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.

Gramophone's Reviews Database: Gramophone has brought together every review published in the magazine since 1983 into this dedicated searchable database making it easy for you to find your favourite recordings or discover the best new releases. If you would like to have unlimited access to our archive of more than 45,000 reviews from our panel of experts, please subscribe today: Subscribe to Gramophone

1. Rattle's Rachmaninov

The London Symphony Orchestra has recorded this work on many occasions (with Previn, Rozhdestvensky and Gergiev, among others) and Rattle himself produced a version of the Second Symphony with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1999. This live recording was captured at the LSO's home, the Barbican in London, before the pandemic. It will be interesting to see how their way with Rachmaninov contrasts with the Philadelphia Orchestra's, whose recording of the First Symphony and the Symphonic Dances with Yannick Nézet-Séguin was our Recording of the Month in February.

2. HK Gruber's Percussion Concertos

Colin Currie's recordings for his own record label have all been outstanding: Reich's Drumming, 'Live at Fondation Louis Vuitton' and 'The scene of the crime' were all Editor's Choice albums when released. Here, Currie returns with HK Gruber's percussion concertos, accompanied by the BBC Philharmonic, Juanjo Mena and John Storgårds.

3. English Solo Song

This is a special collection of English songs performed by former members of the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, including James Gilchrist, Michael Chance, Lawrence Zazzo, Tim Mead, Ruairi Bowen, Andrew Staples, Ashley Riches and Mark Stone, accompanied by Simon Lepper. Gerald Finley and Christopher Keyte perform a bonus track.

4. Bach Cantatas

The Bach recordings of Philippe Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale Gent have been widely praised in Gramophone's reviews pages over many years, their St John Passion was shortlisted for last year's Gramophone Choral Award and their Mass in B minor was shortlisted for the Gramophone Baroque Vocal Award in 2012. This new recording of Cantatas BWV45, BWV198 & Motet BWV118, with soloists Dorothee Mields, Alex Potter, Thomas Hobbs and Peter Kooij should be very special.

5. Bluebeard's Castle

This album extends a series of Bartók recordings that the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and Susanna Mälkki have been producing for BIS Records which began with the Concert Suite of The Miraculous Mandarin and The Wooden Prince in 2019 and which continued with the Third Piano Concerto (with pianist Andreas Haefliger) last year.

Of The Wooden Prince, Andrew Farach-Colton wrote: 'We’ve had some superb accounts of this ballet over the years – Kocsis (Hungaroton, 6/07) has been a personal favourite – and Mälkki stands with the best of them. Indeed, given the excellence of BIS’s engineering, hers is easily a prime recommendation.' And Jed Distler was impressed by the Third Concerto, writing 'For sheer textual honesty and attention to articulation, Haefliger and Mälkki leave none of Bartók’s Third Concerto’s concertante-orientated soloist/ensemble interplay unaccounted for, and the Adagio religioso’s climactic evocations of birdsong convey a wide-eyed sparkle and sense of fantasy that is easier to hear than for me to describe.'

Mika Kares and Szilvia Vörös are Bluebeard and Judith in this live recording of Bluebeard's Castle.

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 another great way of exploring the new classical releases and well worth checking every week: 

Join the Gramophone Club to receive: 13 new print and digital editions every year, digital access to every Gramophone issue since 1923 and access to our searchable Reviews Database of more than 45,000 reviews: Subscribe to Gramophone