In a recent interview with Peter Quantrill for Gramophone, pianist Tamara Stefanovich called Boulez's Second Sonata ‘a manifesto of the generation, not just from him. A manifesto that was needed at that time.’ Stefanovich's recording of that totemic sonata is released today on Pentatone and the album, 'Organised Delirium', also features Eisler's Piano Sonata, Op 1, Bartók's Piano Sonata, Shostakovich's Piano Sonata No 1, Op 12, and Scarlatti's Keyboard Sonata, Kk87. 

Stefanovich has a long history with Boulez's Second Sonata and indeed studied the music with the composer himself. As she says in the interview: ‘"When I went to see him, I only had a pink pen, so everything he said to me is written down in pink." She holds up to the screen a score liberally annotated with private insights that qualify if not sometimes challenge printed injunctions from the 20-something composer: "Absolutely avoid, especially in slow sections, what could be termed 'expressive nuances'."'

Sir Michael Tippett completed his opera New Year when he was 84 and it was first performed at Houston Grand Opera in 1989. Today sees the release by NMC of the first ever complete recording of New Year, recorded in Glasgow last year with a cast including Rhian Lois, Ross Ramgobin, Susan Bickley, Roland Wood, Robert Murray, Rachel Nicholls and Alan Oke with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and conductor Martyn Brabbins. 

Brabbins is an outstanding Tippett conductor, his recordings of the First and Second Symphonies and of the Piano Concerto (both also with the BBC SSO) were both shortlisted for Gramophone Awards. 

Pianist Jan Lisiecki's new album is both a study of the prelude as a musical form and also a continuation of his exploration of Chopin's piano works, featuring as it does the Op 28 Preludes. Lisiecki has already recorded the Etudes, piano concertos and Nocturnes for DG, but the new album also includes preludes by Rachmaninov, JS Bach, Messiaen and Górecki alongside the Chopin.

When reviewing the Etudes recording for Gramophone, Bryce Morrison highlighted Lisiecki's special affinity with Chopin's music: 'When, if ever, have you heard the Chopin Etudes played as pure music, given as naturally as breathing yet recreated from an entirely novel perspective? From Jan Lisiecki, Chopin’s poetic essence, hidden beneath every thorny, relentlessly focused problem, emerges with an inimitable subtlety and elegance.'

Lisiecki and James Jolly discussed Chopin's Nocturnes on the Gramophone Classical Music Podcast back in 2021 – you can enjoy that episode below:

Phantasm's 'Well-Tempered Consort' series of three albums of JS Bach arrangements for viol consort, drawing on the Well-Tempered Clavier books and Clavier-Übung III for organ won high praise in Gramophone. Mark Seow wrote of the third volume: 'Phantasm have brought to life aspects of Bach’s music I knew to be there, inscribed into the musical notation, with utter stylishness.' 

Phantasm's latest release is Bach's The Art of Fugue and they are joined by organist Daniel Hyde (Director of Music at King’s College, Cambridge) for four of the movements. 

Paavo Järvi and the Tonhalle Orchestra Zürich have been working on complete recorded cycles of symphonies by Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn and Bruckner in recent years and today embark on a new survey of Mahler's symphonies with a recording of the Fifth for Alpha. Ten years ago Järvi recorded a complete Mahler symphony cycle (on DVD and Blu-ray) with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, it was a cycle described by Gramophone's Peter Quantrill as 'patchy but rewarding'. Ten years on and with a different orchestra it will be fascinating to see how this new cycle compares.