The Best Classical Recordings of 2012
Solti: The Legacy (1937-1997)
Soloists; Various Orchestras / Sir Georg Solti
2012 marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Sir Georg Solti, one of the most important conductors of the second half of the 20th century and an exclusive Decca artist for 50 years. The label celebrated the occasion with 9 major releases. This set contains many previously unpublished live recordings and studio items spanning Solti’s entire professional career.
Slavic Heroes
Mariusz Kwiecień, baritone; Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra / Łukasz Borowicz
Polish baritone Mariusz Kwiecień has won over audiences in many of the world’s great opera houses with his powerful interpretations. For his first solo recital, he employs his burnished voice to great effect in Polish, Russian and Czech arias which are very close to his heart. It’s a collection of operatic gems, both familiar and rare.
Something Almost Being Said
Simone Dinnerstein, piano
Simone Dinnerstein’s album combines Bach’s Partitas Nos. 1 and 2 with Schubert’s Four Impromptus, D 899. She says, “Bach and Schubert, to my ears, share a distinctive quality. Their non-vocal music has a powerful narrative, a vocal element. The effect is that of wordless voices singing textless melodies.”
Drama Queens
Joyce DiDonato, mezzo-soprano; Il Complesso Barocco / Alan Curtis
Joyce DiDonato offers a rich recital of opera arias from the 17th and 18th centuries. A parade of royal personages is portrayed in a diversity of challenging situations and extreme states of mind. “For me, this is my most exciting recording project to date,” says DiDonato, “because it is everything I deeply adore about the world of opera: high drama, profound emotion, fearless vocal writing, time-stopping passages, historical significance and real discovery.”
Music@Menlo 2011: Through Brahms
Various Artists
This set commemorates Music@Menlo’s 2011 season, which surveyed and illuminated the historical legacy of Johannes Brahms. The performances explore centuries of music through the lens of Brahms’ art, showcasing his works alongside those of composers from Bach and Mozart to Schoenberg and John Harbison.
Pasión
Miloš Karadaglić, guitar
Deutsche Grammophon B0017000-02
Internationally acclaimed guitarist Miloš Karadaglić returned in 2012 with “Pasión,” his second recording for Deutsche Grammophon. His recital program features popular Latin American selections familiar to many but brought to fresh life with new arrangements for solo guitar and string orchestra.
Berlioz & Ravel Song Cycles
Véronique Gens, soprano; Pays de la Loire National Orchestra / John Axelrod
Véronique Gens is internationally recognized as one of today’s great sopranos. She has made a career with Baroque repertoire and Mozart, but French repertoire, especially Berlioz and Ravel, are “as natural to her” as the air she breathes. The charismatic conductor John Axelrod has been music director of the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire since 2009.
Beethoven For All
Berlin Staatskapelle Orchestra; West-Eastern Divan Orchestra / Daniel Barenboim, piano
Decca B0016999-00 (19 CDs & 1 DVD)
In three installments through 2012, Decca released “Beethoven for All,” a major series of recordings of Beethoven’s complete symphonies, piano concertos and piano sonatas with conductor-pianist Daniel Barenboim. The complete set also includes a DVD documentary and a 64-page hardback book.
Blue Moth: Music of Anna Clyne
Various Artists
CSO composer-in-residence Anna Clyne is a writer of acoustic and electro-acoustic music that blends ambient soundscapes with sonic gestures that morph and collide in ever changing patterns. Her work includes collaborative projects with cutting-edge choreographers, filmmakers, visual artists and musicians. This debut CD includes works for a variety of acoustic instruments and tape, and showcases Clyne’s unique approach to sound, structure and time.
Mozart: Keyboard Music, Volume 3
Kristian Bezuidenhout, fortepiano
In Volume 3 of his widely acclaimed traversal of Mozart’s music for solo keyboard, fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout plays a modern reproduction of an 1805 Viennese instrument by Anton Walter. The program includes the well-loved Sonata in F major K 332, alongside Mozart’s last composition for piano, the Variations K 613.
