Critics' Choice: our favourite classical recordings of 2023
Monday, December 18, 2023
Gramophone’s peerless panel of writers choose their favourite recordings from those reviewed this year
Our annual Critics' Choice is a Gramophone tradition stretching back to the mid-1950s in which we ask our writers to choose the one recording from the previous year that meant the most to them. Here are the choices for 2023, with commentary from the writers themselves and links to the original reviews in Gramophone's Reviews Database.
Andrew Achenbach:
Leighton ‘Every Living Creature’
Sols; Finchley Children’s Music Group; Londinium / Andrew Griffiths
Somm
Martyn Brabbins’s outstanding account of Vaughan Williams’s Ninth Symphony with the BBC SO was something special (Hyperion, 4/23), but even it must yield to Andrew Griffiths’s enterprising anthology of Kenneth Leighton choral offerings – music of uncommon grace, personable warmth, inventive flair and enthralling beauty, fervently performed and ideally recorded.
Tim Ashley:
Janáček Katya Kabanova
Sols; VPO / Jakub Hrůša
Unitel Edition
Corinne Winters gives the performance of a lifetime in Barrie Kosky’s riveting if idiosyncratic Salzburg production, which plays down the opera’s emphasis on religious guilt and reimagines Janáček’s heroine as an existential rebel challenging the emotional bankruptcy of modern-day society. Matching her unsparing commitment, Jakub Hrůša’s ferociously intense conducting sweeps you away. Stunning.
Michelle Assay:
JS Bach ‘Clavichord’
András Schiff clav
ECM New Series
Schiff’s early-keyboard ventures with ECM continue through a sublime programme that showcases the many possibilities of the clavichord – Bach’s own favourite instrument – from the intimate storytelling of the Capriccio sopra la lontananza del suo fratello dilettissimo, through the didactics of the Duets, Inventions and Sinfonias, to the glittering panache of the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue.
Amy Blier-Carruthers:
Coleridge-Taylor Five Fantasiestücke, Op 5 Dvořák String Quartet No 13, Op 106
Takács Quartet
Hyperion
The Takács Quartet are truly impressive here – every micro-phrase, every note is considered. Their sound draws you in from the first moment. This is of course to do with their rich and subtle playing, but also the fantastic recorded balance. To simultaneously hear the separate parts and the collective captured so beautifully is a treat indeed! The Takács are all-in here – their sound is not just orchestral, it’s psychological.
Liam Cagney:
Dillon Emblemata: Carnival
Red Note Ensemble / Geoffrey Paterson
Delphian
Some years ago, James Dillon declared he no longer would give his works names but rather Roman numerals. That seems not to have lasted long, but the anonymous ethos remains. In Carnival we hear Dillon at his most puckish – music that gleefully follows its own internal logic.
Jeremy Dibble:
Parry Prometheus. Blest Pair of Sirens
Sarah Fox, Dame Sarah Connolly, David Butt Philip, Neal Davies; Crouch End Festival Chorus; London Mozart Players / William Vann
Chandos
This a superb interpretation of Parry’s first major choral work on Shelley’s radical poem. References to Wagner and Brahms belie Parry’s own radicalism and an Englishness that looks forward to Blest Pair of Sirens, also included. The performers bring enthusiasm and telling insights to Parry’s colourful score and remind us that this work merits its accolades as one of the first significant scores of modern British music.
Richard Bratby:
Lincke Frau Luna
Sols; WDR Radio Orchestra, Cologne / Helmuth Froschauer
CPO
It’s incredible that it’s taken so long, but here, at last, is a full modern recording of Paul Lincke’s irresistible 1899 science-fiction operetta. You’ll already know such earworms as ‘Berliner Luft’ and the ‘Glow-worm Idyll’, but this sparky, big-hearted account (complete with a late-career cameo from René Kollo: true operetta royalty) reveals the whole score to be every bit as delightful. Instant sunshine, Berlin style.
Jed Distler:
Rodgers Oklahoma!
