Dewa Alit: ‘Likad’
“Chasing the Phantom”; Dewa Alit and Gamelan Salukat (Black Truffle)
This Balinese composer combines two different gamelan scales in his latest project. Just as you start to grasp the harmonic implications, his ensemble begins navigating virtuoso rhythm changes. Recommended if you like innovative tunings, torrid riffing, blooming transitions of percussive color, or hip-hop beat-tapes. SETH COLTER WALLS
Anonymous: ‘Orante Sancta Lucia’
“Mother Sister Daughter”; Musica Secreta; Laurie Stras, director (Lucky Music)
Musica Secreta — its name inspired by the mystery still surrounding works written by and for Renaissance and Baroque women — is pressing into tantalizingly early repertoire from around the turn of the 16th century, including this “Vespers of St. Lucy” and other rare polyphonic settings of psalm antiphons (chants sung alongside psalm verses) believed to have originated in Italian convents. ZACHARY WOOLFE
Bach: ‘Erbarme dich’
“Matthäus-Passion”; Lucile Richardot, mezzo-soprano; Pygmalion; Raphaël Pichon, conductor (Harmonia Mundi)
It’s been a good year for Raphaël Pichon and his period ensemble Pygmalion: critically adored opera stagings and excellent recordings, including one for the pantheon of “St. Matthew Passion” accounts. Hear how, alongside precision, the purity of sound — in the strings, and in Lucile Richardot’s robust yet smooth tone — maintains rending beauty and a softly dancing lilt. JOSHUA BARONE
Beethoven: Variation 24, Fughetta (Andante)
Beethoven: “Diabelli” Variations; Mitsuko Uchida, piano (Decca)
Mitsuko Uchida playing Beethoven: It’s a self-recommending prospect, really. Still, it’s a mark of this pianist’s surpassing artistry that her “Diabellis” prove so unerringly fine. There is elegance, of course, and sensitivity; a wink or two of wit even breaks through, though Uchida is not exactly looking for laughs. What is so striking, rather, is how scrupulously she rethinks each variation, even as she ensures that each finds its rightful place in the whole. DAVID ALLEN
Georges Bizet: ‘La fleur que tu m’avais jetée’
“Arias”; Jonathan Tetelman, tenor; Orquesta Filarmónica de Gran Canaria; Karel Mark Chichon, conductor (Deutsche Grammophon)
On his debut album, Jonathan Tetelman lavishes his sumptuous tenor and almost poetic attention on classic Romantic and verismo arias. For the “Flower Song” from “Carmen,” Tetelman cushions the contours of his phrases, hooks into high notes without breaking the musical line and nails the diminuendo on the high B flat. OUSSAMA ZAHR
Connie Converse: ‘One by One’
“Walking in the Dark”; Julia Bullock, soprano; Christian Reif, piano (Nonesuch)
At last we have a solo album from Julia Bullock. As debuts go, it’s eclectic and understated, and astonishing for its intensity of feeling with such restraint — perhaps most so in “One by One.” This track, by the pioneering but elusive singer-songwriter Connie Converse, is here whispered and prayerful, with the intimacy and elegance of an Ivesian parlor song. JOSHUA BARONE
Anthony Davis: ‘Shoot Your Shot!’
“X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X”; Boston Modern Orchestra Project; Odyssey Opera Chorus; Gil Rose, Conductor (BMOP Sound)
The Highlights of 2022, According to Our Critics
Salamishah Tillet. “In a year when so much, including our democracy, felt topsy-turvy, I was drawn to entertainment that took me out of our real world to another realm.” Keep reading.
