The Top 20 Classical Releases of 2011

Listen to One Thirty BPM’s top 20 classical releases of 2011 in this Spotify playlist.

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About this time last year I had the pleasure of seeing Benjamin Grosvenor in concert at Wigmore Hall in London, playing chamber works by Brahms and Schubert. Seated at the back, he played solidly and unpretentiously, seeming like a mature and seasoned performer despite being less than twenty. Grosvenor went on this year to become the youngest ever soloist to perform at the opening night of the BBC Proms, and produced an astounding performance. Grosvenor’s first album sees him moving, understandably enough, towards those composers who specialised in piano pyrotechnics. Liszt and Chopin are to classical piano what Hendrix or Page are to the electric guitar – people that most of us appreciate, but gods for those who play the same instrument. The album begins with a hefty dose of Chopin, a mixture of fluttering virtuoso pieces and sensitively played nocturnes, rounded off with a piece originally by Chopin but later rearranged by Liszt, linking the different pieces rather than simply plonking them together. Similarly, the Liszt piece included here is a work from very late in the composer’s life which anticipated the kind of music which closes the album – the impressionism of Maurice Ravel. Gaspard de la Nuit is Ravel’s greatest work, and one of the most ridiculously challenging in all piano music, but Grosvenor breezes through it effortlessly. More playing of this quality in the future will certainly justify comparisons with his hero and fellow prodigy Evgeny Kissin.

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“Fun” isn’t a word that people automatically put together with classical music, and neither, for that matter, is “Jazz”, but George Gershwin is the greatest exception to this rule. Gershwin’s classical compositions aren’t particularly numerous – like Mozart, Mendelssohn, Chopin and others he died before reaching 40 – but almost all of them are fantastic. A couple of the best of them, Rhapsody in Blue and the Piano Concerto are included here along with a generous helping of other pieces, including extracts from his opera Porgy & Bess – better known as the origin of standards like ‘Summertime’ and ‘I Loves you Porgy’, and a milestone in 20th century music, both classical and popular. Rhapsody in Blue appears hear in its original jazz band arrangement, and Chailly and the orchestra bring so much joy to their performance that it’s almost impossible to dislike it. The concerto, which can sound awful in the wrong hands, is also thoroughly convincing, biting and incisive, without being rushed.

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Two of my favourite Mozart concertos, played straightforwardly, well, and without fuss. It’s a simple as that. Hélène Grimaud has overcome terrible illness, disputes with ‘superstar’ conductors and occasional snobbery and sexism in the classical world, to steadfastly and repeatedly demonstrate her considerable abilities as a pianist. People can get very picky about interpretation, especially with their favourite composers, but I really couldn’t care less. “Oh, the slow movement is too slow!” “It’s too Romantic!” “Play the original cadenza!”. These things really don’t matter as much as some people think they do. These are great performances – Grimaud puts in a few of her own choices and enough of her personality, but Mozart always remains in the foreground, and is never subordinated to the needs of the performers. Concerto No. 19 in particular, which contains one of the composer’s most brilliant and structurally complex finales, really shines here, thanks again in no small part to the outstanding Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Sandwiched between the two concertos is a beautiful concert aria which also includes a beguiling mixture of piano and voice. Hopefully Grimaud will continue down this well-worn, but always rewarding path.

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At first sight, the tracklisting to this album looks intimidating, made up exclusively of Eastern European composers from the 20th and 21st centuries. Admittedly, some of the music on this album is intentionally terrifying, but that doesn’t mean that it’s inaccessible. Batiashvili, accompanied by the nimble Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra begins with a stunning performance of Shostakovich’s first violin concerto – a true modernist masterpiece which shudders back and forth between quiet, creeping horror and frenzied panic. But this is not just fear for its own sake – this concerto could not be performed at the time it was composed, because of ‘anti-formalist’ persecution of artists in Russia at the time, and is one of the composer’s many expressions of the constant dread inspired by totalitarianism. Batiashvili’s own family fled Georgia during the collapse of the Soviet Union, a fact which adds poignancy and integrity to this performance. The BRSO also do full justice to Shostakovich’s colourful orchestration and rhythmic challenges. Also included is a haunting piece by contemporary Georgian composer Giya Kancheli for orchestra, solo violin and voice, alongside Estonian Arvo Pärt’s minimalist classic Spiegel im Spiegel – seemingly disparate pieces united by a shared sense of history.

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The Brahms violin concerto is not just one of the pinnacles of writing for the instrument, it’s also one of the great pieces of classical music in general. Getting it right requires formidable technical ability, emotional range and passion, and the ability to get right inside the music, to understand it in every detail. Isabelle Faust posses all of these things and more, and has been going from strength to strength in recent years, charging through a wide range of repertoire with apparent ease. The Mahler Chamber Orchestra, like the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, whose performances I recently highlighted with regard to Brahms, lend a dexterous lightness to a composer who can so easily be misunderstood as dense and heavy, but also punch far above their weight in terms of volume – they play, as Bob Dylan would say, fucking loud. The pairing of this concerto with Brahm’s little-played but rich and multifaceted second string sextet is also ingenious, and shows off Faust’s versatility as a performer.

