Holst’s orchestral spectacular seems designed as an audiophile showpiece, and as you probably know there are several recordings of it that hit the sonic jackpot. Here’s another such, but with a twist: this one’s played ...

A perennial on our founder’s Super Disc list, the Hérold-Lanchbery score for La Fille Mal Gardée is among the most famous of audiophile recordings. And like a good many of the “guilty pleasures” discs our ...

Wonder of wonders—the great German classical recording company Deutsche Grammophon has issued its first LP in a quarter-century (on 180-gram vinyl, no less): Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, in a December 2011 live-in-concert performance ...

Perhaps Morten Lindberg was out to make a point about progress in audio technology when he decided that his label’s new program, Souvenir Part I from the Trondheim Soloists, would be released as 24/96 stereo, ...

For 30 years, “Professor” Keith Johnson and Reference Recordings have provided audiophiles with orchestral spectaculars to challenge high-end systems. This new CD of two perennially popular ballet favorites could be their best yet. The sense ...

Renowned guitarist David Russell offers a well-recorded album of transcriptions of Baroque keyboard and lute works on this new Telarc. He has an excellent tone, avoiding both brightness and murkiness; the sound is rich throughout ...

Jonny Greenwood, guitarist for Radiohead and composer of the soundtrack to There Will Be Blood, has written two Penderecki- influenced pieces for strings. Popcorn Superhet Receiver is a study in orchestral white noise, full of ...

Vinyl collectors know David Canfield for his mail-order sales of vintage classical LPs, but he’s also an accomplished composer, as these pieces he wrote for saxophone virtuoso Kenneth Tse show: four sonatas (one for each ...

Like many other symphonic institutions, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra has established its own in-house record label. All six TSO Live releases to date have been conducted by Peter Oundjian, the Orchestra’s music director since 2004. ...

Though doubtless the greatest Polish composer between Szymanowski and Lutoslawski, Grazyna Bacewicz (1909- 69) is (unlike them) known more for her chamber music than her orchestral works. This new release collects three of her mid-century ...

Spears is no compositional Caspar Milquetoast; he writes biting, exotic harmonies and, like Stravinsky, draws forth a beauty at times rough-hewn or violent. If I had to make a comparison, I’d say his Requiem is ...

Handel isn’t known these days as a keyboard composer, but far more copies of his keyboard works were in circulation during his life than copies of Bach’s or Scarlatti’s. These suites are in fact similar ...

For the first release on their own label, the wizards at Zenph Sound Innovations reanimate primitive recordings by three preeminent Spanish composer/pianists. Isaac Albéniz was a child prodigy, a seasoned performer by mid-adolescence. The New ...

Three superb quartets for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano, and the Copland Sextet (adding a violin and viola). Libby Larsen’s Rodeo Queen of Heaven depicts a painting of the Madonna and Child in Western dress; ...

Australian Ross Edwards wrote his violin concerto, Maninyas, in the late 1980s, after leaving his “modernist” style for one characterized by rhythmic vitality and chant-like modal melodies, a style he coined the word “Maninya” for. ...