Today sees the release of new albums from Benjamin Grosvenor, Quatuor Ébène, Kammerorchester Basel and René Jacobs, Le Concert Spirituel and Hervé Niquet, and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and Rumon Gamba. Explore them all below, read reviews and listen on Apple Music.

Benjamin Grosvenor's Liszt album was shortlisted for a Gramophone Award in 2021, with Jed Distler opening his review: 'An ideal Liszt Sonata performance requires transcendental virtuosity, prodigious colouristic resources, a sense of drama and narrative flow and a gift for fusing both architecture and passion. Benjamin Grosvenor’s interpretation embodies these qualities and then some.' 

Grosvenor's new album, 'Schumann & Brahms', includes Robert Schumann's Kreisleriana, Clara Schumann's Variations sur un thème de Robert Schumann, Op 20, and Brahms's Three Intermezzi, Op 117. You can read the Gramophone review of this album in our Reviews Database.

Quatuor Ébène's only previous Mozart recording was 'Dissonances', and album which included String Quartets Nos 15 and 19, plus the Divertimento K138, an Editor's Choice back in November 2011. In his review Nalen Anthoni wrote, 'These musicians bend and straighten, relax and tighten with micro-dynamic changes. All are intuitively sensed and go beyond literal obedience to the written markings.'

Today sees the release of String Quintets K515 & K516 with the additional viola of Antoine Tamestit, who also joined the quartet for their 2022 Gramophone Award-winning album ''Round Midnight'. The new album is reviewed in the April issue – out now – and in the Reviews Database.

René Jacobs has recorded a number of Haydn's works with the Freiburger Barockorchester for Harmonia Mundi, including The Creation and Symphonies Nos 91 and 92, and their recording of The Seasons won Gramophone's Choral Award in 2005. Here Jacobs leads the Kammerorchester Basel for Haydn's Stabat Mater. The Kammerorchester Basel have been heavily involved with the highly-regarded, award-winning Haydn 2032 project, sharing recording duties with Il Giardino Armonico. 

Hervé Niquet and Véronique Gens have made some remarkable recordings together in recent years – Halévy's La Reine de Chypre (a Gramophone Award-winner in 2019), Massenet's Songs with Orchestra (an Editor's Choice recording last year), 'Visions' (shortlisted for a Gramophone Award in 2018) – so this new account of Marais's Ariane et Bacchus with Le Concert Spirituel should be special.

And if you want more Marais from Niquet and Le Concert Spirituel, there is a fine recording of the opera Sémélé (originally from 2007) on the Glossa label. 

Recorded last year in Iceland, this new album of the music written for the stage by Páll Ísólfsson (1893-1974) and Jórunn Viðar (1918-2017) should be fascinating. Rumon Gamba was the Music Director of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra from 2002 to 2010 and with them he recorded a series for Chandos of d'Indy's orchestral works.

The work which opens the album is Viðar's Eldur (Fire), which was the first ballet written for the new National Theatre in Reykjavík (premiered in May 1950). Viðar was a former pupil of the Reykjavík Music School and Páll Ísólfsson was the school's first Director.