Happy New Year!

Harmonia mundi artists send you their best wishes — in music, of course.

There are nearly sixty musicians, ensembles and orchestras recording exclusively for harmonia mundi, the most higly awarded label in 2025! Will you recognise them all? Take a look at our ‘artists’ section and discover the new 2025 signings and albums on our dedicated page.

Celebrating the French trumpet!

Romain Leleu and his musical partner Julien Gernay invite us on a whirlwind tour of the birthplace of the French trumpet and cornet.

Captivated by the unique sonorities of the historical instruments preserved at Paris’s Museum of Music, they have devised a fascinating programme that pays homage to the golden age of the French trumpet. Joined by other fellow musicians (Benoît de Barsony, Guillaume Cottet-Dumoulin, and Adrien Jaminet), they offer a traversal of the repertoire that is as flamboyant as it is poetic!

William Christie & Co

Happy birthday, Bill!

On the occasion of his 80th birthday, the founder of the ensemble Les Arts Florissants William Christie is not content merely to honour the composers who are close to his heart. Along with his tireless endeavours as a musical archeologist, here he also demonstrates his role of mentor to the younger generation of talented performers.

While showcasing the composers he has so fervently championed and, in some cases, brought back into the limelight, this programme also displays the loyalty to his musical companions that has characterised his entire career

Quintessential piano concertos

Kristian Bezuidenhout continues his exploration of Mozart’s piano concertos with the Freiburger Barockorchester. Here they deliver a superb reading of the Concertos nos. 19 and 23, which are justifiably among the most famous in the corpus.

The undeniable popularity of these two works is largely due to their sublime middle movements, but also because they reach the very heights of Mozartian subtlety in terms of orchestration, thematic development, and dramatic instinct. The historically informed performances presented here take the same interpretative approach as earlier volumes in the cycle, underpinned by an utterly luminous musical discourse!

Holy fury!

Now recording exclusively for harmonia mundi, Carlo Vistoli lends his artistry to a showcase of one of the greatest Baroque masters as his label debut: the music of Antonio Vivaldi.

“Diamond” rating from OPÉRA MAGAZINE

Joining the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, the Italian countertenor invites us on a journey into some of Vivaldi’s finest sacred works. Paired with the celebrated Nisi Dominus and Stabat Mater, the quasi-operatic motet In furore shows the extravert, theatrical side of this music, intended for edification, to be sure, but also for our greater delight.

Shostakovich at his most personal

The Cuarteto Casals embarks on its recording project devoted to the complete string quartets by Dmitri Shostakovich: one of the most fascinating chamber-music cycles of the twentieth century.

 After being subjected to public attacks by the Soviet regime in the mid-1930s, Shostakovich sought new avenues of self-expression by turning to chamber music, and the string quartet became for him the perfect medium for private confession. To launch their complete Shostakovich cycle, members of the Cuarteto Casals offer deeply insightful readings of the first five quartets—works that are pivotal in the composer’s oeuvre.

DIAPASON D’OR

The experts compete!

The musical legacy of the Bach family is inseparably linked to the progress in instrument making of the time, which was dominated by the Silbermann family. Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas and his ensemble Les Surprises offer a fascinating comparison between the two dynasties—composers vs. organ builders and fortepiano makers.

Featuring the famous Silbermann organ at the Cathedral of St. Mary in Freiberg, Saxony, along with other superb originals and copies of Silbermann instruments, this recording takes us on a journey through the works of the Leipzig Cantor and of two of his celebrated sons: Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel.

Requiem!

Raphaël Pichon and his ensemble Pygmalion deliver an overwhelmingly moving reading of Mozart’s testamentary work. A masterly interpretation!

Nurtured by a seminal stage experience (in collaboration with director Romeo Castellucci), this recording offers a series of mirror effects that challenge our preconceptions of such a well-known work. Punctuated by earlier sacred pieces by the composer, it invites a dialogue between rearangements, his homage to tradition, and rarely heard pieces from Mozart’s catalogue.

ALSO ON LP

Campra and masters of Notre-Dame

Alongside their magnificent reading of André Campra’s Requiem, Sébastien Daucé and Ensemble Correspondances also offer us an opportunity to discover other maîtres de musique of Notre-Dame, representative of the liturgical tradition of the time.

Although now overshadowed by their brilliant colleague, Jean Veillot, François Cosset, and Pierre Robert made no less of a contribution to the development of the ‘French style’ emblematic of the reign of Louis XIV.

Bach’s cello suites in a soaring performance

Seventeen years after his first reading that quickly set the standard (more than 110,000 copies sold), Jean-Guihen Queyras revisits the iconic Bach cycle. This time around, he gives free rein to his imagination as a poet of the cello. His guiding principles? A no-holds-barred approach and a sense of freedom!

In making this new recording, the French cellist has been profoundly influenced by his collaboration with choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, in whose production Mitten wir im Leben sind he has performed over 100 times and was filmed for the enclosed complete version on Blu-ray disc.

DIAPASON D’OR ARTE

Bruckner on period instruments!

To mark Anton Bruckner’s 200th anniversary, Pablo Heras-Casado and the Bruges-based Anima Eterna orchestra have chosen to record the composer’s Symphony No. 4, the aptly named “Romantic” Symphony, as their birthday present.

The first instalment in a new cycle devoted to the great Austrian symphonist, this recording gives a new lease of life to the work we thought we knew inside out. Thanks to the unique sonorities of the period instruments played by the Bruges orchestra, galvanised by Pablo Heras-Casado’s inspired direction, we can rediscover the dazzling colours and architectural rigour of this ‘cathedral in sound’ as imagined by Bruckner.