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You might be able to tell just from looking at the extensive list of performers for this release that this work requires fairly substantial forces to perform it. Several hundred people are usually needed for this Requiem, including four offstage brass groups alongside the usual orchestra. Indeed, the composer Hector Berlioz stipulated that the choir alone could include eight hundred people if necessary. While Paul McCreesh hasn’t quite gone to those extremes, he has nonetheless assembled a vast ensemble, but manages to keep this huge and unwieldy work tightly under control, making it sound clean and carefully organised. McCreesh highlights the climactic moments in spectacular fashion but also displays considerable attention to detail in the many slow moments which permeate this sombre piece. Berlioz is one of the most underrated composers in history, and the difficulties of this work mean it is not performed often, but this interpretation makes it manageable.

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Emmanuel Pahud is the principal flute player for one of the world’s best orchestras, the Berlin Philharmonic, but also finds time to pursue a busy solo career. Earlier this year I saw him perform an incredibly virtuosic flute concerto by contemporary French composer Marc-André Dalbavie, but this release sees Pahud returning to what was perhaps the instrument’s golden age – the 18th century. In case you’re wondering, the title of this generous double album is not self-aggrandizement on Pahud’s part, but rather a reference to one of history’s most musical monarchs – Frederick the Great of Prussia, himself an accomplished flautist and composer. The works featured here come from Frederick himself and composers at his court – most importantly three pieces by CPE Bach, eldest son of JS Bach, whose own ‘Musical Offering’, written in Frederick’s honour, also appears on the disc. Pahud shines in the chamber pieces but is also brilliantly backed up by the authoritative presence of Trevor Pinnock and the Kammerakadamie Potsdam.

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Mainstream media has, for the most part, banished classical music altogether, or at least relegated it to the position of a fringe activity. Occasionally, however, it takes an interest when some fragment of manuscript paper surfaces in the depths of a dusty archive, and is met with wild claims like “New Mozart masterpiece discovered!”. Such claims rarely stand up to scrutiny, but in the case of this choral work by the 16th century composer Alessandro Striggio, which was thought to have been lost forever, a genuinely great work has been rediscovered. But this isn’t just another example of what Alex Ross has eloquently termed “classical music’s wax-museum strategy.” Forty independent vocal parts mingle and overlap in a vast wall of sound punctuated by plosive syllables, whispers and murmurs in Latin. I Fagiolini are an ensemble of Early Music specialists cherry-picked from groups all over Europe, and deliver a brilliant, austere and hauntingly beautiful performance. The more famous work ‘Spem in Alium’, by English composer Thomas Tallis, which was profoundly influenced by Striggio’s work, has also been thoughtfully included, and is worth hearing even if you don’t like Early Music.

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Having recently completed his gargantuan project to record all thirty-two Beethoven piano sonatas (that’s about half a day of a continuous music) the prodigiously talented Ludwig van lookalike Paul Lewis decided, instead of giving his fingers a rest, to embark upon another insane completist project. For the last year or so, Lewis has focused almost exclusively on one of Beethoven’s few serious challengers in the field of sonatas – Franz Schubert. It can be easy for concert pianists to get stuck in the stylistic mindset of a particular composer, but Lewis has moved effortlessly and sensitively into the more relaxed, languid and intimate world of Schubert, as well as casting much-needed light on the composer’s lesser-known, but wonderful, earlier sonatas. This release also includes several spritely renditions of the composer’s best-loved freestanding piano pieces – the impromptus and klavierstücke, which stand up well beside those of Lewis’ Schubertian mentor, Alfred Brendel.

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I am a Beethoven freak, so this ranking should come as no great surprise. Nevertheless, no other release can match the ambition and scale of this symphonic cycle, which clocks in at more than six hours in length, and also throws in all of Beethoven’s overtures as an added bonus. Chailly’s interpretations are crisp, punchy and dynamic, and the LGO (one of the finest and oldest ensembles in a country which is not exactly short on orchestral excellence) are superb. Beethoven’s symphonies are some of the most popular and frequently recorded in the entire repertoire, but these recordings are refreshing, with the tempo of every movement judiciously chosen, bringing the performances closer to the composer’s intentions without too much dogmatic insistence on period accuracy, and careful attention paid even to the “lesser” works. All in all, consistently excellent recordings which compare favourably to those made by Chailly’s LGO predecessor, Kurt Masur.

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Honourable mentions (and I’m sure I’ve missed out dozens of deserving albums here) must go to: Ensemble Plus Ultra for their extensive recordings of the work of Spanish Renaissance composer Tomás Luis de Victoria, yet another composer with an anniversary this year, Gustavo ‘The Dude’ Dudamel’s recordings of Bruckner, Sibelius and Nielsen with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, James Ehnes’ Bartok recordings, Simon Rattle’s pairing of Schoenberg and Brahms, Andreas Staier’s renditions of CPE Bach’s keyboard concertos, Pappano’s version of Rossini’s Stabat Mater, Hilary Hahn and Valentina Lisitsa’s album of Ives’ violin sonatas, Naxos’ nice compilation of a concerto and other works by the relatively obscure composer John Ireland, and Steven Osborne’s collection of Ravel’s piano music.

I can’t pretend to speak with much authority on works by living composers, and if the history of classical music teaches us anything it’s that critics are almost always wrong, but I will recommend: ‘Landscapes’ by Toshio Hosokawa, ‘Seeing is Believing’ by Nico Muhly, Ann-Sophie Mutter’s recording with the New York Philharmonic of works by Wolfgang Rihm and Sebastian Currier, ‘Night’s Black Bird’ by Harrison Birtwistle, and lastly the London Steve Reich Ensemble’s recording of the Different Trains and other works.

And finally, don’t forget to watch the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Day concert on… er … New Year’s Day. It’s what all the cool kids will be doing!

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