ConTempus Quartet's Strings Intertwined is a newly released 2026 chamber album focused on rediscovering overlooked 20th-century works alongside a contemporary commission.
The ConTempus Quartet is an offshoot of the ConTempus Initiative, a Michigan-based contemporary music collective dedicated to making new music accessible. The group focuses on commissioning new works and discovering unpublished pieces.

Canadian harpist Valérie Milot chose the title of this album to acknowledge the circle of valued musical colleagues she has worked with over the years and to reference the loop as a musical concept, a seemingly simple melodic or rhythmical motif that serves as both framework and source of inspiration. The programme features six complementary approaches, ranging from music by John Cage, Gentle Giant and Frank Zappa to the premiere of violinist Antoine Bareil’s Castille 1382, written especially for Milot.

Jonathan Nott and the Bamberger Symphoniker have written a special chapter in recording history with this series. Currently nominated in the 2012 BBC Music Magazine Awards, their recording of Mahler Symphony No.3 (TUDOR7170) was a BBC Music Magazine Orchestral Choice; “a recorded spaciousness which lets every ensemble and solo spiritually resound.”

The high-caliber jury of the renowned Brussels Queen Elisabeth Competition applauded frenetically after Baiba Skride had finished her performance and won. A rarity, as fans of classical music know. And also that the 23-year-old Latvian performs real miracles on the violin. She has now recorded two CDs (Sony Classical): Solo she delights us with pieces by Bach, Bartók and Ysaÿe, accompanied by the Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Chamber Orchestra she plays Mozart, Schubert and Michael Haydn.

“America, you are better off” – wrote Goethe in 1827, weary of German Romanticism and the 'fruitless wrangling' of sterile debates. A century later, the New World experienced an unprecedented wave of migration consisting of leading figures, largely Jewish, from the cultural and intellectual spheres of Germany and Austriia, composers were able to immerse themselves in the new world of sound film in Hollywood.

This is a fascinating programme from Dejan Lazic who had some interesting detective work tracking down the score of the Cramer. His sonata is wonderful music that deserves to be heard, and Dejan is a superb advocate for Clementi & Cramer as well as Beethoven.

On their new CD the Latvian Skride sisters present yet more composers from their extended Baltic homeland region (allowing that they include Norwegian Edvard Grieg, especially since he composed his Sonata in Copenhagen, then called Christiania). The uniting thread of the works on this CD lies in ‘finding one’s own sound’, something which each of the featured composers first had to find, and an element that the sisters effortlessly achieve as performers.

One of the best recordings of the "Symphonie Fantastique". Cluytens's representative recording is even more attractive with new mastering!

Kei Koito plays the incomparable 1730s-era Volckland organ in Erfurt’s Cruciskirche on her fifth volume dedicated to Bach's organ works. Rich in colour and character, the instrument is considered one of the most remarkable Baroque organs ever made and is the perfect match for these pieces.

Mozart and his family spent 15 months in London when the composer was eight years old. In London he wrote his first symphonies and first vocal works, serving major notice to the world. Those have been recorded before and are included here, but what's novel is the inclusion of music by other composers whom Mozart would have heard in London. Many of the works here receive their premiere recordings, and The Mozartists and conductor Ian Page ably sketch the influences they likely had on Mozart. Some of the influences from J.C. Bach have been recognized before, but Page goes more deeply into them: you can hear Mozart's way of assigning expressive meaning to transitional passagework, uncanny already at age eight, in the music of the "London Bach.

There's a new release from the great Leon Bosch. The British Double Bass Sonatina is out now on Meridian Records with accompaniment from the wonderful Rebeca Omordia.

Schumann’s studies in counterpoint during 1845 climaxed in what he described as a ‘Fugenpassion’. He rented a pedalboard attachment for his piano to extend his music’s textural possibilities and to help familiarise himself with organ technique.

Antonin Dvorák’s symphonic poems are fascinating works because they offer a perfect combination of colourful orchestration, lively narrative art and deeply rooted Czech folk music tradition. Dvorak’s ability to paint musical pictures and tell stories in a haunting way is particularly evident in the three pieces recorded here by the Basel Symphony Orchestra under its chief conductor Ivor Bolton. The physical edition of the production is published as a magnificent digibook with many illustrations and informative texts that allow us to follow the described course of Karel Jaromir Erben’s (1811-1870) originals.