Welcome to our guide to the best new classical releases this week. We’ve provided links to the albums on Apple Music, so you can dive straight in and enjoy the best new classical albums in great sound, and links to the Gramophone reviews where possible.

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This new recording of Beethoven's Violin Concerto and Schnittke's Third Concerto is not the first collaboration between Vadim Gluzman and the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester with conductor James Gaffigan, they produced a wonderful account of Brahms's Violin Concerto in 2017. That recording was an Editor's Choice in the July 2017, with critic Rob Cowan taking time to summarize the violinist's style: 'Gluzman carries forwards a Russian-Jewish playing tradition that hails back to Jascha Heifetz, David Oistrakh and Leonid Kogan, with Maxim Vengerov and Vadim Repin representing the younger generation. I make the point because all these players display a roster of traits that marks them out as part of an age-old violinistic community: a seductively sweet tone, a biting attack of the bow, agility, brilliance, a flexible approach to phrasing and a perfect balance of head and heart.' (Read the review in the Gramophone Reviews Database)

Featuring Brahms's two Clarinet Sonatas, Op 120, and Julian Bliss's own arrangement of the Vier ernste Gesänge, this album is a return to Brahms's music for Bliss who recorded the Clarinet Quintet with the Carducci Quartet in 2016. Interestingly, this is not James Baillieu's first recording of the Vier ernste Gesänge with a non-singer, he recorded these songs with trombonist Peter Moore in 2018 (read the review). 

Jean Rondeau explores the nature of melancholy through the keyboard works of Frescobaldi, Luigi Rossi, Picchi, Luzzaschi, Sweelinck, Dowland, Bull and Gibbons for this new album on the Erato label.

For her first solo album, a collection of Mozart's concert arias, Lisette Oropesa is joined by Il Pomo d'Oro, who won last year's Gramophone Opera Award for Handel's Agrippina starring Joyce DiDonato, and conductor Antonello Manacorda, who made his Metropolitan Opera debut with Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro in 2019. 

Mozart's Gran Partita has a long history on record, of course, but its worth noting that we've had two outstanding recordings of the work reviewed in Gramophone in 2021 alone: one from composer/clarinettist Mark Simpson and friends (an Editor's Choice in the February issue), and another from members of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (an Editor's Choice in January). This new release from Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin should provide an interesting comparison, however, for both the pedigree of this ensemble in Mozart's operas (they have made recordings of Die Zauberflöte and Die Entführung aus dem Serail for Harmonia Mundi with conductor René Jacobs) and also for their use of period instruments. Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin was nominated for Gramophone's Orchestra of the Year Award in 2019.

The Ondine label has been a powerful advocate for the music of Magnus Lindberg for many years, as indeed have the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Hannu Lintu, not least on last year's album of Lindberg's Accused and 2 Episodes, which Gramophone's Andrew Mellor said finds 'Lintu’s Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra on eye-widening form' (read the review). This new album features live accounts of Aura, Marea and Related Rocks.

The Listening Room

Gramophone’s The Listening Room is an Apple Music playlist featuring hand-picked selection of the most interesting new classical releases chosen by Editor-in-Chief James Jolly. It’s the essential classical playlist:

Specialist Classical Chart

The Official Specialist Classical Chart Top 20 appears on the Gramophone website and is updated every Friday at 6pm (UK time). It’s a great way of exploring the new classical releases: 

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