Your Favourite Purchases of 2011

[jlaurson]

Best (Classical) Recordings of 2011:

(under construction; add to the appropriate thread if there is one)

Alex Ross: Apex 2011

Time Out: The best classical albums of 2011

Chicago Tribune: Best music recordings of 2011 (pic.21 ff)

ionarts:

Best of 2011, Parts 1 - 10

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

2011, the Year of Havergal Brian and Hans Gál










P.S. for Brian: A technicality prevented me from including the Pavel Haas Dvorak: it was released in Germany in 2010.

Sarge

NICE!!

[Que]

I browsed though my posts of 2011, which evoked a lot of happy memories!

Here are my favourite musical discoveries of the year:










And the winner is: the Sweelinck keyboard music set (NM Classics)

Q

[Conor71]

I did'nt buy any 2011 releases but here are my 10 best purchases of this year :


Sibelius: Symphonies - Vanska/Lahti SO
Schumann: Symphonies - Gardiner/ORR
Shostakovich: Symphonies - Barshai/WDR SO
Britten: String Quartets - Belcea Qt
Chopin: Piano Woks - Magaloff
Cherubini: String Quartets - Melos Qt
Beethoven: Piano Trios - Beaux Arts Trio
Ravel/Chausson: Piano Trios - Beaux Arts Trio
Ravel: Piano Works - Argerich
Bruckner: Masses - Jochum/BPO

[Jared]

I did'nt buy any 2011 releases but here are my 10 best purchases of this year :

This is why I haven't posted in this thread... with the wealth of terrific historic recordings to catch up on, how many of us do..

anyway, you've bought some top notch stuff there... must get those Bruckner Masses out again soon... 

[Que]

This is why I haven't posted in this thread...

That's why I bent the rules a bit....(I didn't buy any 2011 releases either)...come on boys & girls - let's have them!!

Q

[vandermolen]

John Kinsella: Symphony 6 and 7
Havergal Brian: Symphony No 10 (and the Gothic)
Herrmann: Moby Dick (Barbirolli Soc. and Chandos)
Casella: symphonies 2 and 3 etc
Ince: The Fall of Constantinople
Ben Haim: Symphony No 1 etc.

[kishnevi]

My problem is that there's a lot of recordings I liked, and it would be hard to pick among them.  Even more importantly, a substantial chunk of them are still in the listen to pile, which means i don't know yet if they may become favorites.

Can I report back in, say, three months, after I've actually heard them all?

[Mirror Image]

I'm with Jeffrey Smith on this one. My listening pile is just so large. But I can report on a few I've really enjoyed so far:

Part 1 -

[Mirror Image]

Favorite purchases of 2011, Part 2:

[milk]

[Willoughby earl of Itacarius]

[vandermolen]

Here are a couple more purchases which I have really enjoyed:
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I know that people can be quite snooty about Hovhaness but I really liked the short 'Song of the Sea' for Piano and Strings - with its hymn like craggy piano chords, reminding me a bit of Vaughan Williams + The Exile Symphony is another favourite of mine. The CD would make a great introduction to Hovhaness.

[North Star]

Hamelin Liszt
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Reissues

Raekallio's Prokofiev
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Biondi & Europa Galante: Boccherini 2 CD-set.
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[MDL]

[TheGSMoeller]

Favorite (Not Released in) 2011 Purchases




Favorite (Released in) 2011 Purchase

[Elgarian]

Favourite purchases of 2011 (regardless of release date):



What a breakthrough. I remain deaf to the pleasures of Pinnock's Mozart symphonies, so I wasn't going to rush to buy more Pinnock. And I'd been not taking Haydn seriously for decades. So why did I buy this box last January? I truly can't remember, but when I listened to it, walls fell down, windows flew open wide, and my Haydnistic road to discovery began.




This was a new release of 2011. And I already had most of Elgar's electrical recordings scattered about on records here and there, collected individually over the years. But this - to have them all together, presented so beautifully - this was irresistible.




Haydn's 1st cello concerto was my biggest single music discovery of 2011, and this was the recording that did the job.  It got under my skin almost immediately, and I've since played the surface off this CD. I bought another version, also on period instruments (Suzuki/Kuijken), but no. This is The One. The most beautiful thing to hit my ears this year.




Released just a couple of months ago. I never expected this would happen. And even supposing it might, I never expected the remasterings, of recordings taken from Elgar's personal copies of the 78s, to sound so wonderful. What a treasure.




Ah, Scheherazade. I wore the grooves out of my HMV Concert Classics LP (Kletzki) when I was a mere lad, and when I threw away all my vinyl, Scheherazade was one of the old favourites that I felt I'd not  want to listen to again - I'd just hammered it to death. So I didn't attempt to replace it; and when one day I thought maybe I ought to have one after all, I bought the Naxos version (whatever it is), played it once, and put it away, thinking, alas, Scheherazade works no more for me.

But thank goodness for second thoughts. Last week I decided to try Beecham's Scheherazade, and ordered one, on a whim. Ye gods! It blew me out of my chair! Even the memory of Kletzki's now deleted recording couldn't stand against this. Which all goes to prove that .... well, you never can know. Scheherazade is once again one of my favourite pieces of music, and I'm currently wondering whether I'd ever heard it properly in those distant days when it used to be a favourite.

[Lethevich]

[asin]B000005IGS[/asin]

I will have to try this when the opportunity presents itself. A GMG member sent a sample of one of the movements to me several years back (I think the guy with the 3D model of someone playing a guitar as an avatar - sad that I forget his name) and the choral element was exceptionally beautiful. It's a bit of a shame how obscure this composer and disc are, as from what I could make out, the music is more interesting than a lot of what, say, Ondine has recorded recently.

Edit: good grief this is so much cheaper on Amazon US than UK - Americans, take notice.

[The new erato]

Here's to hoping that Warner does something sensible woth the cast catalogue of Finnish music they obtained when they purchased Finlandia (along with Erato). Nothing has (more or less) been reissued since except for (I think) a couple of Apex discs of odds and ends.

[jlaurson]

Best (Classical) Recordings of 2011:

(under construction; add to the appropriate thread if there is one)

Alex Ross: Apex 2011

Time Out: The best classical albums of 2011

Chicago Tribune: Best music recordings of 2011 (pic.21 ff)

ionarts:

Best of 2011, Parts 1 - 10

Ok... this is slightly delayed, but something always got in between: My self-imposed-rule-skirting "2011 Almost List" with Tveitt, Weinberg, Rota, and other good stuff:



Best Recordings of 2011 - "Almost List"
http://ionarts.blogspot.de/2012/04/best-recordings-of-2011-almost-list.html