Best Classical CDs By VIVIEN SCHWEITZER, JAMES R. OESTREICH, ANTHONY TOMMASINI and ALLAN KOZINN

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Best Classical CDs By VIVIEN SCHWEITZER, JAMES R. OESTREICH, ANTHONY TOMMASINI and ALLAN KOZINN

The end of the CD era, we have long been told, is near. And it’s true that the onetime flood has narrowed to a flow, sometimes steady, sometimes faltering. But a few major labels and many small ones keep putting out many excellent recordings, as represented by the two dozen examples here, chosen by classical critics of The New York Times as records of the year.
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BACH: ‘ ART OF FUGUE’

Pierre-Laurent Aimard, pianist (Deutsche Grammophon).

In his first Bach recording, the superb French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard demonstrates the same intelligent musicianship that has made him a respected performer of contemporary music. His powerful rendition of Bach’s soulful “Art of Fugue,” both fiery and introspective, illuminates the richness of the counterpoint with potent clarity. VIVIEN SCHWEITZER
'The Art of Fugue, BMV 1080' by Pierre-Laurent Aimard
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BACH, GUBAIDULINA: VIOLIN CONCERTOS

Anne-Sophie Mutter, violinist and conductor; Trondheim Soloists; London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Valery Gergiev (Deutsche Grammophon).

The violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter plays with zest and conducts the Trondheim Soloists in lively performances of two Bach violin concertos (BWV 1041 and 1042). But the real gem here is “In Tempus Praesens,” a luminous and deeply expressive new concerto by Sofia Gubaidulina, performed with the London Symphony led by Valery Gergiev. VIVIEN SCHWEITZER
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BACH, HANDEL: VOCAL WORKS

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, mezzo-soprano; Orchestra of Emmanuel Music, conducted by Craig Smith and John Harbison (Avie).

No year that brings a posthumous release of performances by the mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson can be all bad, and this year brought two. “Lorraine at Emmanuel,” with arias from two Bach cantatas and extended excerpts from Handel’s oratorio “Hercules,” all from the 1990s, is easy to recommend. A later release of Brahms and Schumann song performances from 1999 with the pianist Julius Drake on the Wigmore Hall Live label would have been just as easy. JAMES R. OESTREICH
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BEETHOVEN: PIANO SONATAS, VOLUME 4

Paul Lewis, pianist (Harmonia Mundi France, three CDs).
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BEETHOVEN: PIANO SONATAS, VOLUMES 6-8

Andras Schiff, pianist (ECM New Series, three CDs).

The 32 piano sonatas of Beethoven are bedrocks, perhaps the bedrock, of the piano literature. This year two remarkable pianists have completed multiyear releases of the complete sonatas. Andras Schiff’s survey is available in eight single-disc volumes. Paul Lewis’s set is in four volumes totaling 10 CDs. Mr. Schiff plays with unerring taste and elegance. That nearly all of the individual recordings were taken from live performances enhances the spontaneity of the results. Mr. Lewis brings a combination of keen insight and bold adventure to his work that I find especially exciting. Both projects are major achievements. ANTHONY TOMMASINI
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BERLIOZ: ‘BENVENUTO CELLINI’

Soloists; London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Colin Davis (LSO Live, two CDs).

Berlioz’s unconventional opera “Benvenuto Cellini” curiously mixes the heroic and the farcical. Still, the composer thought it one of his most original scores. Colin Davis is a renowned Berlioz interpreter, and this new recording, taken from live performances with the London Symphony, makes the strongest case for this fascinating work. ANTHONY TOMMASINI
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BRAHMS: CLARINET SONATAS

Jon Manasse, clarinetist; Jon Nakamatsu, pianist (Harmonia Mundi France).

The musicians of the rich New York freelance pool are typically heard in the various standing or pickup orchestras they make up. But Jon Manasse, one of the finest, rightly takes center stage in the two Brahms sonatas, peaks of the clarinet literature, offering warm, sensitive performances. Jon Nakamatsu completes the partnership in the expansive piano parts, so crucial to Brahms’s chamber idiom. JAMES R. OESTREICH
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CARTER: PIANO WORKS

Ursula Oppens, pianist (Cedille).

