Fiddles from the grave

NYT picks Classical top 20

NYT best of 2016 list

David Allen

HANS ABRAHAMSEN: ‘LET ME TELL YOU’ Barbara Hannigan, soprano; Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra; Andris Nelsons, conductor (Winter & Winter). There is barely a half-hour of music on this release, but it is a half-hour that has caught the musical imagination like no other this year. Mr. Abrahamsen’s ethereal magic brilliantly treats Paul Griffith’s patchwork of lines from Shakespeare’s Ophelia, and there can be no better advocate for any composer than Ms. Hannigan. Mr. Nelsons’s conducting is smooth, the Bavarians’ playing revealing and true.

Murray Perahia - Bach - The French Suites (Trailer) Video by Deutsche Grammophon

BACH: FRENCH SUITES Murray Perahia, piano (Deutsche Grammophon). No recording I have heard these past months has sounded as instantly, undefinably right as Mr. Perahia’s return to Bach for his debut on the yellow label after decades with Sony Classical and its predecessor, Columbia Masterworks. The piano’s tone is pristine, the articulation clean, the balance between the hands immaculate, the overall tenor both spirited and rapt.

BACH: ‘ST. JOHN PASSION’ Werner Güra, tenor; Staats- and Domchor Berlin; Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin; René Jacobs, conductor (Harmonia Mundi). Every phrase of this riveting Passion sounds as if it has been thought through from scratch, whether in the elaborate way in which Mr. Jacobs varies the number of singers in his choirs, or in the ebb and flow of his tempos. Mr. Güra’s understanding of the role of the Evangelist matches that of his finest peers, and the other soloists are admirable.

BERLIOZ: ‘SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE’; RAMEAU: SUITE FROM ‘HIPPOLYTE ET ARICIE’ Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra; Daniel Harding, conductor (Harmonia Mundi). Mr. Harding’s Berlioz is extreme, caustic and rude, its narrative cast in the most vivid of colors. His poised, earthy Rameau is almost as audacious, if only because this repertoire has for far too long been seen as the province of period ensembles, and taboo for symphony orchestras. Together these works make even more enthralling listen than they do alone: the work of two French radicals, a century apart.

ELGAR: SYMPHONY NO. 1 Staatskapelle Berlin; Daniel Barenboim, conductor (Decca). Another Elgar record from Mr. Barenboim and his Berliners, and another appearance in our annual recommendations. The First Symphony suits them still better than the previously recorded Second. At every turn they achieve what is expected in Elgar — nobility, hush, pomp — and yet seem uneasily to undermine it, in a reminder that Elgar’s world was Mahler’s, too.

Anthony Tommasini

THOMAS ADÈS, PER NORGARD, HANS ABRAHAMSEN: QUARTETS Danish String Quartet (ECM New Series). For its debut recording on the ECM label, this formidable quartet offers a typically adventurous 20th-century program, including significant works by two Danes: the Modernist master Per Norgard’s Quartetto Breve, and Hans Abrahamsen’s arresting 10 Preludes (String Quartet No. 1). This exciting album opens with an early work, “Arcadiana,” by the inventive British composer Thomas Adès.

Daniil Trifonov Liszt 12 Transcendental Etudes Video by Christopher Kirk

LISZT: ‘TRANSCENDENTAL ÉTUDES’ Daniil Trifonov, piano (Deutsche Grammophon); Kirill Gerstein, piano (Myrios Classics). Liszt’s 12 aptly titled études, works of visionary imagination, are so technically daunting that even many virtuosos take a pass. So it’s thrilling to have had new recordings this year from two astonishing pianists. Mr. Gerstein best conveys the grandeur and musical madness of these pieces; Mr. Trifonov (on “Transcendental,” a double album that also offers the rest of Liszt’s piano études) dispatches them with exhilarating ease, imagination and brio.

RACHMANINOFF: PIANO CONCERTO NO. 2, OTHER WORKS Alexandre Tharaud, piano; Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra; Alexander Vedernikov, conductor (Erato). There are numerous classic recordings of Rachmaninoff’s popular Second Piano Concerto. Yet the elegant Mr. Tharaud’s version, at once probing and impetuous, is exceptional. While playing with plenty of virtuosic flair, he brings out inner voices and harmonic subtleties that seem fresh, even startling. This rewarding album also includes a thoughtful selection of shorter Rachmaninoff pieces.

SATIE: ‘SOCRATE,’ OTHER WORKS Barbara Hannigan, soprano; Reinbert de Leeuw, piano (Winter & Winter). In 1917-18, when Paris was a hotbed of musical Modernism, Satie composed a soft-spoken piece of miraculous modesty and precision: “Socrate,” a 20-minute setting of dialogues from Plato’s “Symposium.” The vocal lines lift the words almost reverentially, accompanied by sparse chords and gentle ostinatos. This sublime recording features Ms. Hannigan, the radiant soprano, and includes other elegant Satie vocal works.

SCHOENBERG: ‘KOL NIDRE’; SHOSTAKOVICH: ‘SUITE ON VERSES OF MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI’ Ildar Abdrazakov, bass; Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Riccardo Muti, conductor (CSO Resound). At the request of a rabbi at a temple in Los Angeles, Schoenberg composed a setting of the “Kol Nidre” for a Yom Kippur service in 1938. Mr. Muti leads his Chicagoans and the stentorian narrator Alberto Mizrahi in a gripping live performance of this starkly dramatic piece, paired with a compelling performance of Shostakovich’s suite of song settings of poetry by Michelangelo.

