This beautifully conceived program brings together the complete works for piano duet by three major American composers: Edward MacDowell (1860-1908), Amy Beach (1867-1944) and Samuel Barber (1910-1981).

Classical singer Julia Bullock makes her solo recording debut, Walking in the Dark, December 9, 2022 on Nonesuch Records. Bullock is joined on the album by London’s Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Christian Reif for Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 and an aria from John Adams’s El Niño. With Reif on piano she also performs a traditional spiritual and songs by Oscar Brown, Jr.; Billy Taylor; and Sandy Denny. The first track released is an interpretation of the Connie Converse song “One by One,” whose lyrics are featured in the album title.

This sparkling suite for violin and piano came into being when the composer had to adapt his incidental score for a production of Shakespeare's play to the impending absence of the chamber orchestral. The result is a brilliant piece for violin and piano, which the composer quickly released in a four-movement version. There are other recordings of the chamber orchestra suite in five-movements that duplicate only three of the movements of this version. Violinist Gil Shaham and pianist André Previn are ideal partners in this brilliant performance. The four movements allow Shaham to show four sides of his violinist's personality: He skips and plays in carefree fashion in the opening movement, indulges in the grotesquery and parody of the second, gets to play the romantic in the garden scene of the third movement, and dazzles with virtuosity in the final hornpipe. Previn's part is more than mere accompaniment; the piano often has a large part of the mood of the music and his contribution is, to use a word already employed here, ideal.

Roberta Alexander’s outstanding CD of vocal music by Samuel Barber demonstrates the soprano’s understanding of the composer’s musical language and emotional content … The Netherlands Radio Philharmonic plays very well under the tasteful leadership of Edo de Waart.

For all the agony as to the status of classical music in the modern musical landscape, the three 20th century string quartets on this fine French release can be said to have entered the repertory, with a reach that extends far beyond the U.S. They go quite well together, which is the first point in favor of France's Quatuor Diotima here; both Steve Reich's Different Trains, for string quartet and tape, and George Crumb's Black Angels for electric quartet feature an artificially enhanced string quartet, and even Samuel Barber elected to "enhance" his String Quartet in B minor, Op. 11, by orchestrating its central movement and making it into the famous Adagio for strings. Highly recommended.

This 5 CD boxset presents the complete set of internationally acclaimed violinist Hilary Hahn’s recordings for Sony. Contained are recordings of much-loved works such as Bach’s Partitas for Solo Violin, and concerti by Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Shostakovich, and more – including the violin concerto written specially for Hahn by Edgar Meyer.

An imaginative mixture of the popular and the unusual. Barber’s only quartet has at its heart the famous Adagio for Strings: the latter is an arrangement of the second of the quartet’s two movements. That Adagio – which here benefits not only from the unfamiliarity of the chamber original but also from the Duke’s sensitively understated approach on their first recording for Collins Classics – is here surrounded by some captivating faster music (including a brief return to the opening Molto allegro’s ideas). And Robert Maycock’s excellent booklet notes hint at what those famous seven minutes of slow, sad passion in particular could really be said to be about: young homosexual love in the Austrian woods. Thirty years later, in 1966, another American in Europe, and still in his twenties, wrote his first string quartet, though it’s unlikely to be a direct reflection of love, this time in Paris.

Few pianists can claim such an extraordinary career and life as Ruth Slenczynska. She began performing in public at the age of 4, and, 92 years later, she is still playing. She studied with some of the 20th century's greatest pianists including Rachmaninoff, performed for Presidents Kennedy, Carter, and Reagan as well as Michelle Obama, and even played a duet with President Truman. For her new retrospective, My Life in Music, Slenczynska has chosen some of her favorite, most personal pieces.

On his third PENTATONE album Time Traveler’s Suite, pianist Inon Barnatan redefines our notions of the suite by taking us on a journey through time and space, from Baroque pieces by Bach, Handel, Rameau and Couperin to more recent works by Ravel, Barber, Adès and Ligeti. The program culminates in Brahms’s ingenious Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel.

Vibrant young pianist, Isata Kanneh-Mason, presents her sparkling second album, Summertime, as she takes us on a journey through the musical landscape of 20th century America. Isata brings her signature flair to this virtuosic and spiritual music for solo piano, including a world premiere recording of a Samuel Coleridge-Taylor piece, the fiercely challenging Barber sonata, and dazzling arrangements of Gershwin's songs.

Previous releases from the New York-based Escher Quartet include an acclaimed set of Mendelsohn’s six string quartets as well as an album with works by Dvořák, Tchaikovsky and Borodin. For their latest offering the members have looked closer to home, however, choosing to combine the quartets by Samuel Barber and Charles Ives. The disc opens with Barber’s String Quartet in B minor, containing the music for which the composer remains best-known: the second movement which he two years later expanded into Adagio for Strings. Recognizing its potential already while composing it, Barber described the piece as ‘a knock-out’ – which made it all the more difficult to come up with a third movement worthy to follow it.