The Van Cliburn Competition-winning South Korean pianist tackles one of the cornerstones of the repertoire in a live recording from New York, with other stand-outs for early 2026 including Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius from Martyn Brabbins in Huddersfield (with David Butt Philip in the title-role and Karen Cargill as The Angel), Schumann and Moscheles from Steven Isserlis and Connie Shih, and a prayerful operatic recital from French-Danish soprano Elsa Dreisig (taking in music by Bellini, Wagner, Janáček and Carolina Uccelli).
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Bach: Goldberg Variations
Yunchan Lim (piano)
Recorded live at a sold-out Carnegie Hall in April, Lim's interpretation of the Goldbergs was praised by BachTrack for the 'subtle interplay of colours [and] reverent yet vital energy' which he brought to the music, whilst The New York Times declared that 'the 21-year-old pianist turned the great set of variations into the story of a young man’s maturation from innocence to experience'. Lim writes: 'The first time I heard Bach’s Goldberg Variations was when I was eight years old and I discovered a box set of Glenn Gould’s Bach recordings. When I first listened to it, I was amazed by its grandeur and beauty, and it has remained close to my heart ever since.'
Released 16th February.
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius
David Butt Philip (Gerontius), Karen Cargill (Angel), Roland Wood (Priest/Angel of the Agony); Huddersfield Choral Society, Orchestra of Opera North, Martyn Brabbins
The Huddersfield Choral Society's relationship with Elgar's masterpiece stretches back over a century: the choir performed it under the baton of the composer himself in 1917 (with their numbers depleted by the War, much like the fictitious Yorkshire choir depicted in Alan Bennett and Nicholas Hytner's recent film The Choral). Nearly three decades later, the choir took part in the first-ever complete recording of the piece for EMI, with Heddle Nash as Gerontius, Gladys Ripley as The Angel, and Sir Malcolm Sargent conducting the Liverpool Philharmonic; this new recording was made in the same venue, Huddersfield Town Hall.
Released 30th January.
Available formats: 2 CDs, Download & Streaming (up to 192 kHz, 24 bit)
1851
Steven Isserlis (cello), Connie Shih (piano)
Isserlis and Shih explore works which were all composed in the year of the Great Exhibition in London's Hyde Park, at which a display of Érard pianos attracted huge crowds including Queen Victoria herself; the instrument which Shih plays on the recording may well have featured among the line-up. Their programme includes Ignaz Moscheles's Cello Sonata in E, Isserlis's own transcriptions of Robert Schumann's Violin Sonata No. 2 and 'Sängers Trost', and shorter pieces by Gounod and Ferdinand David. The recording was made at the University of Birmingham's Elgar Concert Hall in 2015.
Released 30th January.
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
Invocation
Elsa Dreisig (soprano), Orchestra e Coro del Teatro Carlo Felice di Genova Orchestra, Massimo Zanetti
The Paris-born soprano's programme of operatic prayers and supplications includes 'Casta diva' from Bellini's Norma, the Song to the Moon from Dvořák’s Rusalka, 'Allmacht'ge Jungfrau!' from Wagner's Tannhäuser, Desdemona's 'Ave Maria' from Verdi's Otello, and rarities from Carolina Uccelli's Anna di Resburgo, Gounod’s Sapho and Mireille, and Bizet's Clovis et Clotilde. Dreisig will be the guest soloist at the Münchner Rundfunkorchester's New Year's Eve concert, where her programme will include the Song to the Moon.
Released 3rd April.
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
Puccini: Orchestral Music
Sinfonia of London, John Wilson
The earliest works here were composed whilst Puccini was studying under Amilcare Ponchielli at the Milan Conservatory: the Preludio sinfonico draws inspiration from Wagner's Lohengrin, whilst the graduation-piece Capriccio sinfonico contains material which the composer would recycle for the opening of La bohème a decade later. The album also includes orchestral excerpts from Puccini's first three operas Edgar, Le villi and Manon Lescaut, and Duncan Gillies's orchestral version of Crisantemi (originally scored for string quartet and written as an elegy for Amedeo, Duke of Aosta).
Released 13th March.
