Best of 2014 - Classical Music Edition (recordings/performances)

[North Star]

I also thought perhaps we can add a list of your favorite live performances if you attended any.

I attended fewer conserts than I would have liked, but these three are definitely the highlights:

Johannes Gustavsson / Oulu SO: Brahms: PC2 (Paavali Jumppanen) & Symphony no. 1
Johannes Gustavsson / Oulu SO: Stravinsky Symphonies of Wind Instruments, Hartmann Concerto funebre (Réka Szilvay) & LVB 3rd
Johannes Gustavsson / Oulu SO: Nielsen VC (Alina Pogostkina) & Sibelius 3rd

[TheGSMoeller]

I have to add one more 2014 release that I just recently purchased.
I've been pretty stale on recent Zarathustra recordings, feels like it's been a while since I've heard a newer performace of the piece that really struck me. The Roth/Strauss series is turning out to be a good one, but this is the first truly great entry. A real fresh reading that seems to objectively focus on the overall pacing and connection of the various movements. I'm a huge admirer of Sinopoli's larger than life rendition with the heavy-sounding forces of the New York Phil, so I was surprised that Roth & Co. struck me so much. But in the struggle of composer vs. conductor it seems Roth is taking a back seat here allowing Strauss' score to do all the talking. I would also be inclined to call the orchestra's playing as flawless, effortlessly adjusting between the lighter and darker tones of the work.
Oh yeah, and an excellent Aus Italian is added. This disc now makes me anxious to hear their Alpine and Domestica, which are hopefully planned.

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[ritter]

I previously posted 5 CDs (new or reissued in 2014)...now the top 5 gigs I attended this year:

1) Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen at Bayreuth (August 10 to 15). This was my second Ring on the Green Hill (I saw the Boulez/Chéreau production--as a teenager--in 1979). Kirill Petrenko's handling of the score was IMHO up there with the very best (live or on record), and Frank Castorf's production could be odd or even annoying at moments,  but in the end turned out to be an extraordinarily strong (and successful) theatrical experience.

2) Stanislaw Skrowaczewski conducting the Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia in La Coruña on March 22 in Bruckner's Fourth symphony and Beethoven's First piano concerto (with Francesco Piamontesi as soloist). Music-making in the grand old manner, but of the highest quality. A great concert!

3) Michaël Levinas at Madrid's Fundación BBVA on March 15, playing Beethoven sonatas (Mondschein and No 32), his own Three études and Tristan Murail's Territoires de l'oubli. A great pianist-composer in a program very intelligently combining the "old" and the "new".

4) Peter Eötvös conducting the PluralEnsemble in the Chamber Hall of Madrid's National Auditorium on April 29. The program included two seminal works of the post-WW2 avant-garde (Stockhausen's Kontra-Punkte and Boulez's Improvisations sur Mallarmé 1 & 2), plus two works by Eötvös himself (Steine and Sonata per sei)... Eötvös as composer and conductor is a proud inheritor of the avant-garde tradition established by the legendary names he conducted in the first half of the program.

5) Eliahu Inbal conducting Schoenberg's Gurrelieder with the Spanish National Orchestra and Chorus (the latter reinforced by the Spanish Radio and Television Chorus), at the Symphony Hall of the National Auditorium on November 22. Seeing this mammoth  masterpiece live is quite an experience, and more so under a conductor of the stature of Inbal.

[Mandryka]

This is a short list of recordings I purchased, streamed, or pirated but eventually intend to purchase, in 2014. Most of these are going to be old news but I'm not a collector so whatever.

