Classical 2024

Erland Cooper’s new album Carve the Runes Then Be Content With Silence. The album is a recording of Cooper’s brand new three-movement composition for solo violin and string ensemble. The work marks the centenary of celebrated Orkney poet George Mackay Brown, as 2021 marks 100 years since his birth. Inspired by natural landscapes and ruminating on time, hope, community and patience, the sole recording of the work – on ¼ inch magnetic tape, with the digital files permanently deleted – has been planted to grow and be nurtured or “recomposed” by the earth, before being exhumed and released in three years’ time. Whilst Cooper will not be unearthing the tape until 2024, he has left a trail for anyone to search and find it if they wish. A map with clues to the location of the planting site will be released via his digital platforms. If the planted tape is found, Erland will invite the discoverer to his studio to embark on a journey together for the treasured first listen. It will then be released exactly as it sounds from the earth.

The National Symphony Orchestra is concluding its Beethoven symphony cycle this month. As with the first half of this series, music director Gianandrea Noseda is pairing these familiar works with others in the genre by African-American composers George Walker and William Grant Still. The first program was anchored on Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony Friday night in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.

Launched in 2020 with a Chopin étude performed by the legendary Daniel Barenboim – and now embracing a huge range of vocal and instrumental music, from the Renaissance to the 21st century – the Musical Moments series showcases new recordings from internationally renowned artists and rising stars of the classical world, as well as offering moments of escape from day-to-day life, through music of every mood, from tranquil, reflective and consolatory, to experimental, exciting and uplifting.

Pianist Philip Chiu presents Voyages, “a deeply personal album that represents a humble attempt to capture something elusive to me: a sense of belonging. Where do we belong? To whom do we belong? What belongs to us, what is ours simply because it was handed to us, and what is ours because we chose it?”

20th anniversary album of all new material, including a new original song, by globally renowned classical crossover group Il Divo. First album with new member Steven LaBrie, after the passing of founding member Carlos Marin in 2020.

This recording of works by four composers highlights the diversity of America.

Das Schweizer Kammerorchester Festival Strings Lucerne hat zuletzt mit seiner Einspielung von Mozarts »Haffner-Serenade« und dem hochgelobten Album »Femmes« der Cellistin Raphaela Gromes auf sich aufmerksam gemacht. Für ihr neues Album »Eastbound« hat Festival Strings Lucerne unter Leitung von Konzertmeister Daniel Dodds ein besonders interessantes Programm ausgewählt.

Associate Professor of Cello Eric Kutz performs the complete cello suites of J.S. Bach in one epic recital. Beloved by many cellists and classical music listeners alike, Kutz learned the first suite at the age of 12 years old.

More than any other artist to emerge from the fertile black metal scene of the early ‘90s, Ihsahn has firmly established himself as an unpredictable maverick. Frontman and chief composer with the legendary Emperor, he re-wrote the rulebook on epic extreme music across a series of albums that are still widely regarded as classics.

"Gidon Kremer has perhaps never before revealed himself as intimately and as existentially focused as on this recording", observes Wolfgang Sandner in his liner note accompanying the Latvian violinist's album Songs of Fate.