RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR

Award-winning discs

Recording of the Year

Brahms The Symphonies Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra / Riccardo Chailly Decca M c 478 7471 (10/13)

Against robust competition in the Orchestral category from Abbado’s Bruckner First and Petrenko’s Shostakovich Fourth – either of which would have made a worthy alternative winner – my theory is that Chailly’s Brahms cycle with the Gewandhaus Orchestra snuck past the winning post because of Chailly’s rare talent for transforming the utterly familiar into music ripe for rediscovery: you can’t help but take notice. The landscape is re-primed and mapped afresh. Familiar landmarks have the accumulated expressive debris of nearly a century of recorded history swept away. Your wits are sharpened; you listen again. For Chailly, all music must aspire to be ‘new music’ again.

Marenzio Primo libro di madrigali La Compagnia del Madrigale Glossa F GCD922802 (10/13) ‘These enthralling performances compelled my jaw to drop on numerous occasions in response to hearing astonishing chiaroscuro details and expressive sonorities.’

CPE Bach ‘Württemberg’ Sonatas Mahan Esfahani hpd Hyperion F CDA67995 (2/14) ‘A modern artist who interprets CPE Bach’s music according to his own feelings; and revitalises the spirit of empfindsamkeit for our time.’

CPE Bach Magnificat Soloists; RIAS Chamber Choir; Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin / HansChristoph Rademann Harmonia Mundi F HMC90 2167 (4/14) ‘Here is a CPE Bach release to stand for the efforts of all who have cherished the 300th anniversary of his birth this year.’

‘Volodos plays Mompou’ Arcadi Volodos pf Sony Classical F 88765 43326-2 (8/13) ‘Occasionally a record is of such quality that it makes reviewing a selfdefeating process. Rarely in my experience as a critic have I heard playing as transcendental as on Arcadi Volodos’s Mompou CD.’

Schubert String Quartet No 14, ‘Death and the Maiden’. String Quintet Pavel Haas Quartet with Danjulo Ishizaka vc Supraphon M b SU4110-2 (10/13) ‘The lasting impression is of the great humanity of their playing: this is warm, emotional, direct in the best Czech tradition.’

Mozart Requiem Soloists; Dunedin Consort / John Butt Linn F Í CKD449 (5/14) ‘At a stroke we are taken back to that day in December 1791, when the late composer’s stunned colleagues and friends gathered to perform what they could of his final testament.’

Schubert Winterreise Jonas Kaufmann ten Helmut Deutsch pf Sony Classical F 88883 79565-2 (5/14) ‘A haunting, ultimately engulfing performance from tenor-of-the moment Jonas Kaufmann. No tenor in the cycle bar Jon Vickers has fielded more tonal splendour.’

‘Arise, my Muse’ Iestyn Davies counterten Richard Egarr hpd et al Wigmore Hall Live M WHLIVE0065 (5/14) ‘Iestyn Davies’s second Wigmore Live disc sees the countertenor joined by a crack team of early instrumentalists for a vivid tour of Restoration London.’

Prokofiev Piano Concertos Nos 1-5 Jean-Efflam Bavouzet pf BBC Philharmonic / Gianandrea Noseda Chandos M b CHAN10802 (3/14) ‘An evening spent with this marvellous set is tantamount to journeying from late Romanticism to spiky modernism.’

Ravel L’heure espagnole. L’enfant et les sortilèges Soloists; Glyndebourne Chorus; LPO / Kazushi Ono Fra Musica F ◊ FRA008 (11/13) ‘The LPO’s razorsharp playing from the pit under Kazashi Ono mirrors the precise, conversational exchanges of a cast.’

32 GRAMOPHONE RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR 2014

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Benjamin Written on Skin Soloists; Orchestra of the Royal Opera House / George Benjamin Opus Arte F ◊ OA1125D (4/14) ‘Written on Skin has already conquered opera houses across Europe. Now the DVD will afford repeated viewings of this many-layered opera at home.’

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