In which a young Malcolm Little — not yet surnamed X — receives a tour of Boston while listeners get a sense of what makes Davis one of today’s great opera composers: Simultaneous warmth and apprehension in lines for Malcolm’s sister Ella hint at both spirituals and Berg. Yet her warnings collide with a pool hall hustler’s even more compelling pitch, eloquent and brash in the manner of Mingus. SETH COLTER WALLS
Debussy: ‘Pelléas part ce soir’
“Pelléas et Mélisande”; Vannina Santoni, soprano; Alexandre Duhamel, baritone; Jean Teitgen, bass; Les Siècles; François-Xavier Roth, conductor (Harmonia Mundi)
Closer and closer to our own time stride François-Xavier Roth and the period-instrument players of Les Siècles, and on, too, toward ever more revealing interpretations. Supporting somewhat lighter voices than the norm, Les Siècles’ gut strings and piping winds give Debussy’s more delicate writing a glinting fragility, his outbursts of violence a raw savagery. This is “Pelléas” not as a mystery play, but as an unsparingly forceful drama. DAVID ALLEN
Dvorak and PUBLIQuartet: Improvisations on String Quartet No. 12, Allegro ma non troppo
“What Is American”; PUBLIQuartet (Bright Shiny Things)
Dvorak’s “American” quartet has elicited dozens of winning, faithful recordings. This one has other goals. As the performers improvise around the original material, they attain a communion with Dvorak’s love of Black American music that most other interpreters fail to achieve. SETH COLTER WALLS
Julius Eastman: ‘Stay On It’
“Julius Eastman, Vol. 2: Joy Boy”; Wild Up (New Amsterdam)
The Los Angeles ensemble Wild Up has embarked on a series of recordings of the once-forgotten music of Julius Eastman (1940-90). The second installment closes with the bright party of “Stay On It,” a paean to community that veers between precision and lush chaos: troubled by shadows but ultimately, patiently, quietly triumphant. ZACHARY WOOLFE
Mary Halvorson: ‘Side Effect’
“Amaryllis”; Mary Halvorson Sextet; Mivos Quartet (Nonesuch)
After spending part of the pandemic studying up on string quartet writing, this guitarist and composer collaborated with the Mivos Quartet on two enjoyable albums released this year. For this exultant and meticulously patterned work, Halvorson invited the string quartet into her standing sextet of improvising players, creating her richest ensemble sound yet. SETH COLTER WALLS
Henze: ‘Tristan’s Folly’
“Tristan”; Igor Levit, piano; Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; Franz Welser-Möst, conductor (Sony)
Another astonishing recording from the pianist Igor Levit, “Tristan” is bookended by Liszt and includes dreamlike solo transcriptions of the Adagio from Mahler’s 10th Symphony and Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” Prelude. But the album centers on Hans Werner Henze’s postmodern “Tristan” (1973), which musters piano, tape and orchestra to reckon with the Germanic tradition, furthering Liszt, Wagner and Mahler’s bendings of time and harmony. ZACHARY WOOLFE
Korngold: ‘The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex’ Overture
“Hollywood Soundstage”; Sinfonia of London; John Wilson, conductor (Chandos)
It would be easy to argue that a track from any of the five sensational recordings John Wilson and his elite Sinfonia of London have released this year should be on this list, but every time I play this Korngold, I find it hard to move on to anything else. The virtuosity Wilson lavishes on a composer he is determined to restore to stature is stunning, no matter how many times you hear it. DAVID ALLEN
Andrew McIntosh: ‘Little Jimmy at the End of Winter’
“Little Jimmy”; Yarn/Wire (Kairos)
Named for a campsite in California where Andrew McIntosh made field recordings a few months before it was devastated by a fire, “Little Jimmy” (2020) folds those recordings of birds and wind into alternately shimmering and chalk-hard music for piano-percussion quartet. The natural world is wondrous, McIntosh suggests, but also stark, lonely and fragile, even threatening. ZACHARY WOOLFE
Mendelssohn: String Quartet No. 1, Andante espressivo
Mendelssohn: Complete String Quartets, Vol. 1; Quatuor Van Kuijk (Alpha Classics)
The latest Quatuor Van Kuijk recording, the first in a promised survey of Mendelssohn’s string quartets, is, like the group’s previous outings, vigorously and precisely executed, and — without cluttering affect — expressed with refreshing, sometimes revelatory, straightforwardness. Particularly in the slow movement of the Op. 12 Quartet in E flat, whose direct phrasing has an irresistibly simple, moving sweetness. JOSHUA BARONE
Mozart: Piano Sonata No. 16 in C, Andante
Mozart: The Piano Sonatas; Robert Levin, fortepiano (ECM)
An impossible challenge: Choose a single track from the dozens in Robert Levin’s tirelessly lively, eloquent collection of Mozart’s piano sonatas, recorded on their composer’s own fortepiano. But, to pick almost at random, the slow movement from the “Sonata Facile” (K. 545) demonstrates the sensitivity, sustained legato and dashing embellishments that characterize Levin’s whole, sprawling set. ZACHARY WOOLFE