Nathaniel Hackmann, Sierra Boggess, Rodney Earl Clarke, Jamie Parker, Louise Dearman and Sandra Marvin; ‘Oklahoma’ Ensemble; Sinfonia of London / John Wilson
Chandos
John Wilson’s revelatory production of this landmark musical arguably gets as close as possible to what Broadway patrons most likely heard on opening night 80 years ago, with every piece of music intact in its original orchestration. A meticulous, vibrant, stylishly sung, splendidly engineered and historically important release.
Alexandra Coghlan:
Sørensen St Matthew Passion
The Norwegian Soloists’ Choir; Ensemble Allegria / Grete Pedersen
BIS
Sørensen’s deeply felt contemporary response to the Passion form – a take that stamps all the elements into fragments then reassembles them – is powerful and knotty and utterly compelling. Who else but the peerless Norwegian Soloists’ Choir could have made a premiere recording so unobtrusively virtuosic? Urgent music and music-making.
Edward Breen:
Obrecht Missa Maria zart
Cappella Pratensis / Stratton Bull
Challenge Classics
I love an album with a good back-story, and the project that caught my attention this year was this new recording of Obrecht’s extraordinarily huge Mass, both for the wonderment of knowing Cappella Pratensis perform from early notation and for the warm sound they achieve by standing in close formation.
Rob Cowan:
‘The Warner Classics Remastered Edition’
Otto Klemperer (r1927-29, 1954-71)
Warner Classics
Valuable box-sets proliferated during 2023 but among the most musically rewarding and best engineered for its period is Warner Classics’ superbly remastered collection devoted to the orchestral recordings of Otto Klemperer, usually at the helm of the Philharmonia. Marmoreal Bruckner and Mahler, patient but powerful Beethoven and Mozart – this and much more makes for a series of life-enhancing musical encounters.
Adrian Edwards:
Fuchs ‘Orchestral Works, Vol 1’
Adam Walker fl Sinfonia of London / John Wilson
Chandos
If you haven’t before come across the name of Kenneth Fuchs, let me recommend him to you with all possible urgency, for here is a composer of contemporary music who brings to his compositions a winning combination of melody, dazzling orchestration, design and balance. Moreover, he could not receive greater advocacy than that accorded him by the Sinfonia of London and their conductor John Wilson. The recording by Chandos is something to live for!
Jonathan Freeman-Attwood:
‘Bach’s Missing Pages – An Expanded Orgelbüchlein’
Sietze de Vries org
Fugue State Films
If Bach’s Art of Fugue only just counts as unfinished, the earlier and abandoned Orgelbüchlein collection is a torso of less than a third of the intended chorale preludes – until, that is, Sietze de Vries’s supremely idiom-sensitive and virtuosic pasticcio of another 45 settings à la Bach. It’s a mesmerisingly beautiful project – aurally and visually.
Andrew Farach-Colton:
Schubert Piano Trios. Arpeggione Sonata, etc
Christian Tetzlaff vn Tanja Tetzlaff vc Lars Vogt pf
Ondine
Christian Tetzlaff and Lars Vogt’s recordings have provided much awe and delight over the years, and this collaboration (with cellist Tanja Tetzlaff), made shortly before Vogt’s untimely death, makes a sublime epitaph. The musicians really take their time here – a poignant reminder that our musical journeys are meant to be savoured.
David Fallows:
‘Unicum: New Songs from the Leuven Chansonnier’
Ensemble Leones / Marc Lewon
Naxos
It was a close thing, but Ensemble Leones must be my winner of the year with their issue ‘Unicum’, offering newly discovered songs or newly discovered versions of known songs in the Leuven Chansonnier. They opened up new ground in the way they performed these marvellous songs.
Neil Fisher:
Bach Solo Violin Sonatas and Partitas
Bojan Čičić vn
Delphian
Čičić’s Bach collection is a recording that both quickens the pulse and stills the heart: three partitas, three sonatas, atmospherically recorded in Crichton Collegiate Church. In troubled times, and we are in them now, I suspect Čičić’s violin will become a trusty and constant ally. Gramophone has referred to the Croatian violinist as having an ‘uncluttered’ style; small praise, perhaps, but telling. This is spacious, finely turned Bach that points the listener to what is truly important.
