Classical Music Discoveries

Musician-led ensemble Palaver Strings releases its new album of music by diverse female composers, Ready or Not. Works on the album include Grażyna Bacewicz’s Concerto for String Orchestra; Non può il mio cuore by Venetian singer, lutenist, and composer Maddalena Casulana; composer Barbara Strozzi’s madrigal Lagrime mie featuring a performance by mezzo-soprano Sophie Michaux;

Cellist Ani Aznavoorian and pianist Marta Aznavoorian, each a renowned soloist and chamber musician in her own right, together celebrate the sounds of their ancestral homeland on Gems from Armenia. The album marks the Chicago-raised sisters’ recording debut as the Aznavoorian Duo. Purchase the music (without talk) at:Gems from Armenia (classicalsavings.com)Your purchase help

William Tell is a French-language opera in four acts by Italian composer Gioachino Rossini to a libretto by Victor-Joseph Étienne de Jouy and L. F. Bis, based on Friedrich Schiller's play Wilhelm Tell, which, in turn, drew on the William Tell legend. The opera was Rossini's last, although he lived for nearly 40 more years. Fabio Luisi said that Rossini planned for Guillaume Tell t

The project began as a nine-month exploration of the Sibelius symphonies to mark Mäkelä’s inaugural season with the Oslo Philharmonic as Chief Conductor but, with Covid cancellations, turned into a completely immersive recording project. With the orchestral season disrupted, Mäkelä and the orchestra devoted much of the Spring of 2021 to playing nothing but the music of Sibeli

Deutsche Grammophon released VOYAGER: ESSENTIAL MAX RICHTER, the first-ever collection of the acclaimed British composer’s work. The 33-track collection will be available as a double CD and e-album and contains work from across his vast catalog, including studio albums such as 2004’s acclaimed The Blue Notebooks, Richter; reviewed by Pitchfork as one of the most affecting and u

Aureliano in Palmira is an operatic dramma serio in two acts written by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto in which the librettist was credited only by the initials "G. F. R." The libretto has generally been attributed to Felice Romani, but sometimes to the otherwise unknown Gian Francesco Romanelli.  It has been suggested that the latter name may have resulted from a co

. Arc I is the inaugural album of an ambitious three-part series and features important works for solo piano from the frantic years of 1911-1913 – the precipice before World War I. The three musical stories on Arc I  – Granados’ Goyescas, Janáček’s In the Mists, and Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No. 9 ”Black Mass” – each struggle with the same impossible awareness

Born in 1925 in Sacramento, California, to Polish immigrants, Slenczynska gave her concert debut at the age of four (just as the world entered the Great Depression), performed on television aged five, and at six made her European concert debut in Berlin. 92 years later, the extraordinary pianist still performs to audiences around the world.‘MY LIFE IN MUSIC’ TRACKLIST:Rachmanin

Ziporyn who released his landmark Cantaloupe Music recording; ‘This Is Not a Clarinet’ in 2001, does the impossible on Pop Channel, taking us through some of the best iconic pop songs during the last 5 decades, imagined through a compendium of clarinets and all arranged, layered, and performed by Ziporyn. Every sound on this album – the lead vocals, guitar solos, backing horn

Rossini wrote L'italiana in Algeri when he was 21. Rossini stated that he composed the opera in 18 days, though other sources claim that it took him 27 days. Rossini entrusted the composition of the recitatives as well as the aria "Le femmine d'Italia" to an unknown collaborator.  The opera is notable for Rossini's mixing of opera seria style with opera buffa. The overture is