Available formats: SACD, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
Huw Watkins: Fanfare, Symphony No. 2 and Concerto For Orchestra
Hallé Orchestra, Sir Mark Elder
All of these works were commissioned and premiered by Elder and the Hallé between 2020 and 2025, with Watkins writing with the orchestra's specific sound in mind. The Fanfare for eleven brass instruments was written to celebrate their return to the stage following the first COVID lockdown, whilst Symphony No. 2 was premiered during one of the orchestra's virtual concerts in 2021 and won the South Bank Sky Arts Classical Music Award in 2022. Elder premiered the Concerto for Orchestra in his first concert as Conductor Emeritus, with The Times hailing it as 'a classy instant classic' which 'sounds as if it has always existed'.
Released 6th March.
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 48 kHz, 24 bit)
JS Bach: Sonatas & Partitas
Renaud Capuçon (violin)
The French violinist celebrates his fiftieth birthday by recording a set of works which 'has always calmed and comforted me, while at the same time filling me with feelings of energy and joy'; he first encountered this music through the recordings by Yehudi Menuhin and began his own journey with the set in his teens, with the Partita No. 3 in E. Capuçon plays on the “Vicomte de Panette” Guarneri del Gesù violin from 1737, using two different bows: one by the legendary bow-maker François Xavier Tourte, the other by Walter Barbiero (b.1968).
Released 23rd January.
Available formats: 2 CDs, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
Hans Zender: Schubert's Winterreise
Allan Clayton (tenor), Aurora Orchestra, Nicholas Collon
Written in 1993, Zender's 'composed interpretation' of Schubert's great song-cycle leaves the vocal line largely untouched, but brings the work's bleak soundscapes to life by adding a standard chamber ensemble plus guitar, accordion, harmonicas and a battery of percussion into the mix; the results bear faint echoes of Berg, Mahler and Kurt Weill. Collon and Clayton first performed the piece together ten years ago, when The Guardian noted that 'Clayton’s bright, healthy tone and complete vocal and musical security provided strong bases for an interpretation that the young tenor can and surely will develop a good deal further'; this studio recording was made following a live tour last year.
Released 16th January.
Available formats: 2 CDs, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
Through the Centuries: Songs of Madeleine Dring
Kitty Whately (mezzo), Julius Drake (piano)
After devoting much of this year to shining a spotlight on the songs of Rebecca Clarke, Whately celebrates the legacy of another alumna of the Royal College of Music - Madeleine Dring, who studied with Herbert Howells, Gordon Jacob and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Dring's sources of inspiration ranged far and wide, from fourteenth-century French song ('The Far-Away Princess') to Cole Porter; other highlights include selections from her Shakespeare settings, the 1970s song cycle Love and Time (setting texts by John Dryden, John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire and others), and the posthumously published 'Weep you no more, sad fountains'.
Released 20th March.
Available formats: CD, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
Clémence de Grandval: Mazeppa
Tassis Christoyannis (Mazeppa), Nicole Car (Matréna), Ante Jerkunica (Kotchoubey), Paweł Trojak (L’Archimandrite), Julien Dran (Iskra)
A pupil of Chopin, Flotow and Saint-Saëns, Clémence de Grandval won the imaugural Prix Rossini in 1881 and composed six operas, of which Mazeppa (1892) is the last; composed eight years after Tchaikovsky's opera on the same subject, it was warmly received at its premiere in Bordeaux, with one critic describing it as 'a truly remarkable score, the success of which will cause a great stir in the music world'. The recording was made from a live concert performance in Munich in January.
Released 13th March.
Available formats: CD2 + Book, Download & Streaming (up to 96 kHz, 24 bit)
Mozart: Don Giovanni (Blu-ray)
Kyle Ketelsen (Don Giovanni), Philippe Sly (Leporello), Hanna-Elisabeth Müller (Donna Anna), Stanislas de Barbeyrac (Don Ottavio), Kate Lindsey (Donna Elvira), Patricia Nolz (Zerlina), Peter Kellner (Masetto), Ain Anger (Il Commendatore); Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper, Philippe Jordan
Filmed in Vienna in December 2021, Kosky's minimalist staging was described as 'more dramma than giocoso, but pleasingly so' by Bach Track, who praised Jordan's 'controlled but compelling' approach to the score; Der Standard also applauded the 'transparency, tangibility and poetry' of his conducting, whilst the ORF welcomed Kosky's willingness to 'satirise the burden of tradition'.
Released 6th March.
Available format: Blu-ray