Charlotte Gardner:
‘The Stradgrass Sessions’
Tessa Lark vn with Michael Cleveland fiddle Jon Batiste pf Edgar Meyer db Sierra Hull mandolin
First Hand
Kentucky-born violinist Tessa Lark has long slipped Bluegrass treats into her classical programmes. ‘Stradgrass’ leaned into this special strand of her DNA with such freshness and polish, and via such joyously warm collaborations and accomplished cross-genre thinking – Bartók violin duos with mandolinist Sierra Hull, anyone? – that it’s now rarely far from my stereo.
David Fanning:
‘Romeo and Juliet: Tchaikovsky on the Piano’
Yevgeny Sudbin, Bella Sudbin pf
BIS
Yevgeny Sudbin’s BIS album is a heterogeneous but immensely pleasurable affair. Tchaikovsky transcriptions, in two of which he is joined by his 12-year-old daughter, some solo pieces and a bravura arrangement of Glinka’s Ruslan and Lyudmila Overture abound in virtuosity, fun and immaculate taste. ‘Scintillating, and then some’, I wrote, and I stand by that.
David Gutman:
Bartók Concerto for Orchestra. Viola Concerto
Amihai Grosz va Orchestre National de Lille / Alexandre Bloch
Alpha
A good year for Bartók recordings, none finer than these. In the Viola Concerto Amihai Grosz is as cogent as any rival, technically immaculate and darkly poignant. The less problematic Concerto for Orchestra is first-rate too. So if this is to be Alexandre Bloch’s last recording project as Lille chief, he goes out on a high.
Fabrice Fitch:
Biber Mystery (Rosary) Sonatas
Amandine Beyer vn Gli Incogniti
Harmonia Mundi
Excluding as I always do many fine Editor’s Choices and Gramophone Award-nominated discs, one release stands out. I predicted that I’d return to Amandine Beyer’s Rosary Sonatas where many others have fallen by the wayside, and so it has proved. Her forceful, compelling performance returns me to the same qualities in the music, with a virtuosity recalling Reinhard Goebel all those years ago. Hugely enjoyable.
Christian Hoskins:
Schreker Der Schatzgräber
Sols; Deutsche Oper Berlin / Marc Albrecht
Naxos
Not only did 2023 bring an excellent double album of Schreker’s music conducted by Christoph Eschenbach (DG, 6/23) but also the first video release of one of his finest operas. This superbly sung, acted and conducted performance brings to life Schreker’s ravishing score in a way I’ve found impossible to resist.
Lindsay Kemp:
‘Gradus ad Parnassum’
Jean Rondeau hpd
Erato
Jean Rondeau’s brilliant and surprising harpsichord recital ‘Gradus ad Parnassum’ knocked me sideways this spring. Works by Fux, Haydn, Mozart, Clementi and Beethoven, played with a feel for colour and expression to astound even ardent harpsichord lovers, are crowned by a must-hear account of Debussy’s rippling ‘Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum’. Quite extraordinary.
Andrew Mellor:
Haydn String Quartets – Op 42; Op 77. The Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross
The London Haydn Quartet
Hyperion
I don’t listen to Haydn’s quartets enough. This recording will change that, and send me back through the releases that came before. The composer’s figurations and effects are like a mother tongue to The London Haydn Quartet, whose gut strings reveal so much in towering music that complements any mood, any day, any century.
Philip Kennicott:
JS Bach ‘Notebooks for Anna Magdalena’
Carolyn Sampson sop Mahan Esfahani hpd
Hyperion
Open the pages of the notebooks for Anna Magdalena Bach, and they seem a jumble. Here are works by the master, and his children, and other composers entirely, including odd items for keyboard and voice. What sense do we make of this? Mahan Esfahani makes a lot of sense of this delightful compendium of domestic musical miscellanea in a recording that shows a more intimate side to his playing. Other volumes of Esfahani’s ongoing exploration of Bach may have music of greater heft, but this is a delightful detour into a more personable side of the composer.
