"Want list" for 2011

[mjwal]

This is not quite the same thing as snypyrr's "Musical discoveries" as I am merely noting recordings that I have purchased or "found" this year, the majority of which (I think) were also issued this year. I have borrowed Fanfare's name for it - I could also call it "Recordings I enjoyed in 2011". I am also not restricting myself to a certain number.

Beethoven Opp.109-111: Penelope Crawford (Conrad Graf f-p); Musica Omnia
Some amazing instrumental effects that change one's perception of the music in some respects, renewing the tradition.
Birtwistle Night's Black Bird etc: The Hallé, c.Wigglesworth; NMC
The Cry of Anubis stands out for me so far, but it is all ripe stuff and will survive, if anything of our time does.
Maxwell Davies Vesalii Icones etc: V.Ceccanti cello, Contempoartensemble c. M.Ceccanti; Naxos
I'm so delighted this has appeared, because so many recordings of his work have vanished from the catalogue until he gets MaxOpus fully operative again. I missed the titular work during the composer's iconoclastic youthful prime in the 60s. With the intrusion of popular music in "The Mocking of Christ", just what one loves to hear from PMD, it really revs up; then the following "Christ Receives the Cross" made me feel very queasy indeed, and it grows more hallucinatory/disturbing from that midpoint. The Fantasia and 2 Pavans are delightful stuff, of course, good to hear in new renderings, and Linguae Ignis is a first - mysteriously moving. Hoorah for Naxos!
Feldman Triadic Memories: Fafchamps; reissued by Sub Rosa 2011
This is one great unfathomable masterpiece by Feldman I had yet to discover. I have since heard the Takahashi recording, but it failed to raise my consciousness in the same way. Like proceeding through a labyrinthine sequence of ghost chambers of the mind, each fading away before you can place where they're really at.
Harvey The Angels etc:Latvian Radio Choir & var.instrumentalists, c.Putnins and Wood; Hyperion
Harvey is another composer I have been renewing my acquaintance with recently. (Not personally: he is the only composer I have ever met face to face, at a university seminar,when he played Mahler's 6th, a work almost totally unknown in England at the time - 196?) I must listen to this again soon. The Summer Cloud's Awakening, the longest work, affected me most, as it is a real head&heart trip.
Ireland Piano Concertoetc: Lenehan p., RLPO, c.Wilson; Naxos
Pleasantly nostalgic English film (in the head) music. I was introduced to the concerto by Antony Hopkins on the defunct 3rd Programme - enjoyed it but have never listened to it since (circa 1960). Ridiculous - it must have been absurd nostalgic sentiment that led me to this complete misjudgment. A second hearing revealed the emptiness & trivial creampuffery of the work.
Katzer Medea in Korinth: Berlin Symphony Orchestra & soloists, c.Zimmermann; Arte Nova
Katzer is an East German composer I have been discovering in dribs and drabs for a year or two; hitherto I have liked his music for tape and/or radio best, but this - to a libretto by the late Christa Wolf and her husband - has a powerfully cumulative effect, with its revisionist view of the mythical material. It has been available for a few years but missed by me till this summer.
Mahler 6th Symphony: Israel PO, c.Dorati; Helicon
I am an adherent of Mitropoulos and Barbirolli in this work, different as they are, but Dorati has opened my ears and inner eye to the full variety of distorted figures and "grelle Farben", reminiscent of the visions of Beckmann and Dix; I hear the new world of the 20th mockingly assimilating the old - but this is mere slapdash suggestion, I agree. It sounds totally stringent (and somehow structuralist) to my ears and avoids the splurgy emotionality that can sometimes get on one's (if not your) wick (no names, no pack drill).
Mozart Divertimento/Trio K.563: Kraggerud vln., Tomter vla., Richter cello; Naxos
This has considerable character, more so that the estimable but very smooth (I am an hairy man...) Grumiaux version or that (more anonymous) by others I also have in another place. It is one of Mozart's most charming works, transcendently so, but hear the complexity of affect in that Andante - could be a music for Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night.
Ravel Complete music for violin and piano + Lekeu Sonata:Ibragimova vln, Tiberghien p.; Hyperion
Dazzling playing, and I loved the dreamy passionate Lekeu, which was new to me - though I won't give up my Szigeti in the Ravel sonata.
Reynolds Process and Passion: Menzies vln., Livingston cello; Pogus
This has gripped and rejoiced me, especially on the second hearing, when I put the headphones on and received the full richness of the binaural presentation on the 2nd disc: the third (titular) piece, combining the first two and utilising electronics, blew me away, as they used to say. Outta sight!
I am leaving this forum now.