' and 'Wunden trägst du mein Geliebter'. Reuss's 2006 recording of Les noces, the Messe and Cantate was a Building A Library Choice for its 'choral and instrumental virtuosity'.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Light out of Darkness: Choral Music by Elgar
Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, William Vann
Released to mark the 75th birthday of The Elgar Society, this survey of the composer's lesser known choral works features world premiere recordings of five pieces: the 1878 hymn 'Praise ye the Lord', two settings of Thomas Aquinas’s 'O Salutaris Hostia' (from c.1877 and 1882), the a cappella Stabat Mater from 1886, and a setting of Psalm 51. Also included are two choruses from The Light of Life, 'The Spirit of the Lord' from The Apostles, and secular songs such as 'O Wild West Wind' and 'Go, Song of Mine'.
Available Formats: CD, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
