Even though I wrote an article on this blog in December 2016 railing against the annual Grammys, Prix du Disques, etc. that all the record labels (and sometimes, but not normally) the artists seem to covet as if they actually meant something, I’ve decided to do my own annual retrospective on what I felt were indeed the most exceptional albums of the year in both classical and jazz.
Why?
Two reasons. #1, December is the worst month of the year for reviewing, because so many of the albums released are Christmas-theme-based and, as a Buddhist and a Deist, I don’t do Christmas. (Not knocking you if you do, it’s just not my thing.) #2, since no one in the industry pays that much attention to me anyway, it’s kind of a poke in the eye of the establishment for me to say what I felt were the best records of the year because I’m sure that 99% of my picks won’t be theirs. I say that because, for the most part, I gravitate to more modern music than they do and, when I do gravitate to older music, it’s generally edgier, less romantic performances than those everyone else likes.
There’s some French guy on YouTube who calls himself Professor Fabre—maybe he’s a real professor, maybe he’s not, who can tell?—who has a channel he calls Classical Music / /Reference Recordings in which he presents the “Recording of the Century” for a great deal of the standard repertoire. A few times I agree with him, as in the case of the almost-complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas by Walter Gieseking, but most of the time I tear my hair out because this guy is always pushing the “warmest” and “most human” performances, which often translates to mushy Romanticism. (Klemperer’s Fidelio is a perfect example). But eventually I figured, What the heck, it’s his taste, not mine, and if hundreds of people want to click on his links and enjoy what he has to offer, that’s their thing.
So maybe you’ll agree with my thing, maybe not. I’m not ranking any of these recorded performances like the others do. No categories and no first-second-third-fourth place. Every record I really loved from start to finish (that’s the key) gets my WHAT A PERFORMANCE! award. Pretty simple, huh? Maybe it’ll catch on. If I had enough money, I’d probably start a podcast called WHAT A PERFORMANCE! and offer my weekly discoveries of the things that move me to the world, but I’m also not that egotistical. The late jazz composer Alonso Levister used to rib me for putting the word “I” in my reviews. “Boy, you’re such an egotist!” he’d say, No, I replied, I’m not an egotist, it’s just that everything I write about music reflects my own personal tastes and reactions, not anyone else’s, and many are the times when I say, “but you may feel differently” because it’s true. No two people in the world hear all music exactly the same, certainly not me and Professor Fabre. And possibly not even me and you.
So anyhow, here are my first annual WHAT A PERFORMANCE! awards. I’m going to go back through my reviews for the year and add the award image on those that won. In the future—meaning, starting in January 2020—I’ll just put the blue ribbon on each CD that merits a rave, then put out the list at the end of the year, but for 2019 I have to work backwards.
Since I’ve already written what I wanted to about these discs, there will be no recaps. Just click on the links below to read the full reviews. Enjoy!
