Your Favourite Purchases & Musical Discoveries of 2020

[vandermolen]

Fantastic selection of composers, Olivier. I love most of them. As for VW's symphonies, such a magnificent cycle couldn't go unnoticed for your listening experience. When I heard his symphonies for the first time I was instantly receptive to his idiom.

+1

[Iota]

 A few favourite discoveries for me this year:


Oleg Marshev playing Prokofiev piano sonatas.

Konstantin Lifschitz's piano recording of Bach's Musical Offering.

De Leeuw recordings of Satie piano music (revelatory to me).


The singing of the early music group La Compagnia del Madrigale has really wowed me.

Takemitsu, Boulez seemed to become even more vividly intense for me than they were before, and Ives has certainly become more important.

And Antoine Brumel's Missa et ecce terrae motus (Huelgas Ensemble, Paul Van Nevel) was a lovely discovery.


I don't know if this counts as a discovery, but I think lockdown has brought me even closer to music, which was a gratefully received experience.

[Mirror Image]

Takemitsu, Boulez seemed to become even more vividly intense for me than they were before, and Ives has certainly become more important.

Excellent to read. I love all of these composers.

[Iota]

Excellent to read. I love all of these composers.

Yes a mighty appealing trio. The first two in particular seem like endless Aladdin's Caves, and there's something about Ives attitude to life that shines through in his music that I really like.

[Mirror Image]

Yes a mighty appealing trio. The first two in particular seem like endless Aladdin's Caves, and there's something about Ives attitude to life that shines through in his music that I really like.

Yes, indeed.

[71 dB]

Last cds out shrink plastic wrap:

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Handel - Complete Italian cantatas for bass - Batzdorfer Hofkapelle - Raimund Nolte

The Quartetto G minor HWV 404 is especially enjoyable. 

[Todd]

An easy first choice:








Everything about this trio of big boxes is top notch.  Instrumental contributions, singing, sound: all is as good as it gets for early Baroque.  Anyone who doubts the composer's greatness would be converted after this.  Of special note is sound quality, which through speakers is perfect, and then through headphones is even more perfect.  Whoever mastered the recordings did a, well, masterful job.

Some other more than notables:

Schumann - Fantasy, Kreisleriana, Arabeske; Yeol Eum Son (Onyx)
Beethoven - Beethoven Around the World; Quatour Ebene (Warner)
Beethoven - Symphonies 1-5; Savall (Alia Vox)
Beethoven - Symphonies 1-3, etc; Adès (Signum)
Beethoven - Violin Concerto; Patricia Kopatchinskaja (Naive)
Beethoven - Complete Piano Sonatas - Minsoo Sohn (Sony)
Reflecting Beethoven - Herbert Schuch (Cavi)
Italian Inspirations - Alessio Bax (Signum)
Rachmaninoff - Piano Works; Sergei Babayan (DG)
Schubert - Sonatas I; William Youn (Sony)
Cherubini - Masses, etc; Muti (Warner)
The Long 17th Century - Daniel-Ben Pienaar (Avie)
Chopin - The Piano Concertos; Benjamin Grosvenor (Decca)
Entre Orient & Occident - Virgil Boutellis-Taft / Guillaume Vincent (Evidence)

[not edward]

Seeing this thread has reminded me that I've been listening to a lot of new music in the last year: all the discs that stand out for me are primarily focused on the contemporary.

Absolutely no doubt in my mind about the best new recording I've heard this year: Liza Lim's Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus. Lim has been a fine composer for a long time now, but this work feels to me like the masterpiece that her recent compositions (such as How Forests Think) have been pointing towards. The final movement is one of those extraordinary one-of-a-kind set pieces that show up every now and then in music history, but the whole work has deeply impressed me.

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I'd add a couple of recordings that would have been my joint disc of the year but for the competition:

Another composer making huge strides forward in my estimation is Clara Iannotta. Earthing, her disc of string quartets as played by the JACK Quartet, shows this very well: the two earlier quartets are fine essays in sonic exploration in the tradition of the likes of Lachenmann and Schnebel, but the title work and the extraordinary You Crawl over Seas of Granite add something new, a cavernous, doom-laden sound that feels like it's taking up where the best of Nono's late electro-acoustic works left off.

