The year 2024 was an emotional roller coaster. Wars kept rampaging, a tortured election season further divided an already polarized nation and climate change served up the most scorching summer on record. Still, in the midst of the chaos, I found astonishing beauty in many places: Simone Biles' performances at the Paris Olympics, the kaleidoscopic late-night aurora borealis light shows and in much soul-nourishing music that helped mitigate those low points in what remains a wild ride.
I witnessed astounding performances this year, too many to describe in total. The proved that 's Seventh Symphony is the jewel in his crown, while the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra luxuriated in 's Second. Pianist paid homage to the sesquicentennial with an uncanny performance of the knuckle-twisting "Concord" Sonata, and the redoubtable Evgeny Kissin offered electrifying and . , still spry in her 80s, danced and sang in her restorative theatre work Indra's Net. Soprano delivered a diverse range of songs from to in recital, and took the lead in a colorful version of ' El Ni帽o at the . toured with a full orchestra. And then, there was the seamless blend of the , pairing with in an unforgettable evening in a small church.
Naturally, not all of my favorite artists were touring this year, but many were in the studio, making terrific albums. The 10 recordings below, plus a few honorable mentions, kept my ears focused and delighted throughout the year. Opera singers Aigul Akhmetshina and submitted two satisfying approaches 鈥� Akhmetshina releasing a standard arias album while D'Angelo filled hers mostly with folk and pop songs, imaginatively arranged. Women composers, still too often overlooked in concert halls, have released amazing albums this year 鈥� a glittering symphonic tour-de-force from Mexico's , ethereal choral works by Lithuania's 沤ibuokl臈 Martinaityt臈 and warm-hearted melodies for soloists and chamber orchestra from the Brit . Lutenist Jakob Lindberg lowered my stubbornly high blood pressure, as did a shimmering ambient adventure from Christopher Rountree.
The albums below were sources of joy, introspection and hope for me this year. Perhaps they'll do the same for you.
Gabriela Ortiz
Revoluci贸n Diamantina
For Those Who Like: Stravinsky, social justice, Mexico
The Story: With a colorful family history in her native Mexico 鈥� including a grandfather who worked as Pancho Villa's physician and parents who founded a popular Latin American folk group 鈥� Gabriela Ortiz has slowly emerged as one of today's must-hear composers. Luckily, hearing her is easier than ever, as she's in residence this season at Carnegie Hall. Her luminous orchestral works have been championed by star conductor Gustavo Dudamel, who calls her one of the most talented composers in the world and leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic on this dazzling album.
The Music: Ortiz says , and she practices what she preaches. Her compositional voice is singular, but the jagged rhythms in Act IV of this politically charged ballet almost out-Stravinsky Stravinsky, just moments after oscillating figures in the winds channel John Adams. A Huichol folk melody from Mexico's western Sierra Madres inspires the colorful symphonic showpiece Kauyumari, and in Altar de Cuerda, an atmospheric violin concerto played with precision and passion by Maria Due帽as, you might hear the ghosts of 20th century modernists Gy枚rgy Ligeti and Olivier Messiaen. With this album, the distinctive, hardworking composer finally relishes the spotlight she has deserved for years.
Maya Beiser
Maya Beiser x Terry Riley: In C
For Those Who Like: Steve Reich, cellos, magic mushrooms
The Story: It's pretty gutsy to take on a revered, pioneering piece of minimalism designed for a couple dozen people to play and reduce it to only a stack of cello loops and a pair or percussionists. But cellist Maya Beiser has triumphed, releasing one of the most groove-laden and listenable renditions of In C, Terry Riley's enduring 60-year-old score. And it's fitting that Beiser deploys loops for her version, given that the seeds of In C were sown in Riley's earlier experiments in cutting and looping tape.
The Music: Beiser's vision is all about pulses, drones and the low C string of her instrument, which tends to ricochet off drummers Shane Shanahan and Matt Kilmer. She likes to unfurl long, singing cello lines over oscillating beats, creating grooves with the power to intoxicate or get you wired for an all-night road trip. In one section, she interleaves her voice with cello in a nod to the medieval vocal technique of hocketing. In another, she distorts her instrument and amps up the beat, creating a kind of headbanging grunge moment. Along the way, Beiser cuts the engine to provide a couple of calming rest stops.
Emily D'Angelo
Freezing
For Those Who Like: June Tabor, Kathleen Ferrier, voluptuous voices
The Story: Emerging opera stars aren't supposed to release albums stuffed with folk and pop songs, but the velvet-voiced Canadian mezzo-soprano has done just that, tossing off old British ballads and a Randy Newman number with supreme beauty and homespun confidence. She can sing Mozart and Rossini as well as anyone today, and never mind at all that she opened the Metropolitan Opera season this fall 鈥� her curious mind, smart curation and inherently gorgeous instrument are enough to render this decidedly non-operatic album essential listening.