Classical
Ana Maria Alonso Plays Spanish Music
Thompson: The Mask in the Mirror
Tsintsadze: Preludes / Inga Folia, pianist
Fiddler’s Blues/Philippe Graffin (incl. Ysaye sonata)
Schnabel: Violin Sonata/William Harvey
Weinberg: Chamber Symphonies, Flute Concerto/Anna Duczmal-Mróz
Gudmundsen-Holmgreen: String Quartets/Nordic String Qrt
Bons: Nomaden/Ed Spanjaard, cond
Messiaen: Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jésus/Martin Helmchen
Copland: Billy the Kid; Grohg/Leonard Slatkin
Rathaus: Piano Music/Daniel Wnukowski
American Concertos/Michala Petri
Bach: Orchestral Suites/Karl Richter
Elfman: Violin Concerto; Piano Quartet
Spontini: Olympie/Jeremie Rhorer
Chabrier: L’Etoile/Mortagne, d’Oustrac, Guilmette, Fournillier
Falla: El amor Brujo etc./Ordonez
Piano Music of Bacewicz/Morta Grigaliūnaite
Transformations/Morgenstern Trio
Works for Solo Cello/Rohan de Saram
Wolpe: Music for 2 Pianos/Quattro Mani
Voice of the Viola/Ásdís Valdimarsdóttir
Schubert: String Quintet; String Quartet No. 14/Quartetto di Cremona
Wilson: Symphonies/Rory MacDonald
Alberga: String Quartets Nos. 1-3/Ensemble Arcadiana
20th Century Harpsichord Concertos/Vinikour
Weinberg: Symphonies No. 2 & 21/Gražinyte-Tyla
Michael Gielen, Vol. 8 (Schoenberg-Berg-Webern)
Weber: Euryanthe/Sutherland, Vroons, Stiedry
Erika Fox: Paths/Goldfield Ensemble
Stravinsky: Perséphone/Wunderlich, Dixon
Silenced Voices/Black Oak Ensemble
Carlos Álvarez Live at La Monnaie
Borissova Plays Vladigerov, Poulenc & Seabourne
Sonata Concertato à Quattro/Trio Arbós
Frid: Symphony 3, Double Concerto/Gazarian
Kurtág: Scenes/Vitrenko, Grimal
Kurtág: The Edge of Silence/Susan Narucki
Weinberg: Viola Sonatas/Dinerchtein
Lindroth: The Wilfred Owen Songs/Eleby, Jansson
Messiaen: Harawi/Sarah Maria Sun
Crumb: 3 Early Songs, Vox Balanae
Schubert: Winterreise/Peter Mattei
Dalberg: String Quartets/Nordic Quartet
Kodály: Sonatina; Cello Sonata/Julian Steckel
Michell-Menuhin “Compassion Project”
Cooke: Violin Sonatas/Pleyel Ensemble
Veress: String Trio; Bartók: Piano Quintet/various artists
Weinberg: Piano Trio; Cello Sonata 1/Trio Khnopff
Cooke: Piano Trio, Quartet, Quintet/Pleyel Ensemble
Mozart: Don Giovanni/Stich-Randall, Gencer, Petri, Molinari-Pradelli
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7/Mariss Jansons
20th Century British Works for Cello/Rohan de Saram
Lutosławski & Szymanowski Works/Alexander Liebreich
Philippe Jordan’s Monumental Beethoven
The Orchestral Music of Winterberg
Raymond Lewenthal: Complete RCA & Columbia Albums
Berlioz: Messe Solennelle/Hervé Niquet
Berthomé-Reynolds Plays Bacewicz Sonatas
Palester: The Wedding Cake, 3 Poems by Czesław Miłosz, Letters to Mother
Jazz
Pablo Aslan’s Jazz-Classical Quintets
Hakan A. Toker/Messing Around with the Classics
Mark Lomax: An Afrikan Epic – Part 1
Mark Lomax: An African Epic – Part 2
Mark Lomax: An African Epic – Part 3
Justin Morell: Concerto for Guitar and Jazz Orchestra
Jason Palmer: Rhyme and Reason
Svenska Jazzhistoria Vol. 3: Rytm och Swing
Joey DeFrancesco: In the Key of the Universe
Cannonball Adderley Quintet in Stuttgart, 1969
Uncompromised/Michel Berthiaume Quartet
New York Trio/Angelika Niescier
The Rhythm of Invention/Wayne Wallace
Time Gone Out/Sylvie Courvoisier, Mark Feldman
Dark Matter/Lafayette Gilchrist
Grits, Beans & Greens/Tubby Hayes Quartet
Bass’d on a True Story/Brandon Robertson
Blue Brass/Paul Zauner, David Murray
How We Do/John Yao’s Triceratops
Baritone Madness/O’Rourke, Belliveau, Bane
Instants of Time/Enrique Haneine
The Mind’s Mural/Enrique Haneine
Hittin’ the Ramp/Nat King Cole
The Many Open Minds of Roger Kellaway
Dream Notes/Giorgia Santoro, Pat Battstone
Efflorescence/Ivo Perelman & Matthew Shipp
The Golden Rule for Sonny/Eric Wyatt