1) Bach: Keyboard Concertos, BWV 1052, 1053, 1054 & 1056

Amsterdam Sinfonietta, conducted by Candida Thompson | Beatrice Rana, piano | Warner Classics

My favourite part in these Bach concertos is probably an incredibly intimate moment in the second movement of the F minor. When I see it in the score, which calls for so much of the legato and cantabile that typifies piano technique, I wonder what Bach had in mind when he wrote this kind of music for a harpsichord, an instrument that offers properties that are dramatically different from the piano. What I really adore in this movement is the way the incredibly moving piano line hovers so far above a layer of subtle pizzicatos. As soon as we start playing it feels like we are entering another dimension. It is hard to describe, but it takes you to another planet, especially after that rather dramatic first movement. Suddenly finding this heavenly sound in the middle of nowhere is like finding a gem in the dark. It is a moment of revelation.

— Beatrice Rana, notes from the recording

2) Shostakovich: Symphonies; Concertos; Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District

Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Andris Nelsons | Yuja Wang, piano • Baiba Skride, violin • Yo-Yo Ma, cello | Deutsche Grammophon

Shostakovich’s relationship to the Soviet regime continues to fascinate. Was he a loyal (and therefore reprehensible) servant of the evil Soviet regime, a cowardly cheerleader for the Communist motherland? Or was he an embittered and alienated closet-dissident, inserting into his scores secret anti-Soviet messages intended to be decoded as anguished cries of protest? These questions raise another: should the issue of Shostakovich’s political convictions (or lack thereof) change the way we listen to the music anyway? 

For Boston Symphony Orchestra music director Andris Nelsons, who experienced the Soviet system firsthand growing up in Latvia, and who has spent much of his career studying and conducting Shostakovich’s music, the answer is clear, as he said in an interview at the start of this monumental recording project: “The greatness of his music lies beyond politics. It speaks to people whether they know the times he lived in or not.”

— Harlow Robinson, notes from the recording

3) Ravel: Fragments

Bertrand Chamayou, piano | Warner Classics

All the pieces in this latter category contain Ravelian echoes, whether  in the Hispanic strains of Joaquín Nin’s Mensaje, the enigmatic lyricism of the Elegía by Xavier Montsalvatge, the luminous neoclassicism of Arthur Honegger or the bewitching bell sounds of Alexandre Tansman. The other pieces employ more overt references: the gallows death knell in Frédéric Durieux’s disquieting piece (evoking Ravel’s “Le Gibet”) or the motifs  from Gaspard de la nuit borrowed by Betsy Jolas. A homage to Gaspard  is no doubt also the guiding force behind the album’s focus on fragments:  De la nuit by Salvatore Sciarrino, albeit ironically dedicated to Chopin,  is a sequenced collage of scraps from ”Ondine” and ”Scarbo”, playing with  our memory and giving the impression of a hallucination. At the heart of the programme is a touching gesture from Ravel’s faithful pianist and friend Ricardo Viñes, in the guise of a short romantic evocation.

— Bertrand Chamayou, notes from the recording

4) Bach: The Art of Fugue

Albert Cano Smit, piano | Aparté

The boundless imagination in Bach’s writing is multiplied by the fact that no the piece for the first time, and being captivated by the impression that an entire universe was slowly being revealed through the work. Without immediately understanding the degree of complexity, the underlying layers of meaning, the Pythagorean proportions and mind blowing achievement of certain movements, such as the mirror fugues (imagine a four-voice fugue that also works by inverting every voice), or certain counterfugues, I was deeply moved by the music, and I believe every listener can be.

This album is my humble attempt at communicating this to every music lover. I’m grateful to them and to everyone joining me on this journey of discovery, as well as to all those who through their generous support have made this project possible. 

— Albert Cano Smit, notes from the recording

5) Organised Delirium

Tamara Stefanovich, piano | PENTATONE

This sonata came to me at a moment of complete chaos, in the years of the Balkan Wars, when I was left with no concerts, but only with the youth and intensity that it brings with it. The rage of the first movement and its almost unbearable passion, the way of being poetic in a million ways in the second movement, the capricious, dangerous Scherzo and its enigmatic trio; all this had to be the preparation for the fourth movement that encompasses all the world. The choice to integrate fugues — the old form of utter musical organization — and its symbolic meaning are a masterstroke. Boulez employs them in a way that they can’t be really followed -the pitch is too low and dark, auditory virtuosity too impossible to follow.

— Tamara Stefanovich, notes from the recording

6) Mahler: Symphony No. 5

Tonhalleorchester Zürich, conducted by Paavo Järvi | Alpha Classics

The song describes a singing competition between a nightingale and a cuckoo: the judge is a donkey who crowns the cuckoo the winner because, among other things, it sings a good chorale. Mahler thus breaks the seriousness of the movement, parodying the listener’s usual expectation that the last movement should include a chorale that concludes the symphony. A chorale does appear at the end of the finale of the Fifth, although it has an ironic connotation right from the start, as the introduction consists of elements of the chorale itself — and the cuckoo is chosen as the winner because it sings a good chorale. The actual chorale at the end of the movement thus loses any legitimacy and has no solemnity; this is further emphasised by its restatement in a playful burlesque style once it has been heard. The music thus completely evades any clear interpretation of the fate of the symphonic self and leaves the outcome open. Did Mahler write his symphony this way on purpose so that “no one would understand it”?

— Franziska Gallusser, notes from the recording

7) Verdi: Simon Boccanegra (1857 Version)

The Hallé, conducted by Sir Mark Elder | Chorus of Opera North (Anthony Kraus, chorus master) • RNCM Opera Chorus (Kevin Thraves, chorus master) | Opera Rara

Most lovers of the composer would surely want to argue that such questions of value will at the least be heavily inflected by the quality of the performance; and, perhaps just as much, by the nature of the audience – by who they are, where they are, and the mood (political or more broadly cultural) that surrounds them. Particularly when it is performed with commitment and an awareness of its stylistic peculiarities, hearing the original Boccanegra can, in short, lead us to confront important questions, ones that might even extend to the whole issue of whether Verdi’s revisions are, as well as re-imaginings, invariably improvements. True, he thought of them as just that. But times change, and with them change the meanings that we can extract from works of art. The ‘old’ Boccanegra might, in this context, quite suddenly become fresh and ‘new’, adapted to our times just as urgently as was its successor.

— Roger Parker, notes from the recording

8) Marsalis: Blues Symphony

Detroit Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Jader Bignamini | PENTATONE

The Blues Symphony is a seven-movement work that gives a symphonic identity to the form and feeling of the blues. It utilizes regional and stylistic particulars of the idiom’s language and form to convey the basic point of view of the blues as music: “Life hands you hard times.” When you cry, holler, and shout to release those hard times; when you tease, cajole, and play to diminish them; and when you dance and find a common community through groove, better times will be found. The more profound the pain, the deeper the groove. 

— Wynton Marsalis, notes from the recording