A world-premiere recording. Maestro Mikhail Pletnev conducts his own, never before published composition: the 14 Memoires musicales (2024). He set his childhood memories to music in 14 musical images that captivate the listener like a colorful kaleidoscope. Mikhail Pletnev's trumpet concerto is dedicated to trumpeter Sergei Nakariakov, who is also the soloist in this concert recording.
Performing three concertos written specifically for him, renowned violinist Gil Shaham is joined by acclaimed conductor Leon Botstein and The Orchestra Now (TON), Bard College's graduate orchestral masters. Scott Wheeler's "Birds of America" (Violin Concerto No.2) was premiered by Shaham, Botstein, and TON at the Fisher Center at Bard and Carnegie Hall in 2021. The birds making appearances in the concerto include a hawk, a whippoorwill, loons, a mourning dove, and a downy woodpecker. Winner of the 2018 Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music, Avner Dorman's "Nigunim" (Violin Concerto No.2) was originally commissioned as Sonata No.3 for violin and piano by New York's 92nd Street Y, Gil, and his sister, pianist Orli Shaham. Gil premiered the orchestrated version that appears on this album with CityMusic Cleveland, conducted by Dorman, in 2014. The main melodic gestures of the piece are drawn from common elements found in Jewish music from around the world. Chinese-American composer Bright Sheng's violin concerto "Let Fly" had it's premiere in 2013 with Shaham and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, led by legendary conductor Leonard Slatkin. The title of the work was inspired by an aural image of the violin melody flying off into the air.
In his new album, Jordi Savall, undisputed master of early music, reveals a new interpretation of Haydn's Seasons. With an approach that respects tradition while injecting his own unique signature, Savall breathes new life into this masterpiece. His use of period instruments and his acute sense of detail offer a freshness and emotional depth never heard before. At once timeless and innovative, this album immerses the listener in the very essence of nature and the seasons, capturing the beauty and richness of Haydn's work with a rare intensity. An experience not to be missed.
HAYDN: THE SEASONS
$33.99
SACD
ALIA VOX
Sep 12, 2025
AV9964SACD
MENDELSSOHN: EIN SOMMERNACHTSTRAUM (MIDSUMMER
HARMONIA MUNDI
Available as
CD
$22.49
Jun 20, 2025
Mendelssohn's incidental music left it's mark on his contemporaries with it's virtuosity, it's subtle orchestration and it's evocative power. Here, Pablo Heras-Casado, the Freiburger Barockorchester and the RIAS Kammerchor Berlin present the music absolutely complete, flanked by Max Urlacher as a wonderfully ebullient narrator. Their historically informed interpretation of A Midsummer Night's Dream offers a delightful plunge into this world of dreams and enchantment.
Edward Gardner, now in his fifth season as Principal Conductor, continues to shape the LPO's distinctive sound with authority and brilliance. Gardner's long-standing relationship with Tippett's music is captured once again in this powerful live performance of A Child of Our Time. Recorded live in concert at London's Royal Festival Hall, this powerful performance - with the voices of the London Adventist Chorale especially deepening the soul-stirring impact of the Spirituals - highlights Gardner's long-standing affinity with Tippett's music, bringing conviction and emotional depth to this searing work of oppression, compassion and hope.
The Condon Collection, compiled by Australian musician and leading piano roll authority Denis Condon, documents major classical composers including Claude Debussy, George Gershwin and Sergei Rachmaninoff performing their famous piano works using a form of music storage and playback technology that predates modern recording techniques. Recorded between 1905 and 1933, and capturing every nuance of each individual performance, this extensive archive faithfully reproduces the playing styles and techniques of these legendary musicians and offers a unique opportunity to experience these rare performances and historical treasures first-hand, while also serving as a comprehensive archive of the reproducing piano's unique musical legacy.