Zachary Woolfe

‘DEATH AND THE MAIDEN’ Patricia Kopatchinskaja, violin; St. Paul Chamber Orchestra (Alpha Classics). This disc is yet another testament to Ms. Kopatchinskaja’s impassioned playing and exuberant creativity. Named an artistic partner with this superb Minnesota chamber ensemble, she worked with it to surround a rich new arrangement for strings of Schubert’s great “Death and the Maiden” quartet with other melancholy outpourings of mortality’s dominion, from the 16th century to Gyorgy Kurtag.

R. NATHANIEL DETT: ‘THE ORDERING OF MOSES’ May Festival Chorus; Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra; James Conlon, conductor (Bridge). When NBC cut away three-quarters through its live radio broadcast of this gorgeous oratorio’s premiere in 1937, it claimed previous commitments. But it may have been responding to callers objecting to perhaps the first network broadcast of a major work by a black composer. The Cincinnati May Festival was responsible for that premiere, and its forces brought the work — since then largely forgotten — to Carnegie Hall in 2014, under the auspices of the late, lamented Spring for Music festival. In this live recording, the orchestra plays with driving energy under Mr. Conlon and the chorus, warmly hovering, is glorious. The soloists are excellent, particularly the radiant soprano Latonia Moore and Rodrick Dixon, fervent as Moses, here imagined not as a patriarchal bass but as a youthful tenor.

HAYDN, LIGETI: CONCERTOS AND CAPRICCIOS Shai Wosner, piano; Danish National Symphony Orchestra; Nicholas Collon, conductor (Onyx). To galvanizing yet ruminative effect, this disc brings together the bright, witty, unexpectedly heartfelt music of two Central European composers: Haydn (1732-1809) and Ligeti (1923-2006). The centerpieces are piano concertos: two by Haydn and Ligeti’s uproarious, rhythmically knotty contribution to the genre. Between are alternately dreamy and lively capriccios by both; all is played with style, flair and velvety touch by Mr. Wosner, given spirited support by Mr. Collon and the Danes.

Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble: On Behalf of Nature (excerpts) Video by mmonkhouse

MEREDITH MONK: ‘ON BEHALF OF NATURE’ Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble (ECM New Series). When she first performed it a few years ago, Ms. Monk’s latest work of abstract music theater — its score a mixture of droning instruments, bending vocal pitches and eruptions of yelps — came across as calmly melancholy. Now, with the peril to nature seeming more acute than ever, the crystal-clear recorded version feels more like artfully focused desperation — and, in the climactic “Water/Sky Rant,” choking rage.

‘THE STONE PEOPLE’ Lisa Moore, piano and voice (Cantaloupe Music). The occasion for this disc is an assemblage of John Luther Adams’s three works so far for solo acoustic piano, including the sweeping “Among Red Mountains.” Playing through these stark landscapes with tenderness, Ms. Moore has sensitively set Mr. Adams’s trio alongside similarly atmospheric, somber, often wintry pieces by Martin Bresnick, Julia Wolfe, Missy Mazzoli and Kate Moore.

James R. Oestreich

MOZART: VIOLIN CONCERTOS Isabelle Faust, violin; Il Giardino Armonico; Giovanni Antonini, conductor (Harmonia Mundi). Ms. Faust seems thoroughly at home in an early-music style that favors intimacy and mercuriality over monumentality. Her approach to cadenzas and other solo passages is imaginative and thoughtful, and Mr. Antonini and his band supply a freshness and verve that match hers.

PÄRT: ‘KANON POKAJANEN’ Cappella Amsterdam; Daniel Reuss, conductor (Harmonia Mundi). Arvo Pärt’s magnum opus, the “Kanon Pokajanen” (“Canon of Repentance,” 1998), retains the language of its Eastern Orthodox sources, Church Slavonic, and follows Orthodox tradition in avoiding instruments, though it is not intended for church use. It is a contemplative concert work — utterly mesmerizing, despite modern-leaning harmonies — and enchanting.

Dashon Burton - He never said a mumberlin' word ―on Acis. Video by acisproductions

‘SONGS OF STRUGGLE AND REDEMPTION: WE SHALL OVERCOME’ Dashon Burton, bass-baritone; Nathaniel Gumbs, piano (Acis). Mr. Burton is a beloved fixture of the New York choral scene, and it is always a pleasure to hear him step out in solos. In this superb collection of songs and spirituals, he reveals his personality more fully. Mr. Gumbs provides excellent support, but it is Mr. Burton’s unaccompanied version of the crucifixion anthem “He Never Said a Mumblin’ Word” that will live with you longest.

TALLIS: ‘SPEM IN ALIUM,’ OTHER WORKS The Cardinall’s Musick; Andrew Carwood, conductor (Hyperion). Sooner or later in its excellent survey of Thomas Tallis’s a cappella choral works, the Cardinall’s Musick — as listed, 12 strong — was going to have to beef up to tackle the great 40-voice motet “Spem in Alium.” Here it is, and even amid rich and exalted company, it stands apart as something truly extraordinary.

Teodor Currentzis, Patricia Kopatchinskaja & MusicAeterna : Tchaikovsky & Stravinsky Video by Sony Classical

TCHAIKOVSKY: VIOLIN CONCERTO; STRAVINSKY: ‘LES NOCES’ Patricia Kopatchinskaja, violin; MusicAeterna; Teodor Currentzis, conductor (Sony Classical). Here is an album seemingly tailored for a year that epitomized disruption. Ms. Kopatchinskaja wholeheartedly joins Mr. Currentzis in bringing the untamed spirit of the primitivist “Les Noces” (“The Wedding”) into their fascinating deconstruction of Tchaikovsky’s war horse concerto, virtuosic in its own willful way.

A version of this article appears in print on December 16, 2016, on Page C4 of the New York edition with the headline: Beautiful Music to Their Ears. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe