Norman Lebrecht's Album of the Week - Prokofiev Violin Concertos
/Prokofiev's violin concertos, one anarchic, one written under duress to please Stalin, anchor an intriguing new release from Vadim Gluzman and Neeme Järvi.
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's Album of the Week - The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
/Michael Nyman's rare and underappreciated chamber opera, based on a book by Oliver Sacks, finally gets a rare new recording.
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's Album of the Week - Ustvolskaya, Silverstrov, Kancheli
/The late Soviet system created damaging monopolies in the arts as much as they did in state industry. The three lesser-known composers in this intriguing album each tackled the hegemony from a different aspect.
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's Album of the Week - Elgar Remastered
/The last decade and a half of Elgar's musical life was focused on leaving a legacy in the form of composer-approved recordings. A remastered 4-CD set collects the brilliant results.
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's Album of the Week - Martinu's Ariane
/I am beginning to wonder if posterity will ever place Bohuslav Martinu where he justly belongs, as one who's sound world is at once distinctive and entirely approachable, the mark of a great composer.
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's Album of the Week - Schubert Leider
/It’s always a good sign when a pianist is named as the editorial force behind a lieder recital, giving the enterprise both objective distance and intellectual rigour, as it does in these Schubert leider.
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's Album of the Week - Sibelius Symphonies
/The Minnesota Orchestra’s partnership with the Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä is a treasure of our times, especially when they play music of the frozen north.
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's Album of the Week - F.X. Mozart & Clementi piano concertos
/They're not great (in fact they're often mild and unoriginal), but the concertos of Muzio Clementi and Mozart's son, Frances Xaver, are nonetheless worth your time.
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's Album of the Week - Polish Violin Concertos
/There used to be a truth, universally acknowledged across the record industry, that you could put out unfamiliar music with a famous artist or popular music with an unheralded performer but never attempt what Donald Rumsfeld might have called the unknown unknowns.
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's Album of the Week - Songs without Words
/They may grate in other instances, but period instruments are well suited to Mendelssohn's Songs without Words, as this new recording demonstrates.
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's Album of the Week - Glazunov and Khachaturian violin concertos
/Tchaikovsky's violin concerto towers over all other Russian efforts in the genre, but these two by Glazunov and Khachaturian deserve a wider audience.
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's Album of the Week - Lucas Debargue
/In an era replete with talented young competition winners, Lucas Debargue, who placed fourth in the 2015 Tchaikovsky Competition, stands out.
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's Album of the Week - Shostakovich chamber music
/These three Shostakovich chamber works span the composer's whole career, and together they constitute a musical self-portrait with few equals.
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's Album of the Week - All you need is Bach
/Cameron Carpenter is virtuosic, effervescent, totally in command of his pipes and sometimes quirky enough to make you rethink the piece from core principles. But does that approach work in Bach?
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's Album of the Week - piano pieces by Feldman and Crumb
/Steven Osborne takes on unexpected repertoire: the ascetic Morton Feldman and the extreme George Crumb.
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's Album of the Week - Anonymous Concertos
/These six early-classical concertos are close to the best music of their time and yet the composers of these six concertos are unknown.
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's Album of the Week: Vaughan Williams Symphonies
/Vaughn Williams' symphonies are too little played, and too rarely played well. The first disc of an exciting new cycle aims to change that.
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's Album of the Week - Haydn: Violin Concertos
/A new release of an old recording prompts the question: Why are orchestra chiefs still afraid of Joseph Haydn?
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's Album of the Week - Beethoven: symphonies 4 and 5
/Just months before his death, Nikolaus Harnoncourt made his final attempt to faithfully render Beethoven's scores into music. Norman Lebrecht assesses his valediction.
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's Album of the Week - Mahler: 3rd symphony
/Mahler's Third is a challenge of both organization and interpretation. Does Jaap van Zweeden's new live recording deserve a place among the greats?
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