CONDON COLLECTION: MASTERS OF THE PIANO ROLL
$14.49
CD
GOOD TIME
Sep 13, 2024
GODM17087274.2
Still: Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5, Etc / Jeter, Fort Smith Symphony
Naxos
Available as
CD
$19.99
$13.99
Oct 27, 2009
Recording information: The Arkansas Best Corporation Performing Arts Center, F (05/23/2009-05/24/2009).
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Still: Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5, Etc / Jeter, Fort Smith Symphony
$19.99
$13.99
CD
Naxos
Oct 27, 2009
8559603
NIGHTCLOUDS
BLANK FORMS
Available as
Vinyl
$32.49
May 30, 2025
On her fifth album, Ellen Arkbro brings her instincts for structurally elegant songwriting to extended improvisations. Her durational works move like water: They can be choppy on the surface, disturbed by harsh gusts of wind, or suspensefully still, belying the roiling forces deep below. Her towering organ chords billow and undulate, seeking internally discordant phrases and resolving them incrementally, slipping against one another with a luxuriant friction. While Arkbro's For Organ and Brass (2017) took a formalist approach, testing the mechanical limits of it's instruments, and Sounds While Waiting (2023) took a contextual one, offering up an explicit (if tongue-in-cheek) social-spatial function, Nightclouds is unabashedly Romantic and representational. Arkbro, steering directly into the storm, conjures the mortal awe of the sublime. LP
NIGHTCLOUDS
$32.49
Vinyl
BLANK FORMS
May 30, 2025
BKFO70.1
Fuchs: An American Place; Out of the Dark / Falletta, London Symphony Orchestra
Naxos
Available as
CD
$19.99
$13.99
Aug 16, 2005
REVIEW:
Kenneth Fuchs' An American Place is a bright, big-hearted, neo-romantic work in the style of John Adams' Harmonielehre. Adams' finale is an unmistakable influence as both works open with motor rhythms chugging along in the strings while woodwinds and high percussion chirp and tingle above as the music builds to a spirit-lifting sunrise. Fuchs pretty much goes his own way from there as the piece travels through a series of engaging episodes--some featuring wonderful brass writing--and closes in a similar atmosphere to its opening. Eventide is a concerto for English horn, harp, percussion, and strings inspired by Negro spirituals such as "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and "Mary Had a Baby", though Fuchs does not quote them directly, at least not in a manner that's easily recognizable. The work is reminiscent of the pastoral mood-music of Vaughan Williams, though the English horn writing occasionally brings to mind jazz saxophonist Kenny G--a tribute perhaps to the free spirited, highly virtuosic playing of soloist Thomas Stacy.
The pleasantries end with Out of the Dark, which is a set of three pieces based on works by expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler. Heart of November begins in thorny string paroxysms, while Out of the Dark moves somewhat away from the gnarly harmonies of the previous piece. Summer Banner gradually reintroduces consonance, and the work ends in a blissful, subdued atmosphere (with fine solo work by hornist Timothy Jones). Jo Ann Falletta leads first-rate performances with the London Symphony Orchestra, captured in excellent sound--another fine addition to Naxos' American Classics series.
--ClassicsToday.com (Victor Carr Jr.)
On Sale
Fuchs: An American Place; Out of the Dark / Falletta, London Symphony Orchestra
$19.99
$13.99
CD
Naxos
Aug 16, 2005
8559224
DOLCE CONCENTO LES ITALIENS A PARIS SOUS LOUIS XIV
HARMONIA MUNDI
Available as
CD
$22.49
Jun 27, 2025
In it's fascination with Italy, nurtured by all that was best in Florence, Rome and Venice, 17th-century France saw the blossoming of a new national art. Though Lully in his pomp might seem to have subdued the musical world of his time, the ensemble La Palatine has helped us to restore it in a quite different constellation - one that is far more diverse, overflowing with imaginative riches.