Los Pájaros Perdidos
L’Arpeggiata / Christina Pluhar
Virgin Classics 50999 07095023
A fusion of musical styles and techniques is a trademark of L’Arpeggiata. This collection of South American music takes its name from a piece by Ástor Piazzolla. Echoes from the pre-Columbian era, African rhythms and the styles and structures of the European Baroque all enrich this survey of music from the 17th century to the present day
Get Happy
Jenny Lin, piano
Jenny Lin presents some of the most indelible melodies in American music refracted through a kaleidoscope of keyboard virtuosity. Lin says: “What sets these arrangements apart is that they are all by performing pianists. I have always admired pianists who can play and compose, and I wanted to pay tribute to them with this album.”
Twilight of the Gods: Ring Cycle at the Met
Soloists; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra / James Levine & Fabio Luisi
Deutsche Grammophon B0017249-02 (2 CDs)
Wagner’s Ring Cycle presents the ultimate challenge for any opera company, and the Metropolitan Opera’s new production, unveiled between 2010 and 2012 and starring some of the greatest Wagnerian singers of today, is among the most ambitious stagings ever mounted. This 2-CD compilation features highlights from all four operas.
Tune thy Musicke to thy Hart
Stile Antico; Fretwork
Stile Antico and the instrumental group Fretwork explore a long-neglected repertory – the wealth of Tudor and Jacobean sacred music written for domestic devotion, rather than for church worship. Pieces by Tomkins, Campion, Byrd, Tallis, Dowland, Gibbons and others have been culled from collections intended for use in private homes.
Live at the Royal Albert Hall
Valentina Lisitsa, piano
Valentina Lisitsa, the most viewed classical musician on YouTube, made her solo debut at London’s Royal Albert Hall on June 19, 2012. Streamed live, the concert received more than 74,000 views. Originally from Ukraine but now a resident in the United States, Lisitsa is known for performances balancing virtuosity with spontaneous and poetic communication.
Requiem for a Pink Moon
Joel Frederiksen, bass; Ensemble Phoenix Munich
Joel Frederiksen and Ensemble Phoenix Munich pay tribute to one of the great singer/songwriters of the past 50 years — Nick Drake (1948-74). Under fine melodic lines is a rhythmically driving guitar part which Frederiksen has arranged for Renaissance instruments. Parts of the plainsong Requiem Mass interweave with Drake’s finely crafted songs and music of composers from the Renaissance.
A Second of Silence
The Knights / Eric Jacobsen
The Knights are an orchestra of friends from a broad spectrum of the New York music world. The celebrated ensemble, under the direction of Eric Jacobsen, presents a program juxtaposing works of Schubert with examples of minimalism from Satie, Feldman and Glass. This release marks the group’s second appearance on the Ancalagon label.
Mozart: Don Giovanni
Soloists; Mahler Chamber Orchestra / Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Deutsche Grammophon 477 9878 (3 CDs)
Deutsche Grammophon’s complete recording of Don Giovanni is the first installment in a cycle of Mozart’s seven main operas. It features a remarkable cast of opera’s biggest names (including Ildebrando D’Arcangelo in the title role) under the direction of rising star Yannick Nézet-Séguin and was recorded at the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus.
Joan of Arc: Battles & Prisons
La Capella Reial de Catalunya; Hespèrion XXI / Jordi Savall
Twenty years after his work on the soundtrack of the film Jeanne la Pucelle, Jordi Savall returns to this powerful subject. Alongside works by composers from Joan of Arc’s time, the program also features compositions and arrangements by Savall, further illustrated through spoken dialogue. The accompanying hardbound book is richly illustrated and provides historical perspective as well as texts and translations.
Songs of Smaller Creatures
Grant Park Chorus / Christopher Bell
Celebrating its 50th season in 2012, Chicago’s Grant Park Chorus conducted by Christopher Bell, made its a cappella CD debut with an all-American program of eight imaginative, moving, and sometimes whimsical works written between 1975 and 2005, including four world premieres.
The Best Classical Recordings of 2012,
