5 Classical Music Albums You Can Listen to in April 2025-OxBig News Network

Bach: Mass in B Minor

Julie Roset, soprano; Beth Taylor, mezzo-soprano; Lucile Richardot, alto; Emiliano Gonzalez Toro, tenor; Christian Immler, bass; Pygmalion; Raphaël Pichon, conductor (Harmonia Mundi)

Raphaël Pichon and the musicians of his Pygmalion chorus and orchestra have made some extremely fine recordings over the last several years, from their Monteverdi “Vespers” to their Mozart “Requiem.” This Bach, however, is truly exceptional. It is not at all an act of staunch certainty and steadfast belief, the kind of monument that other conductors have made of this Mass. It’s a human drama, filled with the struggle and complexity of our mortal experiences. Above all, it sounds alive.

Blessed with playing and singing of extraordinary virtuosity, Pichon seems determined to find every last accent of expressivity in the score, resolved to shape the smallest details in service of his broader ideas. It’s hard not to be swept away by the sheer vigor of “Cum Sancto Spiritu,” performed as if a gust of the Holy Spirit were sweeping past, or by the regal grandeur of “Et resurrexit.”

Pichon is at his most breathtakingly interventionist at the first “Et expecto resurrectionem,” a moment that he sees as Bach inviting us into the darkest frailties of his faith: Everything stretches out as time dissolves and dissonance cuts at the ear. Still, this is Bach, and the “Dona nobis pacem,” though uncertain at first, grants a new dawn that blazes with resplendent light. If this is Bach for our times, then we are fortunate to have it. DAVID ALLEN

There’s a lot to keep track of with the “inverted” string quartet known as Owls: It uses two cellos instead of two violins, necessitating repertoire rearrangement; it is game to play Baroque as well as contemporary material; one of its cellists, Paul Wiancko, also composes for the group. Perhaps the most notable thing about Owls, though, is the evident joy that Wiancko, his fellow cellist Gabriel Cabezas, the violinist Alexi Kenney and the violist Ayane Kozasa find when playing together.

Take the opening number on this album, Wiancko’s “When the Night” (an extended homage to the first three notes of Ben E. King’s “Stand by Me”). After a melancholic intro, the interlocking melodic parts of the second minute receive loving, precisely etched attention. After that, you’ll hear the group’s take on a ricercar composed by the folk duo Trollstilt; a fervid dance by the Azerbaijani composer Franghiz Ali-Zadeh; a gorgeous morsel from Couperin; and another of Wiancko’s stirring originals.

The closing piece is the group’s arrangement of the finale from Terry Riley’s two-hour string quartet “Salome Dances for Peace.” I came away from “Rare Birds” hoping that Owls might commit to an all-Riley disc. And an all-Couperin set. Plus some more Wiancko originals. Whatever comes next, it may take some time. For one thing, Wiancko is a new member of the substantially revamped Kronos Quartet. But with such audible chemistry, the members of Owls are bound to collaborate again. SETH COLTER WALLS

Beethoven: The Complete String Quartets Vol. 1

Ariel Quartet (Orchid Classics)

A good string quartet, so the saying goes, sounds like a single instrument. At moments on this lively first volume of its perusal of the complete Beethoven string quartets, the players of the Ariel Quartet come across like a living organism with a single central nervous system that transmits emotional impulses to every part of the body.

In this first set of six quartets, published in 1801, where Mozartian freshness mixes with fitful irascibility, it’s often the middle voices that function as the engine of disruption. With needling staccatos, crisp articulation and breathless tempos, the Ariel players bring out the excitability of Beethoven’s fast movements. Even in slow movements such as the heartbreaking Adagio of Quartet No. 1, yearning lyricism is tempered by a restless pulse that draws the music inexorably forward. The result is an invigorating take on a repertory staple that restores a sense of lightness and unpredictability to works written by a composer who was just getting started in revolutionizing the string quartet genre. CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM

Thomas Adès: Orchestral Suites

London Philharmonic Orchestra; Thomas Adès, conductor (LPO)

In this world premiere recording of suites from Thomas Adès’s stage works, the composer’s electrifying theatricality and extravagant orchestrations leap out of the speakers. Even without singers, dancers or sets, his intentions remain radically clear.

The “Luxury Suite” from “Powder Her Face” expands the orchestral forces of the original chamber opera, a daring abstraction of the Duchess of Argyll’s salacious, tabloid-addled life. Adès dials up the work’s sleazy, slinky glamour with a wanton lavishness. His second opera, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” creates an entirely different sound world of enchantments. In the corresponding suite, the sprite Ariel’s eccentric, wispy charms are of a piece with the earthier magic of Ferdinand and Miranda’s newly kindled romance.

Adès’s musical language feels recognizable, but also original. He deploys familiar sounds — a saxophone playing an unseemly tango or a magical atmosphere of glockenspiel, harp and woodwinds — without cliché. A spellbinding mercuriality keeps the music moving from one penetrating moment to the next.

His way with a sound picture invigorates the “Inferno Suite” from his ballet “Dante.” Shifting meters convey a queasy, fateful journey over the Acheron. For Satan, who is stuck in a lake of ice, slow-moving winds and strings create a chilly stasis, and the brasses groan deeply, to the very bowels of hell.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Adès himself, is wonderfully fluent, commanding even, in his idiom. Particularly in the “Inferno Suite,” the ensemble sketches characterful scenes of delicate pity, light mockery and withering damnation, matching the versatility of the compositions they bring to life. OUSSAMA ZAHR

Brahms: Piano Quartets Nos. 2 & 3

Krystian Zimerman, piano; Maria Nowak, violin; Katarzyna Budnik, viola; Yuya Okamoto, cello (Deutsche Grammophon)

Every new album from Krystian Zimerman feels like an event. That’s particularly the case with chamber music, which he plays marvelously but rarely records. Here, in what seems to be his first recording of Brahms chamber works, he tackles the composer’s two lesser-known piano quartets in the company of three string players with whom he has a rapport that is audible from the start, and does not flag, in these attentive and often searing performances.

Like much of Brahms’s chamber music, the piano quartets are symphonically scaled works in which a Classicist’s approach to form meets a Romantic’s zeal for drama. The clash creates a friction that both drives the music’s development and creates numerous hurdles for performers. All the latter are bested here: The four musicians maintain exacting pacing and balances, even in moments where the music seems to edge into pure rage.

Zimerman produces a deep, glowing tone without overwhelming his colleagues. The slow movements are full of unsentimental nobility, and the cellist Yuya Okamoto’s playing in the Third Quartet’s Andante is the essence of dignified lyricism. Given the heat they work up in the closing movements of each piece, one wonders what they could do in the “Gypsy Rondo” finale of the more famous G-minor Quartet. They should tackle that next — or, frankly, anything else they feel like. DAVID WEININGER