DOLCE CONCENTO LES ITALIENS A PARIS SOUS LOUIS XIV
$22.49
CD
HARMONIA MUNDI
Jun 27, 2025
HMF916120.2
TANIA LEON: HORIZONS RAICES (ORIGINS) STRIDE
LPO
Available as
CD
$15.99
Jul 25, 2025
Cuban-born American composer Tania Leon was Composer-in-Residence with the London Philharmonic Orchestra from 2023-2025. During this period, she not only brought a bold new voice to the concert stage with a number of world premieres, but also mentored the LPO's Young Composers, championing living composers and diversity in contemporary music. Premiered in the UK by the LPO under Karina Canellakis at the Royal Festival Hall in October 2023, Horizons (1999) is an evocative orchestral work reflects Leon's fluid musical form - an ever-shifting stream punctuated by vivid foreground events and rich textures. Commissioned by the LPO and Concertgebouw Brugge and [world] premiered by the LPO under Edward Gardner in March 2024, Raices explores Leon's multicultural heritage through a vibrant, three-part structure that fuses contemplative textures, lively Latin rhythms and jazz-inflected exuberance. A Pulitzer Prize-winning work premiered by the New York Philharmonic and given it's UK premiere by the LPO in 2023 under the baton of Dima Slobodeniouk, Stride draws inspiration from women's rights activist Susan B. Anthony's determined spirit. It's powerful rhythmic language blends Black music traditions from the US and Caribbean with the modality of the orchestra. With it's European premiere by the LPO under Edward Gardner in February 2025, the vivid four-part Pasajes evokes the sounds, sights, and joyful spirit of Leon's childhood in Cuba. Rich in color, rhythm and narrative, it is a sonic gallery of cultural memory, celebration and radio playing in the street.
TANIA LEON: HORIZONS RAICES (ORIGINS) STRIDE
$15.99
CD
LPO
Jul 25, 2025
LPOR135.2
HOW DO I KNOW IF MY CAT LIKES ME
BLANK FORMS
Available as
Vinyl
$32.49
May 30, 2025
Two organists and a sound poet walk into a studio. What results is not a punchline, although it is often funny: How do I know if my cat likes me?, the first record from Swedish musicians Ellen Arkbro and Hampus Lindwall and Norwegian artist Hanne Lippard, is a collection of existential meditations on the uselessness of language. "Modern Spanking," adapted from an existing text of Lippard's, free-associates it's way from the phrase "online banking" toward "breathing down your neck banking / stabbing an open wound banking" and "sexy but bankrupt"-you guessed it-"banking." "The long goodbye" imagines an excruciating dialogue between acquaintances who can't politely disengage: "It's always enriching to explore new ideas with you!" deadpans Lippard, who replies to herself, "Definitely! I hope to see you soon! / I hope so too! / I'm really looking forward to the next time! / I couldn't agree more!" Punctuated by Arkbro and Lindwall's majestic organ chords, which thwart their own grandiosity with impeccable comic timing, How do I know if my cat likes me? extends the lineage of Roberts Ashley and Barry's droll concept poetry, hammering at the sounds of language until they dislodge all signifiers through pleasurably numbing repetition. It's like doing a Captcha over and over until all the characters fuzz to hieroglyphs, or finding oneself mired in an endless, tautological customer-service argument, but after you dead-end at nonsense, you stumble into an unexpectedly transcendent beauty, where language flips from pure function to pure aesthetic, shimmering with possibility.
HOW DO I KNOW IF MY CAT LIKES ME
$32.49
Vinyl
BLANK FORMS
May 30, 2025
BKFO074.1
LAYERS OF AFTERNOON
WESTERN VINYL
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Vinyl
$27.99
Jun 27, 2025
Layers of Afternoon is meant to reflect a certain experience of time-something both tangible and vague, felt yet not easily described. These moments often emerge in patterns, sometimes brief, sometimes sustained, but always formative. We recognize their uniqueness, yet something subconscious in us yearns to identify and indulge in these patterns. Perhaps we avoid discussing them for fear of sounding mundane or inconsequential, yet they return to our memories often, offering collective comfort. For Keith Kenniff aka Goldmund, language does little to convey these experiences; only art and music seem to come close to capturing what makes them special. Kenniff explains, "My aim for the music in Layers of Afternoon was to find this in-between place and write from there, hoping to communicate my experience of the world as ideal-free from goals, musical training, or emotional complexity. I wanted to visit this space and let the moments float freely within the act of creation." Working with violinist Scott Moore, Kenniff crafts a sonic landscape that lingers between nostalgia and fleeting presence, allowing listeners to drift through the blurred edges of memory.