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And of course I'm going to include Grisey's Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil, another outing for one of the great 20th century song cycles, with the voice of Barbara Hannigan. And there's a pretty good Haydn symphony reading tacked on to it.

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[Mirror Image]

I think this thread has already been created...anyway, I really haven't bought a whole lot this year. I would say that this Mahler set was worth every penny:



Another notable purchase was buying all of the George Crumb and Elliott Carter series on Bridge Records. I still have yet to dig into these recordings, but hopefully soon.

[ritter]

Purchases this year that stand out:


Having all of Berio's Chemins pieces together highlights the unity of this cycle (regardless of the fact that the composition dates span more than 30 years, and each piece derived from—widely differing from each other—Sequenze for solo instruments). The performances by the WDR forces from Cologne (under several conductors, including Peter Eötvös) are exemplary.
———————

Two great Milhaud discs:

Some great chamber music here, in committed performances.


Two well-known, and two quite obscure works in the program; of the latter,  Le carnaval de Londres is a blast!
———————


Michael Gielen in repertoire he excelled in. A treasure trove.
——————


Just starting to explore this collection of Peter Serkin's recordings, but so far there's some seriously good stuff in here.
——————


A stunning performance by Marianne Crebassa and Fazil Say of the unusual piano version of Shéhérazade, in an intelligently constructed program (even if I was not won over by the composition by Say himself that closes it).

[Brahmsian]

Not favourite purchases, but rather, favourite discoveries of 2020:

Franck's Symphony in D minor (via an early 2020 live performance I attended of the WSO with Matthias Bamert conducting)

Kalinnikov's Symphony No. 1 in G minor (via local Classical radio station - Kuchar conducting the Ukrainian National Symphony Orchestra)

Both works blew me away upon hearing them!  I guess I'll crosspost this on the "Music that has blown you away recently" thread. 

[Sergeant Rock]

Bought very few recordings this year but what I have bought these are my favorites:






Sarge

[springrite]

Damase: Symphony
Andreae: Symphony
Wetz: Symphony 2
Finn Mortensen: Symphony

[Daverz]

I have to admit to a bad case of musical indigestion this year.  I sampled widely and greedily but need to spend more time actually absorbing what I discovered.

However, some standouts from the general tidal glut:

Composer Discoveries:  Tonu Korvits and Jonathan Leshnoff.  Korvits is somewhat in the Baltic tradition of Pärt, but unpretentious and unabashedly beautiful.   Leshnoff harks back the mid-20th Century American symphonic tradition.



Also lots of new stuff on Toccata Classics: John Keeley, Herman Galynin, Steve Elcock, Alexander Brincken.



In new recordings of "old" music:

Marek Stilec's completion of his Fibich cycle and the start of a Novak cycle. 



Frabrice Bollon's conclusion to his Magnard cycle. 



Rafael Wallfisch's new recordings of cello concertos by Ben-Haim and Weinberg. 



Paavo Järvi's Schmidt Symphony cycle.



Belated artist discoveres: fabulous CPE Bach symphonies from Riccardo Minasi and Ensemble Resonanz (Wq. 182 & 183); and Cafe Zimmermann in 4 symphonies from Wq. 182.

[T. D.]

 
 

[Carlo Gesualdo]

Hard one because I did not buy a tone of record I would have to go whit the graindelavoix ensemble and there Gesualdo it were quite impressive even If I heard this work zillion of time Tenebrae responsoria always a great listen, quite captivating, quite bold and daring , I like it a lot, but beside Gesualdo I really Like Cristobal de morales by ensemble Capella del ministers, under the direction of Carles Magraner.

Hello QUE     

[SurprisedByBeauty]

After skipping last year, I can contribute to this. Just finished my list yesterday.


ionarts : Best Recordings of 2020



https://ionarts.blogspot.com/2020/12/best-recordings-of-2020.html

[Que]

[...] but beside Gesualdo I really Like Cristobal de morales by ensemble Capella del ministers, under the direction of Carles Magraner.

Hello QUE   

Oh yes! 

[vandermolen]

Two nice discoveries for me this year:

[Papy Oli]

These items stand out in my musical year  (Technically the first two were bought in late 2019 but enjoyed thoroughly this year.



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and this very recent arrival to offset this British onslaught