Tchaikovsky - Serenade for Strings/Suite No. 3 - Kirill Kondrashin This recording will lower your risk of heart disease, increase your sex appeal and improve your car's gas mileage. If you don't know it, listen to it.
Mozart - Violin Sonatas - Rachel Podger & Gary Cooper An endless wellspring of musical treasures. I am strongly tempted to say there are more riches in these 8 cds than in the entire violin repertoire from 1791 to the present day.
Hummel - Piano Trios - Trio Parnassus Hummel's inspiration is at its peak in these works, which compare favourably with Haydn's London Trios and Beethoven's Op. 1. If you have to have only one Hummel recording, this one puts the BAT in the shade, no mean feat in itself.
Weber - Piano Sonatas - Michael Endres And if you have to have only one Weber recording... Well you should probably go for one of the operas in that case, or his finest non-operatic work the Konzertstück in F minor, but nowhere else will you find the solo piano music of Weber played in a manner so attentive to its strengths and shortcomings. And there are a lot of the former, quite few of the latter.
Shostakovich - Complete String Quartets - St Petersburg Quartet Yes, I've since found recordings of many of the quartets I like better (most of the time by the Taneyev Quartet) but what the St Petersburg crew brought was freshness; a sense of hearing the works for the first time. And that's not a freshness that has gone away with subsequent listenings. These are performances that are profoundly alive (or profoundly dead, in the case of the B-flat minor quartet) that served to re-awaken my long-dead interest in Shostakovich. An essential cycle for the DSCH fan I think.
Ferneyhough - Complete String Quartets & Trios - Arditti Quartet I know for sure this one's a 2014 release as I pre-ordered it. Kaleidoscopic, endlessly fascinating music, presented in its best and most accomplished performances to date. Not much more needs to be said.
Holliger - String Quartet No. 1, Die Jahreszeiten, Chaconne - v/a I think I might have heard every Holliger recording out there. This one remains the pick of the lot, mostly for the 1st Quartet, which is one of the most intense, impassioned and ultimately inward works in a form that's all about intensity and passion and inwardness. It is the ideal discmate to Beethoven's Op. 131 and probably close to it in musical quality.
Sciarrino - Cantare con silenzio, Berceuse, Libro notturno delle voci - Mario Caroli, Tokyo Philharmonic etc Every Sciarrino piece is a miniature world, circumscribed by its own particular set of physical laws. I don't know if this is a new release or I just hadn't seen it before, but the works on it were definitely new to me and are examples of the late-20th-century stylus phantasticus at its best. The Berceuse is one of my favourite things now, I have no idea how I managed to avoid it for so long.
Biber - Rosary Sonatas - Daniel Sepec There are, apparently, a lot of recordings of these pieces. I hadn't heard any of them before 2014. This one was the biggest standout—extraordinary performances of extraordinary music. Eduard Melkus is my runner-up, for what that's worth.
Brahms - Violin Concerto, String Sextet No. 2 - Isabelle Faust Never liked the Brahms concerto until I listened to this recording. Still don't like it when I listen to e.g. Heifetz, Milstein, Menuhin or Szeryng. But Izzy absolutely nails it from first note to last. And you can never have too many recordings of the String Sextet No. 2
Schubert - String Quintet, Der Hirt auf dem Felsen - Marlboro 40th Anniversary Couldn't not mention a D956

Also shoutouts to anything András Schiff has recorded on ECM, Michael Finnissy's The History of Photography in Sound and Bartók/Eötvös/Ligeti by Patricia Kopatchinskaja

Lots of violin music this year, for some reason. Also lots of standard rep, almost no new music. Don't know why. :<

What is this Holliger recording you're talking about? I'd be interested in what you have to say about History of Photography in Sound, since it sounds like you're enjoying it.

The obvious competition for Mozart's violin music is Kurtag's - Kafka Fragments.

[milk]

[milk]

[jlaurson]

The 10 Best Classical Recordings Of 2014 (Reissues)

It's fair to say to say that such "Best-Of" lists are inherently daft if one clings too literally to the idea of "Best." Still, I have been making "Best of the Year" lists for classical music since 2004, when working at Tower Records gave me a splendid oversight (occasionally insight) of the new releases and of the re-releases that hit the classical music market. Since then, I've kept...

The 10 Best Classical Recordings Of 2014 (New Releases)

All year one wonders what 10 recordings really deserve to be included in such a list, and wonders if any potential inclusions might not be a stretch. Then, in the last few weeks, suddenly a slew of recordings, late discoveries that might have been lying about for months or weeks, force themselves upon the ears and one could easily extend the list to 20. On the ionarts website I just cheated by creating an "Almost List." Here I will ostentatiously lament

[Ken B]

Queued up!  Later today!

Right now I am listening to my #1 discovery of 2014 (so far!), The Feast of Love by VT. Beautiful in itself and in the way it captures the mood and attitude of the poem.

[Johnll]

The obvious competition for Mozart's violin music is Kurtag's - Kafka Fragments.

Perhaps a bit more virile than Mozart but the times were a changing. Wise cracks aside a great piece.

[milk]

Queued up!  Later today!

Right now I am listening to my #1 discovery of 2014 (so far!), The Feast of Love by VT. Beautiful in itself and in the way it captures the mood and attitude of the poem.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on Fujieda. At first I didn't think much of it. But the more I listened the more I fell in love with it. It seems so effortless.

[Que]

My favourites of 2014:

The year started off on a good food with the purchase of this set:

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Though I can't say everything in there is at the top of my list, the ensemble recordings and the Frescobaldi disc definitely are.
I got a lot of mileage out of this set!


Things even got better with the purchase my my now favorite Mozart fortepiano set:
Perhaps Van Oort's restrained approach of "letting the music speak for itself"  is probably not to everyone's taste, but I love it.

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Then the best Marais I've ever heard - the rumours about these recordings are quite true.

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If the rest of the series is ever reissued in neat box sets, I'll be all over it.

The year was an excellent solo period keyboard year. I repurchased the Clementi recordings by Mastroprimiano as a set and Pieter Jan Belder came up with some awesome CPE Bach - IMO one of the best things he has done so far.

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I need too follow up on Schoonderwoerd's Mozart efforts - though the prospect of collecting thwhole series individually is not attractive...
All the same, this recording was as much of a revelation as his Beethoven concerto recordings:

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Some really great harpsichord discs that came my way:

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[asin]B000027QXW[/asin]	[asin]B000038I6E[/asin]

Some organ picks:

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[asin]B00015OOHE[/asin]	[asin]B002DYLU0U[/asin]
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Some non-keyboard Baroque:

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Some of the best Early Music recordings of the year:

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[asin]B003LUH5OU[/asin]	[asin]B002JP9HLM[/asin]
[asin]B00KFU09OW[/asin]	[asin]B00187AG9E[/asin]
[asin]B001PARXGS[/asin]	[asin]B005UU06E0[/asin]
[asin]B009VPETDO[/asin]	[asin]B000YPW5PY[/asin]
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And the best of the rest: (but certainly not the least!)

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It has been, purchases-wise, a really awesome year (also not purchases wise - the year in which you get married will always be momentous..  ).

Very little real disappointments, only one or two. I guess, with the help of some friends, I got better at picking them.

Q

[Ken B]

I'd love to hear your thoughts on Fujieda. At first I didn't think much of it. But the more I listened the more I fell in love with it. It seems so effortless.

I'm still at stage 1.    but I see what you mean by effortless. I will give it another listen.

[Ken B]

Que

the year in which you get married

Ah, youth.

 

[Que]

QueAh, youth.

 

If that is youth, I hope I never get old! 

Q

[jlaurson]

My favourites of 2014:...the year in which you get married will always be momentous... Very [few] real disappointments

My, my! What heartening news. Congratulations and felicitations and much success and merry marryment, so to say.

[Que]

My, my! What heartening news. Congratulations and felicitations and much success and merry marryment, so to say.

Thank you,  Jens.

Glad to see you posting here more - I've read the listings you posted here with considerable interest. 
Just to mention one personal highlight: I was happy to see the reissue of Mozart's basset clarinet concerto under Frans Brüggen. It has been a long time favourite of mine and I have the feeling it flew under the radar of many - not surprising considering the flood of recordings of this popular work (though rarely performed on an actual basset clarinet).

Though not issued in 2014, I consider Brüggen's recording of the violin concertos as my personal find of the year.

Q