LAYERS OF AFTERNOON
$27.99
Vinyl
WESTERN VINYL
Jun 27, 2025
WVNL283.1
FIVE LEAVES LEFT (ECHOES ON SOLO PIANO)
PONDEROSA MUSIC RECS
Available as
Vinyl
$22.49
May 16, 2025
November 24th, 2024, marked the 50th Annyversary of Nick Drake's untimely passing at the age of just 26, so it seemed like the right time to honor another of his studio albums "FIVE LEAVES LEFT". This time I wanted to go back to where it all began and take Drake's is first album and put it on my Piano canvas. Everything about "FIVE LEAVES LEFT" has fresh, more positive vibe, in contrast to the harshness of his latest "Pink Moon" and thoughts of his impeding death.
FIVE LEAVES LEFT (ECHOES ON SOLO PIANO)
$22.49
Vinyl
PONDEROSA MUSIC RECS
May 16, 2025
PDRA38.1
FOUR ELEMENTS
IN A CIRCLE RECORDS
Available as
Vinyl
$119.99
Sep 19, 2025
FOUR ELEMENTS
FOUR ELEMENTS
$119.99
Vinyl
IN A CIRCLE RECORDS
Sep 19, 2025
ICIR33.1
Bernstein conducts Haydn: London Symphonies
Sony Masterworks
Available as
CD
$24.98
$16.99
Jan 01, 2014
Reviews of some of the original recordings that make up this set"
"let’s not kid ourselves: there was no finer 20th century Haydn conductor than Leonard Bernstein. He has the same affinity for the composer that he did for Mahler: the music’s energy, humor, and sheer emotional range played to the conductor’s strengths, and no amount of foolishness about “period this” or “authentic that” can diminish idiomatic results that penetrate far deeper into the music’s expressive essence than issues of performance practice ever can."
-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com
"The competition is strong in the “London” symphonies, but Bernstein’s performances of Haydn are always among the most intriguing, the most dynamic and intense. The “Surprise” Symphony’s opening Vivace assai is played slowly, with a unique gravitas, a seemingly odd approach that—through some Bernstein magic—produces a tender, sensitive result. The surprise chord in the Andante doesn’t sneak up on us; it is just plain ff. The repeated ff chords in the rest of the movement thunder with a towering rage, and the Menuet stomps heavily. The Allegro di molto finale boils along at terrific pace, bursting with joy. This is a wildly unconventional performance of this warhorse, yet one that thrills and satisfies.
