Isata Kanneh-Mason's sparkling Mendelssohn headlines August new releases

Every day, YourClassical’s programming team (music director Joe Goetz and associate music directors Jennifer Allen and Robin Gehl) listen to dozens of recordings as they create our daily radio playlists and on-demand streams. Here are some of their favorites for August 2024.

Isata Kanneh-Mason: Mendelssohn (Decca)
British pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason has long been a champion of rarely played women composers. Her first album, Romance, celebrated the strong and influential pianist and composer Clara Schumann, and her most recent recording, Mendelssohn, shines the spotlight on Fanny Mendelssohn. The older sister to Felix was a talented and prolific composer, despite the societal limitations forced on women during her lifetime. Her Easter Sonata was initially believed to have been composed by Felix, until recent research revealed that the manuscript was in her handwriting. Kanneh-Mason approaches the sonata’s heavy topic of the Passion of Christ with power and tenderness. The music is quite dramatic and energetic but also introspective, with a gentle Bach-like fugue in the second movement and a peaceful ending based on a Bach chorale. More familiar works by Felix fill out the disc — a handful of short pieces, selections from A Midsummer Night’s Dream in transcriptions by powerhouse pianists Sergei Rachmaninoff and Moritz Moszkowski that seem to capture every note of Mendelssohn’s orchestration, a Song Without Words beefed up by Franz Liszt. The other substantial piece on this recording is a fiery performance of Felix’s first Piano Concerto with the London Mozart Players. — Jennifer Allen

Chloe Chua, violin, with Singapore Symphony Orchestra: Butterfly Lovers and Paganini (Pentatone)
Teenage violinist Chloe Chua presents her tuneful sophomore album, Butterfly Lovers & Paganini, partnering with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) and conductors Rodolfo Barráez and Mario Venzago. Chua, now 17, initially achieved acclaim after winning first prize at the 2018 Yehudi Menuhin International Competition for Young Violinists. She has toured and competed around the world, and she appeared in the 2024 PBS Great Performances episode, “Now Hear This — Rising Stars.” For the past two seasons, she performed concerts with the SSO as artist in residence. Composed in 1959 by Chen Gang and He Zhanhao while they were students at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, the Butterfly Lovers violin concerto was inspired by a story known as the Romeo and Juliet of ancient China. The violin’s storytelling unfolds over seven sections, and the piece is one of the most famous in Chinese orchestral music. Recently chosen as assistant conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Rodolfo Barráez leads the orchestra in Butterfly Lovers and in another Chen Gang piece, Sunshine Over Tashkurgan. Chua shared that she was “honored to introduce the Butterfly Lovers to more listeners around the world even though it is already famous in Asia, and the underrated piece Sunshine Over Tashkurgan,” she said. “Both pieces are worth discovering.” The album concludes with a work by 19th-century touring violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini, his Violin Concerto No. 1, in which Chua displays her virtuosity and lyricism. This fall, Chua will begin work on a bachelor’s degree at the Hanns Eisler School of Music, Berlin, studying violin with Kolja Blacher. — Robin Gehl

Courtney Hershey Bress, harp, with Colorado Symphony Orchestra: Harp of Ages (Naxos)
I was first introduced to the music of Michael Daugherty thanks to my former boss and mentor Cheryl Willoughby, back in the day when we worked together at Vermont Public Radio. During her morning show, she programmed a piece called “Candelabra Rhumba” from Daugherty’s Le Tombeau de Liberace. I heard it on my drive to the office and was hooked. What pure, unadulterated madness! Willoughby also used to play horn in the Colorado Symphony before our paths crossed in Vermont, so when I saw that Daugherty’s latest release features that same group, I naturally thought of her. It’s every bit as fun as I would have anticipated. Harp of Ages traces the lineage of one of the world’s oldest instruments, paying homage to music from ancient Greece to Africa to Hollywood. It’s impossible to pick any one of the work’s seven movements as a standout, but since I have to choose one to share, Irish Wedding is a great standalone work, with its brisk Celtic atmosphere and tongue-in-cheek treatment of one of Bach’s most famous melodies. But I’d definitely recommend listening to the whole album for full effect! — Joe Goetz