10. Various composers — English Song Collection
Naxos
My box set of the year combines classic albums from the defunct Collins catalogue with 13 recorded by Naxos. Fifteen composers are featured, with Britten dominant on seven of the 25 CDs, unforgettably performed by Felicity Lott and Philip Langridge. Anthony Rolfe Johnson’s account of Vaughan Williams’s On Wenlock Edge is a highlight of the set, as is Roderick Williams in Vaughan Williams, Finzi, Ireland and Britten.
9. Britten, Bliss, Bridge, Berkeley — English Music for Strings; Sinfonia of London, cond John Wilson
Chandos
Wilson’s programming offered four British Bs, beginning with Britten’s early Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge and ending with Bliss’s almost contemporaneous Music for Strings. It’s a less ostentatious, although hardly less difficult, work than Britten’s masterpiece, but Wilson’s handpicked band plays with a depth of sonority and variety of tone to challenge the greatest ensembles. Berkeley’s wistful Serenade and Bridge’s touching Lament complete the line-up.
8. JS Bach, Bach-Busoni, Busoni — Bach Nostalghia; Francesco Piemontesi (piano)
Pentatone
The Swiss pianist imaginatively juxtaposed “genuine” Bach — the Italian Concerto, albeit performed on a modern piano — with works transcribed by his most celebrated arranger, Ferruccio Busoni, not the famous adaptation of the Chaconne for solo violin, but a Prelude and Fugue in E flat, and his own Bach-inspired Toccata, plus an arrangement by one of the great 20th-century Bach pianists, Wilhelm Kempff.
7. Francesco Rasi et al — Soleil Noir; Emiliano Gonzalez Toro (tenor), I Gemelli
naïve
This is a remarkable homage to the tenor Francesco Rasi, creator of Monteverdi’s Orfeo in 1607, and a composer of note himself, versed in the style of his teachers, Peri and Caccini, and of his sometime employer, Gesualdo. Like his master, he was a murderer and fugitive from the law, an almost Shakespearean character brought vividly to life in a narrative programme by Toro and his dramaturge, Mathilde Etienne.
6. Elgar — Violin Concerto, Violin Sonata; Renaud Capuçon (violin), Stephen Hough (piano) London Symphony Orchestra, cond Simon Rattle
Warner Classics
Elgar’s mournful 1918 sonata, with Hough partnering Capuçon, is a perfect, if unusual, coupling for the famous concerto. Only a handful of non-Brits can match Capuçon’s feeling for Elgar’s nobilmente style, but he is supported by Rattle — in his third recorded account of Elgar’s concerto — and the LSO, which premiered the work with the soloist Fritz Kreisler under the composer in 1910.
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5. Chopin —Nocturnes; Stephen Hough (piano)
Hyperion
Hough’s first recording of Chopin’s Nocturnes is one of the British pianist’s most personal discs to date. An opera lover himself, he identifies with Chopin’s homage to the so-called bel canto composers — Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti — with this recording of Chopin’s 21 canonical pieces and a handful of posthumous works, doubtful attributions and a version of Op 9 No 2, with Chopin’s own “coloratura” embellishments.
4. Schubert — Die schöne Müllerin; Andrè Schuen (baritone), Daniel Heide (piano)
DG
German is the young Ladin-speaking South Tyrolese baritone’s third language, but his vivid response to words makes him a born lieder singer in an invigorating, emotional rollercoaster account of Schubert’s much-recorded cycle. His approach is confidential, almost shy in his confession of love, rising to jealous passion at the appearance of his huntsman rival, and suicidal despair at the end.
3. Vivaldi — The Four Seasons; La Folia; Francisco Fullana (violin) Apollo’s Fire, dir Jeannette Sorrell
Avie
Fullana and Sorrell’s brilliant baroque band from Cleveland reveals Vivaldi’s most popular work in spring-cleaned colours, like the restoration of an old master. The “barking dog” of Spring, the cascading rain storm of Summer, the dancing harvest-home peasants of Autumn and the icy shivers of Winter have rarely been evoked as graphically and intelligently as here.
2. JS Bach — Violin Sonatas & Partitas; Tedi Papavrami (violin)
Alpha
The Albanian violinist offers a mesmerising interpretation of the six solo violin sonatas and partitas, playing a modern instrument with an 1830 bow and employing vibrato sparingly as an expressive device. These are pristine performances, marked out by his keen tone and incisive attack in the elaborate fugues, while his playing of the great D minor Ciaccona — faster than usual — is astounding in its technical elan and musical cogency.
1. Mozart, Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi, Wagner, Korngold et al — BariTenor; Michael Spyres (tenor), Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, cond Marko Letonja
Erato (Warner Classics)
Spyres’s unique exploration of classic tenor and baritone repertoire ranged from Mozart’s Idomeneo — singing the fiendish original version of Fuor del mar with dark tone and phenomenal agility — and took in Mozart’s Count Almaviva and Don Giovanni, Rossini’s Figaro, and the (baritone) villains of Verdi’s Il trovatore and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. His position as the leading “dark” Rossini tenor of the day allows him to sing stratospheric notes written by Méhul (Ariodant), Adam (Le postillon de Lonjumeau) and Donizetti (La fille du regiment). He added Wagner’s Lohengrin in French and a rare tenor version of Hamlet’s Drinking Song (Ambroise Thomas). Staggering singing.