Mozart and Vikingur Ólafsson: ‘Laudate Dominum’
“From Afar”; Vikingur Ólafsson, piano (Deutsche Grammophon)
Vikingur Ólafsson has emerged in his recordings as not only one of the most thoughtful pianists of our time, but also one of the finest arrangers. Something of anti-Liszt, he humbly translates the essence of each work, such as in his treatment of Mozart’s “Laudate Dominum,” whose flowing melody over an arpeggiated accompaniment could pass for one of the composer’s delicate sonatas. JOSHUA BARONE
Pejacevic: Symphony in F Sharp Minor, Finale
Dora Pejacevic: Piano Concerto and Symphony in F Sharp Minor; BBC Symphony Orchestra; Sakari Oramo, conductor (Chandos)
Sakari Oramo has long been a friend to the hardly heard, and it is to his credit that he is now lending his persuasive skills to the effort to bring female composers to greater prominence. His righteous advocacy certainly blazes for the Croatian Dora Pejacevic, who died in 1923 at just 37; her bold symphony, finished in 1920, might be in the Dvorakian tradition, but Oramo leaves you in no doubt of its fundamentally adventurous spirit. DAVID ALLEN
Rossini: ‘Céleste providence’
“French Bel Canto Arias”; Lisette Oropesa, soprano; Saxon State Opera Chorus Dresden; Dresden Philharmonic; Corrado Rovaris, conductor (Pentatone)
A peerless bel canto interpreter, the soprano Lisette Oropesa combed through her bread-and-butter repertoire to come up with an album’s worth of material in French, her favorite language to sing. In this showstopper from Rossini’s elegant comic opera “Le Comte Ory,” Oropesa’s classy singing sneaks subtle flecks of color into fiendish runs taken at the speed of light. OUSSAMA ZAHR
Othmar Schoeck: ‘Liebesfrühling’
“Elegie”; Christian Gerhaher, baritone; Basel Chamber Orchestra; Heinz Holliger, conductor (Sony Classical)
The baritone Christian Gerhaher mumbles, sighs and occasionally sings full out amid the stark, transfixing musical landscapes of Othmar Schoeck’s orchestral song cycle “Elegie.” “Liebesfrühling” turns the metaphor of spring inside out, locating in its verdancy memories that cause anguish, as Gerhaher’s voice rises to a pained pitch suffused with light. OUSSAMA ZAHR
Schubert, arranged by Liszt: ‘Der Doppelgänger’
“Mein Traum”; Stéphane Degout, baritone; Pygmalion; Raphaël Pichon, conductor (Harmonia Mundi)
The conductor Raphaël Pichon’s brilliantly curated album with Pygmalion and the baritone Stéphane Degout, “Mein Traum,” is a marvel of sustained tension in melancholy hues. “Der Doppelgänger” exemplifies their shared purpose: Singer and orchestra, breathing as one, crescendo ever so slowly into a climax of uncanny horror. OUSSAMA ZAHR
Caroline Shaw: ‘How Do I Find You’
“How Do I Find You”; Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano; Kirill Kuzmin, piano (Pentatone)
The mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke kicks off her album about the pandemic with the emotional wreckage of the title track by Caroline Shaw. Over a simple sequence of diatonic chords, played with compassion by the pianist Kirill Kuzmin, Cooke describes a couple circling their feelings with an amber-toned voice suspended between tears and solace. OUSSAMA ZAHR
Kate Soper: ‘The Understanding of All Things’
“The Understanding of All Things”; Kate Soper and Sam Pluta (New Focus)
In Kate Soper’s playfully searching album, she doesn’t reach some universal understanding. Instead, her title track’s fragmented telling of a Kafka story, recounted through vocalise and Laurie Anderson-like elevated speech over the sound of a spinning top, seems to make a statement, but with the syntax of a question. Figuring out what to make of that is part of the fun. JOSHUA BARONE
Strauss: ‘Macbeth’
“Richard Strauss: Three Tone Poems”; Cleveland Orchestra; Franz Welser-Möst, conductor (Cleveland Orchestra)
There is no more glorious demonstration than this of what makes the partnership between the Cleveland Orchestra and its music director so special. Listen closely to any section of the orchestra, and you will hear playing that is little short of immaculate; draw back to listen to the whole, and you will find Welser-Möst, at his most direct, turn a Strauss piece that most conductors ignore into a minor masterpiece. It’s exhilarating. DAVID ALLEN
Zimmermann: ‘Alagoana,’ IV. Caboclo
“Bernd Alois Zimmermann: Recomposed”; WDR Sinfonieorchester; Heinz Holliger, conductor (Wergo)
After World War II, the modernist composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann produced orchestral arrangements of French chansons and Villa-Lobos for West German radio. The conductor (and oboist) Holliger has rescued those sparkling adaptations from oblivion. Crucially, he also provides fresh looks at Zimmermann originals like “Alagoana,” with its funhouse-mirror reflections of Villa-Lobos (and Milhaud). SETH COLTER WALLS