The Music: Spanning five centuries, D'Angelo's eclectic vocal mixtape ranges from Grounded, the brand new opera written for her by Jeanine Tesori, to a song by Elizabethan gloom master John Dowland, to a synth-laden arrangement of the English ballad "Cold Blows the Wind," inspired by . The title track is a fresh take of a Philip Glass / Suzanne Vega collaboration that unleashes a molten electric guitar. The mood of Freezing is wistful, lovelorn and a little chilly, but D'Angelo's buttery, burgundy-colored voice, concise diction and luxurious phrasing is your warm fire to keep away the cold.
Christopher Rountree
3 BPM
For Those Who Like: Brian Eno, Julius Eastman, chill rooms
The Story: Composer-conductor Christopher Rountree is perhaps best known as the founder and leader of Wild Up, the Los Angeles-based new music outfit responsible for resuscitating (on four extraordinary albums) the lost music of Julius Eastman. This year, with help from his band, the piano duo Hocket and intrepid violist Nadia Sirota, Rountree released 3 BPM, a 28-minute safe haven for calming reflection. The music also serves as a lasting tribute to pianist and composer Sarah Gibson (one half of Hocket), in July at 38 鈥� a cruel gut punch to the new music community.
The Music: 3 BPM (three beats per minute) is a flight through tranquil spaces marked with little episodes of euphoria. Brian Eno's ambient music may come to mind, and Eastman's jubilance. But Rountree has crafted his own musical language here, one he's called a musical framework for togetherness. A tolling piano and a whoosh of air usher us into the piece; by the time we reach our final stop with "Almanac," a wheezy viola emerges and gently rolled piano chords bloom like a celestial portal opening, calling you to travel beyond yourself.
Experiential Orchestra
American Counterpoints
For those Who Like: Bart贸k, violin concertos, musical archeology
The Story: This long overdue release spotlights two singular Black American composers whose music had fallen into neglect. Julia Perry found success in the 1950s after her Stabat Mater debuted and a Guggenheim Fellowship funded her study with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. But the 1960s brought health and financial problems, and when she died in 1979 her music was all but forgotten. Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson's music was also overlooked until after his death in 2004. A versatile pianist who collaborated with Marvin Gaye and Max Roach, Perkinson composed in a variety of idioms for television, film and the concert hall. He co-founded an orchestra and was a key figure at the Center for Black Music Research at Chicago's Columbia College.
The Music: The album is anchored by Perry's austere, sometimes Bart贸k-leaning Violin Concerto from 1968, whose score was left in disarray. This newly reconstructed version receives a probing performance by soloist Curtis Stewart and the Experiential Orchestra. Perry's experimental style emerges in the darkly hued Symphony in One Movement for Violas and Basses, while an almost Copland-like freshness pervades her Prelude for Strings. Perkinson proves a formidable presence in his Sinfonietta No. 1, composed when he was all of 22, the opening movement of which elegantly weaves strands of baroque counterpoint that would make Handel jealous. Stewart gets down and gritty for Perkinson's Louisiana Blues Strut: A Cakewalk, which, in its slurred and syncopated lines, conjures Black music from before the Civil War.
沤ibuokl臈 Martinaityt臈
Aletheia
For Those Who Like: Bj枚rk, Tanya Tagaq, choirs
The Story: 沤ibuokl臈 Martinaityt臈, raised in Soviet-era Lithuania and now a denizen of New York, has emerged as a composer poised for maximum visibility. Those following her career understand her command of a symphony orchestra, via recordings released on the Finnish Ondine label. Her latest proves she may also be one of the leading choral composers of our time 鈥� a sonically shimmering album for unaccompanied chorus featuring magnificent performances by the Latvian Radio Choir, which continues to assert itself as perhaps the finest chorus singing today.
The Music: No actual words are sung on Aletheia. Martinaityt臈 trusts in styles of vocalizing that communicate beyond language, not unlike Meredith Monk. The title track, composed during the onset of the war in Ukraine, gives voice to resilient people under siege in passages of bottled claustrophobia and joyous "whooping." Chant des Voyelles, where only vowels are sung, evokes clouds of heavenly synthesizers, radiant and breathtaking when the choir is in full cry. Ululations is at once beautiful and terrifying, a symphonic weave of vocalizing that is halfway between howling and yodeling. In this complex music, the choir offers its signature unified blend of sounds, transparent and seemingly limitless in color and lighting.
Anna Clyne
Shorthand
For Those Who Like: Yo-Yo Ma, strings, mandolins
The Story: In college, British composer Anna Clyne made a last-minute pivot from literature to music. She was already 20 when she took up her first formal composition lessons, and after she moved to New York in 2002, she spent time as a florist and even contemplated investment banking. It was a glowing email from Steve Reich, telling her she was "the real deal" after looking over one of her pieces, that helped Clyne's career to fully blossom. Today, she's one of the most commissioned composers, writing music that can be experimental 鈥� she's developed software to shapeshift the sounds of individual instruments in live symphonic performances 鈥� but always unapologetically melodic.