Elliott Carter’s piano works have had many eloquent champions, but few have tapped into both its poetry and its explosive energy as fully as Ursula Oppens. In this contribution to the Carter centenary, she plays the big works — the Sonata and “Night Fantasies” — as briskly unfolding dramas and illuminates the chiseled pointillism and hard-driven virtuosity in miniatures like “90+” and “Caténaires.” ALLAN KOZINN
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CHOPIN, MOMPOU: PIANO WORKS

Alexandre Tharaud, pianist (Harmonia Mundi France).

The idiosyncratic French pianist Alexandre Tharaud, best known for his luminous collections of Baroque works, proves an inventive, forceful Chopin pianist. But you’ll have to set aside any preconceptions about the Opus 28 Preludes: his assertive traversal is cast in dark hues and grand, ominous gestures. It’s an acquired taste, perhaps, but it affords a thoroughly fresh view of these familiar works. Also included are Chopinesque miniatures by Mompou. ALLAN KOZINN
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GANDOLFI: ‘Y2K COMPLIANT’

Boston Modern Orchestra Project, conducted by Gil Rose (BMOP/sound).

The Boston composer Michael Gandolfi is drawn to both the rigor of the mid-20th-century atonalists and the melodic breadth and textural lushness of the neo-Romantics. The tension between those qualities, along with a wry sense of humor and an ear for striking timbres, makes the works on this disc irresistible; but more striking, the title piece and “Points of Departure” show that angularity can be beautiful. ALLAN KOZINN
'Points of Departure: I. Spirale' by Boston Modern Orchestra Project
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HANDEL: ‘TOLOMEO’

Soloists; Il Complesso Barocco, conducted by Alan Curtis (Deutsche Grammophon Archiv, three discs).

The Handel specialist Alan Curtis leads the ensemble Il Complesso Barocco in a buoyant, colorful and ideally paced performance of “Tolomeo,” Handel’s seldom performed opera about lust, revenge, heartache and false identities. The outstanding cast includes the mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg in the title role and the soprano Karina Gauvin as Seleuce. VIVIEN SCHWEITZER
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KIRCHNER: STRING QUARTETS

Orion String Quartet (Albany).

Leon Kirchner’s four string quartets span 57 years. The First, from 1950, presents a young American awash in Bartok. The Second is steeped in Schoenberg. The Third, incorporating electronic tape, was awarded a 1967 Pulitzer Prize. The Fourth offers an autumnal synthesis of styles. The Orion String Quartet’s brilliant recording anticipates the composer’s 90th birthday next year. ANTHONY TOMMASINI
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LINDBERG: ORCHESTRAL WORKS

Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sakari Oramo (Ondine).

“Sculpture,” “Campana in Aria” for horn and orchestra and the Concerto for Orchestra, three recent harmonically vibrant and sonically adventurous works by the Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg, receive dynamic readings from Sakari Oramo and the Finnish Radio Symphony. VIVIEN SCHWEITZER
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LUTOSLAWSKI, SALONEN, STUCKY: PIANO WORKS

Gloria Cheng, pianist (Telarc).

A recording of six contemporary piano pieces, four of them from the last 10 years, may seem pretty intimidating. But the dynamic pianist Gloria Cheng’s program of works byEsa-Pekka Salonen, Steven Stucky and Witold Lutoslawski is by turns rhapsodically beautiful and utterly exhilarating. You will not believe her account of Mr. Salonen’s crazed and fearsomely difficult “Dichotomie.” ANTHONY TOMMASINI
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MESSIAEN: PIANO WORKS

Pierre-Laurent Aimard, pianist (Deutsche Grammophon).

The formidable French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, a champion of contemporary music, is an ideal performer ofMessiaen’s ecstatic piano works. Indeed, as a teenager, while studying with Messiaen’s wife, Yvonne Loriod, Mr. Aimard was almost a surrogate son to the couple. His “Hommage à Messiaen” on the composer’s centenary includes astonishing performances of works seldom heard. ANTHONY TOMMASINI
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MOZART, SCHUBERT: WORKS FOR TWO PIANOS

Katia and Marielle Labèque, pianists (KML Recordings).

The French duo-pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque, now based in Italy and running their own eclectic record label, play Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos (K. 448) with elegance and vitality. And in Schubert’s “Andantino Varié” (D. 823) their gestures and timbres are so closely matched that they sound like a single player. ALLAN KOZINN
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PURCELL: KEYBOARD SUITES AND GROUNDS

Richard Egarr, harpsichordist (Harmonia Mundi France).

The harpsichordist Richard Egarr reveals the sensuality of little-known keyboard suites by Purcell, a composer known primarily for his songs, stage works and opera. The music, wistfully melodic and full of extravagant ornamentation, is elegantly rendered in Mr. Egarr’s imaginative, sparkling performances. VIVIEN SCHWEITZER
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ALISON BALSOM PLAYS TRUMPET CONCERTOS

Alison Balsom, trumpeter Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, conducted by Thomas Klug (EMI Classics).

Those who associate the trumpet with brash fanfares should listen to Alison Balsom’s poetic renditions of concertos by Hummel, Haydn, Torelli and Johann Baptist Georg Neruda, all performed with a clear, soaring tone, virtuosic technique and elegant phrasing. Ms. Balsom is effectively matched by the vigorous playing of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. VIVIEN SCHWEITZER
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‘D’AMORE’

Garth Knox, violist d’amore; Agnès Vesterman, cellist (ECM New Series).

The combination of the viola d’amore and the cello is magical, and the richness of the recorded sound (a characteristic of Manfred Eicher’s ECM productions) makes this duo sound almost orchestral. More striking still is the program, which moves freely between Baroque and contemporary works, with Garth Knox’s own “Malor Me Bat” (2004) and Marin Marais’s “Folies d’Espagne” (1685) among the highlights. ALLAN KOZINN
'Malor Me Bat' by Garth Knox & Agnès Vesterman
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‘FRANCISCO JAVIER: THE ROUTE TO THE ORIENT’

Hespèrion XXI, Capella Reial de Catalunya, directed by Jordi Savall (Alia Vox, two CDs).

Happily, releases by Jordi Savall, the master violist da gamba and conductor, come out almost by the month on his Alia Vox label. His recordings have been particularly revelatory in exploring possible and proven interchanges between early music in Europe and music of the Middle East. The musical selections in this lush package trace Francis Xavier’s footsteps on his 1594 journey to Japan, where he founded a Jesuit mission, in quick, kaleidoscopic fashion. JAMES R. OESTREICH
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‘GO CRYSTAL TEARS’

Andreas Scholl, countertenor; Julian Behr, lutenist; Concerto di Viole (Harmonia Mundi France).

In this magnificent collaboration, a half dozen elegantly turned lute solos and consort fantasias are interspersed among Andreas Scholl’s nuanced, coloristically flexible accounts of Dowland’s supremely melancholy lute songs and earthier, more exotic works (most notably John Bennet’s exotically chromatic “Venus’ Birds Whose Mournful Tunes”) by Dowland’s contemporaries. ALLAN KOZINN
'Points of Departure: I. Spirale' by Boston Modern Orchestra Project
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‘GODS, KINGS AND DEMONS’

René Pape, bass; Staatskapelle Dresden, conducted by Sebastian Weigle (Deutsche Grammophon).

That the German bass René Pape is one of the most compelling artists to have emerged internationally in the last 15 years is proved again by his phenomenal singing on his new recording of arias by Gounod, Boito, Berlioz,Verdi, Wagner and others. This imaginative program allows Mr. Pape to portray, chillingly, various gods, kings and demons, as the title suggests. ANTHONY TOMMASINI
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‘KAPELL REDISCOVERED’

William Kapell, pianist (RCA Red Seal, two CDs).

Though his career was cut short by his death in an airplane crash in 1953 when he was 31, William Kapell is regarded as one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century. So this two-disc set of recently discovered live performances from his final tour in Australia is a precious addition to his discography. ANTHONY TOMMASINI
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‘WALLED GARDENS’

itsnotyouitsme (New Amsterdam).

Reasonable listeners may disagree as to whether the ambient, post-Minimalist music produced by the duo itsnotyouitsme — Caleb Burhans, violinist, and Grey McMurray, guitarist — is chamber music or rock. But that’s beside the point: these musicians live in both worlds, and their instrumental meditations are structurally fascinating and at times meltingly beautiful. ALLAN KOZINN