Jonathan Blumhofer
Our classical music critics supply their favorites, albums and concerts, from over the past year.
Though none of the works exhibit the stylistic flashiness of Fernande Decruck’s better-known contemporaries, they all suggest a musician of singular—and sometimes idiosyncratic—vision.
The Arvo Pärt compositions here showcase a composer of remarkable stylistic coherence—but never dramatic complacency or creative stasis.
The album ends up paying dividends, not just for fans and students of 20th-century composition, but for anyone interested in the broader reach and global development of classical music in the last century.
Though Sibelius’s music has come to define whatever Finnish music is supposed to sound like, he certainly wasn’t the country’s only active, turn-of-the-20th-century composer.
“Standard Stoppages” is a veritable cornucopia of sounds experienced in multifarious combinations, showcasing a diversity of fresh, inventive, and satisfyingly expressive voices operating at full tilt.
A new recording of Carl Nielsen’s Symphony No. 5 from the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Edward Gardner captures much of what makes the composer’s writing in it sound so fresh.
Both players are long-time friends and recital partners; the pair thrive on tackling big stylistic and musical contrasts that are tied together by performances that were both interpretively thoughtful and technically accomplished.
How our memoirist and the man who shook Mickey Mouse’s hand crossed paths is characteristic of the author’s good fortune and perseverance.
This is a terrific compendium of new music of the best sort: the kind that’s brilliantly written, expressively direct, played with assurance, and engineered with clarity and warmth.
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