The Music: Yo-Yo Ma's burnished cello tone caresses the lachrymose theme of the title track, a miniature cello concerto inspired by Tolstoy's quote that "Music is the shorthand of emotion." Clyne isn't afraid to spin opulent, wistful melodies, nowhere more so than in the album's impassioned centerpiece, Within Her Arms, an elegy for strings written in response to the death of her mother. Mandolinist Avi Avital twinkles, shreds and sweetly serenades in the concerto Three Sisters, inspired by the stars in Orion's belt. Prince of Clouds, a sensuous double concerto for two violins, finds committed soloists in Colin Jacobsen and Pekka Kuusisto. And throughout, the New York-based orchestra The Knights plays the music like it was written just for them.
Aigul Akhmetshina
Aigul
For Those Who Like: Bizet's Carmen, the Republic of Bashkortostan, fresh opera stars
The Story: Mezzo-soprano Aigul Akhmetshina's rise to fame reads like a fairy tale. Raised by a single mom in a rural village in Bashkortostan, she learned music on her grandfather's accordion because space and finances precluded a piano in their small apartment. At just 14, she moved away to study, supporting herself by entertaining as a stilt walker and waiting tables. After being denied admission to a Moscow conservatory, and then suffering a debilitating car accident, she tossed all her singing awards in a box she labeled "Aigul's Bulls***" and called it quits. But her teacher was persuasive. Akhmetshina rehabilitated her voice, landed in a young artists program in London (without speaking English) and, at 21, got her big break singing Carmen at London's storied Covent Garden.
The Music: Naturally, scenes from Carmen dominate this debut album. Hearing her plush, aubergine-colored voice, coquettish and confident in the drama, one understands why she's in top demand for the role. Better still are two arias from Massenet's emotionally fraught Werther. In the "Letter Scene," where the character nervously reads letters from her troubled lover, you can hear a complex swirl of regret, fear and guilt in Akhmetshina's voice. Selections from Bellini's I Capuleti e I Montecchi and Rossini's La Cenerentola and The Barber of Seville show off her seamless agility throughout the registers, with ringing top notes and smoldering low ones. At 28, the young mezzo has a full career ahead, and opera fans will want to keep their ears open.
Jakob Lindberg
Robert De Vis茅e: Theorbo Solos
For Those Who Like: guitars, Baroque elegance, quiet cups of tea
The Story: The French lutenist and composer Robert de Vis茅e could often be found serenading his boss, Louis XIV, at his bedside. He also taught the monarch how to play the guitar. Fast forward about 300 years to the Swedish musician Jakob Lindberg, who as a teen picked up the guitar after hearing The Beatles, then turned to early music and studied in London. Now, in his early 70s, Lindberg is a lute magus who performs on his various instruments around the world.
The Music: In this collection of suites and pieces by de Vis茅e, Lindberg deploys a particularly large theorbo 鈥� a member of the lute family, in this case a spectacular five-footer that boasts a kaleidoscope of colors and luxurious low bass strings. The "Musette" from the G-major suite offers a sparkling melody, steady bass line and strumming to imitate a bagpipe. But not all is delicate and rosy; deep pain is found in the low, thrumming strings in the "Tombeau" that de Vis茅e wrote to mourn the deaths of his two daughters. This is an exquisite, quiet album for our very loud world.
Timo Andres
The Blind Banister
For Those Who Like: Nico Muhly, piano concertos, Pulitzer finalists
The Story: Timo Andres, a thoughtful pianist-composer who turns 40 next year, has his agile fingers in many pies. Last year, he edited Philip Glass Piano Etudes, a new edition of the music, which he performed in various venues. Earlier this year, his orchestrations graced the Sufjan Stevens-inspired Broadway show Illinoise. And the title work of his third album, a piano concerto called The Blind Banister, earned much-deserved street cred after it became a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2016. This is the work's recorded debut, with the composer as soloist and tailor-made accompaniment by the Metropolis Ensemble.
The Music: What goes up must come down in The Blind Banister. The 20-minute concerto, inspired by Beethoven, presents a series of variations on a descending scale, which gets built up again, only to fall even harder 鈥� and lower on the keyboard 鈥� by the time warm string figures emerge in the coda. Often mesmerizing, Banister is a beautiful journey that concludes with a satisfying jolt of release. Colorful History is a darkly textured, cyclically driven solo piano work played by Andres, while Upstate Obscura, a cello concerto, offers the attentive soloist Inbal Segev opportunities to soar at the top of her instrument's register, chase themes in strings and winds and, finally, guide us through open spaces, pensive yet filled with promise.
10 (Very) Honorable Mentions:
Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Reto Bieri, Polina Leschenko: Take 3
John Luther Adams: An Atlas of Deep Time (South Dakota Symphony)
Yuja Wang: The Vienna Recital
Yunchan Lim: Chopin Etudes
Christopher Cerrone: Beaufort Scales (Lorelei Ensemble)
C.P.E. Bach: Symphonies 鈥� From Berlin to Hamburg (Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin)
Valentin Silvestrov: Postludium & Dedication (Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra)
Kurt Weill: The Kurt Weill Album (Konzerthausorchester Berlin)
Danish String Quartet: Keel Road
John Zorn: Hannigan Sings Zorn, Volume One (Barbara Hannigan)
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