Today sees the release of new albums from Isabelle Faust with Les Siècles and François-Xavier Roth, pianist Rafał Blechacz, Christian Thielemann and the Vienna Philharmonic, Martyn Brabbins and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and BBC Philharmonic with John Storgårds. Explore them all below, read reviews and listen on Apple Music.

Isabelle Faust's recording of Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale was shortlisted for a Gramophone Award last year (it was an Editor's Choice in the November 2021 issue) and here the violinist returns to Stravinsky alongside Les Siècles and their music director François-Xavier Roth. 

Les Siècles and Roth have recorded The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring (a recreation of the 1913 premiere performance) for Harmonia Mundi, and besides the concerto perform Stravinsky's Variation d'Apollon and Pastorale on this new album.

It was back in 2005 that Rafał Blechacz won the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw at the age of 20. Chopin's music has been the spine running through his career, with recordings of the Polonaises, the piano concertos and the complete Preludes for DG. 

This new album features Piano Sonatas Nos 2 and 3, Nocturne No 14 and the Barcarolle in F sharp major.

'Here, then, is a performance that is both of a piece with itself and at peace with one of the most glorious of all Bruckner’s musical bequests.' So wrote Richard Osborne in his review of Christian Thielemann's recording of Bruckner's Fourth Symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic in November 2021.

There is a recording of Bruckner's Ninth by Thielemann with the Staatskapelle Dresden on DVD and Blu-ray (C Major) that Christian Hoskins was a little underwhelmed by back in 2016 ('the performance gives the impression of being borne on a surface current far removed from the seismic cataclysms potentially occurring in the ocean depths far below.') It will be fascinating to here how this new recording with the Vienna Philharmonic compares.

This album could be something special. Last year, Jeremy Dibble wrote a Gramophone Collection article about Vaughan Williams's Symphony No 5 in which he compared all of the available recordings and selected his favourite. He chose Martyn Brabbins's recording with the BBC Symphony Orchestra as his primary recommendation, noting Brabbins's 'special affinity for this music'. The recordings in this series of the Third and Fourth Symphonies, A Sea Symphony and A London Symphony were all selected as Editor's Choice albums. 

BBC Philharmonic and John Storgårds produced an outstanding recording of Shostakovich's Symphony No 11 in 2020, an album described by Edward Seckerson as 'a terrific performance and a terrific-sounding disc.' (Read the review). Seckerson would later choose the recording as his favourite of the year, writing: 'A resounding and searching account of perhaps my favourite Shostakovich symphony where drama and sonic spectacle are so movingly underpinned by the wordless revolutionary songs at its heart and soul.'

Today, the same team return to Shostakovich with this new recording of Symphonies Nos 12 and 15 for Chandos.