Max Goberman recorded a superb No. 98, including the violin/cembalo duet in the finale, but his Vienna State Opera Orchestra (like Scherchen’s, third-string leftovers from the Vienna Philharmonic) cannot match the New Yorkers’ power and panache. This “Military” is a lovely performance, with especially enticing wind solos; the Janissary music (triangle, cymbals, bass drum) is not overplayed, as with Scherchen. The triangle rings its own miniature cadenza in the finale’s penultimate measure. The Andante of “The Clock” ticks sweetly and gently, interrupted by thundering fortissimos. Trumpets are prominent throughout the performance, so the wrong-note joke in the (very slow) Menuet’s Trio jars the ear as never before—or since. No.102, perhaps Haydn’s greatest symphony, receives it finest performance, beginning with an almost motionless Largo and ending with a lightning-fast, spectacularly executed Presto. "
-- James H. North, Fanfare
At least one of these performances (No. 104) goes back to the Fifties, and the Paris Symphonies came out about a quarter-of-a-century ago. For some reason they caused a tremendous row in the New York press when they were issued. Part of it was my defending the performances (in a magazine called High Fidelity), saying among other things that Bernstein had gone to great pains to get his trills right, ie in strict tempo and starting on the upper note. In those days, a lot of snobs did not take Bernstein seriously – how wrong they were. Bernstein has a natural affinity for Haydn, though some of his tempi will be judged too slow: first movements of Nos. 82, 93 and 98 (an old legacy from Sir Thomas Beecham, especially in the case of No. 82), the intolerably slow minuets of some works (eg Nos. 93 and 101, also a Beecham legacy but not much better in the Karajan/Berlin Philharmonic recordings), and the slow movement of The Clock (No. 101). But when Bernstein gets it right, it is glorious. The slow movement of the Surprise (No. 94) is nowadays taken far too quickly: it is only andante, not allegretto, and Bernstein’s reading is poetic and masculine, by turns. The first movement of the great C minor Symphony No. 95 is the best reading of it that I know – listen to that hair-raising timpani part at the end: it is extraordinary, as is the ferociously slow Minuet in the same work. And while on the subject of timpani, there are splendid timpani solos in the Minuet of No. 97, the slow movement of which is also a revelation – note the careful adherence to Haydn’s markings of ‘ponticello’, on the bridge of the violins, a nasty, spiky sound which must have stunned London in 1792. If you want one perfect Haydn/Bernstein sampler, try the finale of No. 99 in E flat, the first time Haydn ever used clarinets in a symphony. The tempo and the pace are perfect. And what civilised works these are: witty, profound, dramatic, touching – there is something for everybody in them.
-- H.C. Robbins Landon, BBC Music Magazine
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Bernstein conducts Haydn: London Symphonies
$24.98
$16.99
CD
Sony Masterworks
Jan 01, 2014
88691991762
MARIA CALLAS: THE GREATEST HITS (CLEAR VINYL)
GAMA MUSIC
Available as
Vinyl
$33.49
Aug 29, 2025
Maria Callas remains one of the most iconic and transformative figures in operatic history. With her unparalleled dramatic intensity, exquisite phrasing, and extraordinary vocal range, she redefined the art of singing in the 20th century. Every note she sang carried profound emotion, blending technical mastery with a deep understanding of character and story. This collection captures Callas at her finest, breathing life into some of opera's most beloved arias. From the heart-wrenching despair of Tosca to the delicate vulnerability of La Traviata, each performance reveals her rare ability to inhabit every role completely. Her voice - at once powerful, nuanced, and unmistakably unique - continues to inspire generations of listeners and performers alike. Listening to Maria Callas is not merely hearing great singing; it is experiencing a profound act of storytelling. Her artistry transcends time, reminding us why she is, and always will be, "La Divina."
MARIA CALLAS: THE GREATEST HITS (CLEAR VINYL)
$33.49
Vinyl
GAMA MUSIC
Aug 29, 2025
GAMA7404244.1
RICHTER PLAYS BRAHMS
ALTO
Available as
CD
$11.49
Sep 12, 2025
Sviatoslav Richter was one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century, known for his profound musical intellect, colossal technique, and uncompromising artistic integrity. His interpretations, spanning composers from Bach to 20th-century contemporaries, remain benchmarks for pianists and listeners alike. This new collection from Alto brings together Richter's performances of Brahms from the Melodiya and RCA labels.
Maria Callas remains one of the most iconic and transformative figures in operatic history. With her unparalleled dramatic intensity, exquisite phrasing, and extraordinary vocal range, she redefined the art of singing in the 20th century. Every note she sang carried profound emotion, blending technical mastery with a deep understanding of character and story. This collection captures Callas at her finest, breathing life into some of opera's most beloved arias. From the heart-wrenching despair of Tosca to the delicate vulnerability of La Traviata, each performance reveals her rare ability to inhabit every role completely. Her voice - at once powerful, nuanced, and unmistakably unique - continues to inspire generations of listeners and performers alike. Listening to Maria Callas is not merely hearing great singing; it is experiencing a profound act of storytelling. Her artistry transcends time, reminding us why she is, and always will be, "La Divina."
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