Alan Gilbert & Hamburg’s NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra release new Brahms 3 recording (April 18), marking latest title in their digital recording series, launched last fall

(March 2025) — April 18 brings the release of Brahms’s Third Symphony, captured live in concerts by Hamburg’s NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra (NDREO) and its Principal Conductor, Alan Gilbert. This marks the most recent in Gilbert’s new series of digital recordings with the orchestra, available from OneGate Media on all major streaming platforms. Since its launch last fall, the series has yielded recordings of Mahler, Ravel, and Unsuk Chin, with works by Bruckner, Rachmaninoff, and Mark-Anthony Turnage to follow, making Gilbert’s celebrated interpretations of their music accessible to home audiences worldwide. Meanwhile, he and the NDREO continue their spring season with live performances of Berg’s Wozzeck, Dutilleux’s Second Symphony, a Kayhan Kalhor world premiere, and more, in Hamburg and beyond. As Susan Hall reports for Slipped Disc: “Gilbert has always been daring. In Hamburg, he has come into his own. Here he is appreciated for his adventurous ways and his spot-on conducting.”

It was in concerts on February 27 & 28, 2020, that Gilbert and the NDREO recorded the Third Symphony by Brahms, a Hamburg native, whose music has long loomed large in the orchestra’s repertoire. Gilbert previously impressed The New York Times with his “supple, texturally transparent, contrast-rich reading” of the work, and when he led the NDREO in Brahms’s First, their “spacious and sonorous performance” drew a five-star review from Classical Source, which found their account “glorious in the home stretch.” From April 11, the new digital recording will be available for pre-orders here.

OneGate Media GmbH, a subsidiary of Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) and part of the Studio Hamburg Group, is responsible for the release of recordings by all NDR ensembles. This initiative, which began in autumn 2024, aims to enhance the accessibility and reach of NDR’s exceptional musical performances. Gilbert and the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra launched their contribution to the OneGate Media series on September 27, 2024, with the release of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony. Produced in the Elbphilharmonie under studio conditions on November 8–10, 2022, the recording captures what MusicWeb International describes as “an orchestra and conductor at one working for the music alone as selfless ambassadors for Mahler.” As the review concludes: “Thanks to the expert pacing of Alan Gilbert, … we are in good hands.” Click here to see Gilbert’s live NDREO performance of the same symphony, which has already been viewed online more than 90,000 times.

Testifying to the conductor’s commitment to new music, on January 31 OneGate Media issued the original version of Unsuk Chin’s Frontispiece, recorded live in concert at the world premiere performances of the work on September 6 & 7, 2019. Commissioned by the NDREO to inaugurate Gilbert’s tenure and launch Grawemeyer Award-winner Chin’s role as its 2019-20 Composer-in-Residence, this original version of Frontispiece has been hailed as “an eight-minute sonic kaleidoscope,” in which “colors, textures, motifs and gestures emerge, combine and vanish in rapid and dizzying swirls and crunches” (The Dallas Morning News).

The present year marks the 150th anniversary of Ravel’s birth. On March 7 – the French composer’s birthday – OneGate Media issued La valse, recorded at New Year’s Eve concerts by Gilbert and the NDREO on December 30 & 31, 2022. Ravel described his orchestral ballet as “a kind of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz,” and Gilbert’s interpretation of the work has been called “sumptuous and, naturally, highly polished” (Boston Musical Intelligencer).

Three further titles are due for release this summer. Captured live in concert with the orchestra on September 1, 2021, Gilbert’s world premiere performance of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Time Flies, an NDREO co-commission, is scheduled for release on June 6 to celebrate the eminent English composer’s 65th birthday four days later. This will soon be followed by Gilbert’s recordings of both Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony, recorded live with the orchestra on October 14–17, 2021, and Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, captured live in New Year’s Eve concerts with the NDREO on December 30 & 31, 2021 (release dates TBC). Meanwhile, many films of Gilbert’s performances with the orchestra are available for streaming on demand at the NDR’s YouTube channel and on its mobile and iPad apps.

Live in concert with NDREO this spring

Gilbert and the NDREO may also be seen live in concert together this spring. Today and on Sunday, they pair Richard Strauss’s autobiographical tone poem Ein Heldenleben with Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20, joined by the conductor’s long-time collaborator Emanuel Ax (March 28 & 30). Tune in at 4:15pm ET (9:15pm CET) to livestream today’s performance of Ein Heldenleben.

Next, at this year’s Hamburg International Music Festival – a five-week exploration of “The Future” – they perform two programs featuring works that struck contemporary audiences as being ahead of their time. The first presents celebrated Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes in a pair of rarities – Debussy’s Fantaisie and Franck’s Symphonic Variations – alongside Dutilleux’s Second Symphony, “Le Double” (May 8–11). The second comprises Berg’s Wozzeck in concert, with a stellar cast headed by Matthias Goerneand Christine Goerke (May 23 & 25). Festivalgoers can also see Gilbert trade his baton for a viola when he joins the Elphier Quartet for an evening of chamber works by Britten, Bruch, and Schulhoff (May 10).

To celebrate the orchestra’s 80th birthday, Gilbert and the NDREO complete their Hamburg season with the world premiere of Venus in the Mirror, a new double concerto for cello and kamancheh by Iran’s Kayhan Kalhor. Featuring both the composer and superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma as soloists, this is the vehicle for the NDREO’s season-closing concerts (June 27–29), of which the third will stream live to home audiences worldwide.

Beyond Hamburg, Gilbert and the NDREO perform two programs on tour in Istanbul, Turkey, where they pair Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony with Brahms’s Violin Concerto, featuring German Record Critics’ Prize winner Frank Peter Zimmermann (June 19), followed by a coupling of Brahms’s First Symphony and Chopin’s First Piano Concerto, with Chopin Competition laureate Rafał Blechacz as soloist (June 20).

Alan Gilbert: upcoming engagements with NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra

March 28 & 30
Hamburg, Germany
MOZART: Piano Concerto No. 20 (with Emanuel Ax, piano)
R. STRAUSS: Ein Heldenleben
Livestream Ein Heldenleben today, March 28, at 4:15pm ET (9:15pm CET)

May 8, 9, & 11
Hamburg, Germany
2025 Hamburg international Music Festival
DEBUSSY: Fantaisie (with Leif Ove Andsnes, piano)
FRANCK: Symphonic Variations
DUTILLEUX: Symphony No. 2, “Le Double”

May 10
Hamburg, Germany
Chamber concert (on viola, with Elphier Quartet)
BRITTEN: Phantasy in F minor
BRUCH: String Quintet in A minor
SCHULHOFF: String Sextet

May 23 & 25
Hamburg, Germany
2025 Hamburg international Music Festival
BERG: Wozzeck in concert

June 19 & 20
Istanbul, Turkey

June 19
BRAHMS: Violin Concerto
TCHAIKOVSKY: Symphony No. 4 (with Frank Peter Zimmermann, violin)

June 20
CHOPIN: Piano Concerto No. 1 (with Rafał Blechacz, piano)
BRAHMS: Symphony No. 1

June 27–29

June 27: Hamburg, Germany (with livestream)
June 28: Hamburg, Germany (open air)
June 29: Osnabrück, Germany

Kayhan KALHOR: Venus in the Mirror (double concerto for cello and kamancheh (with Kayhan Kalhor, kamancheh; Yo-Yo Ma, cello; world premiere)
BERLIOZ: Symphonie fantastique