Ivan Moody:
Živković Citadel of Love
Norbotten NEO / Fredrik Burstedt
BIS
Živković’s remarkable music combines a spiritual trajectory with a genuine musical dramatic sense in a truly unique fashion. Citadel of Love uses extended performance techniques to create quite amazing musical landscapes that describe a spiritual journey, and Norbotten NEO’s playing is attentive to every detail of this complex but extremely direct music.
Jeremy Nicholas:
Balakirev Au jardin Henselt Complete Études and Préambules
Daniel Grimwood pf
Edition Peters
A toss-up between Yuja Wang’s 2008 Verbier Festival debut (DG, 9/23) and Grimwood’s programme. But the Henselt Études are so important and so rarely heard, Grimwood’s playing so compelling (easily outclassing earlier iterations and with the imaginative addition of the Préambules), that he wins my palme d’or. A beautifully recorded album of classic status.
Richard Lawrence:
Cavalli Il Xerse
Sols; Modo Antiquo / Federico Maria Sardelli
Dynamic
Torn between two excellent Bru Zane CD issues, Cherubini’s Les Abencérages (1/23) and Spontini’s La Vestale (7/23), I will plump instead for the DVD of Cavalli’s Xerxes: nearer three hours than two, but Leo Muscato keeps things moving along nicely with his quirky direction of the recitatives. Countertenor Carlo Vistoli leads a fine cast.
Mark Pullinger:
Schulhoff Five Pieces for String Quartet Tchaikovsky Symphony No 5
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra / Manfred Honeck
Reference Recordings
There are so many Tchaikovsky Fifths out there that it was always going to take something special for a new recording to knock me flat. Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony did just that, delivering a thrilling new account, full of impetuosity with an exhilaratingly wide dynamic range.
Guy Rickards:
Nordheim The Tempest – Suite from the Ballet
Beate Mordal sop Jeremy Carpenter bar Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra / Edward Gardner
LAWO
Recordings of two composers, one living (Philip Sawyers), one no longer with us (Arne Nordheim), stood out for me this year. Ultimately, the ‘effortless lyricism and warm romanticism’ of Sawyers’s string concertos (Nimbus, 7/23) yielded to Nordheim’s ravishing, ‘magical’ music for The Tempest, still holding me in thrall, but it was close.
Peter Quantrill:
JS Bach ‘Clavichord’
András Schiff clav
ECM New Series
I regarded the clavichord as an instrument of private study and solitary pleasures. Schiff does not so much counter that notion as share it so persuasively that we could be sitting on the bench next to the Kapellmeister as he shows off, in undemonstrative fashion, his virtuosity as both performer and composer. The Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in particular is a tour de force of recreative fidelity.
Malcolm Riley:
Bruckner Motets
St Albans Cathedral Choir / Andrew Lucas with Dewi Rees org Joe Arnold, Rory Cartmell, Matthew Lewis, Becky Smith tbns
First Hand
Among many notable recordings, one of the greatest highlights was a new recording of the complete Bruckner motets. Searing performances from St Albans Cathedral Choir under Andrew Lucas feature his fearless trebles, who stretch up to a series of sublime top B flats. Add in brass and organ and you have an irresistible combination.
Patrick Rucker:
Liszt Consolations. Caprice-valses. Deux Légendes. Liebesträume. Valse-impromptu
Saskia Giorgini pf
Pentatone
Among the most lustrous, vibrant and stylish piano-playing to reach my ears this year is the mixed Liszt recital by Italian-Dutch pianist Saskia Giorgini. Works spanning Liszt’s career are played with flawless fingers and straight from the heart, including Consolations and Liebesträume that could be neither simpler nor more eloquent.
Richard Osborne:
‘Les nuits de Paris’
Les Siècles / François-Xavier Roth
Bru Zane
Now that champagne has become unaffordable, why not invest in some vintage French dance music? In ‘Les nuits de Paris’, François-Xavier Roth and his period band Les Siècles offer an exhilarating selection of music you’d have heard in pre-1914 Paris in places as various as the Folies Bergère and the Opéra itself.
Peter J Rabinowitz:
Liszt Consolations. Caprice-valses. Deux Légendes. Liebesträume. Valse-impromptu
Saskia Giorgini pf
Pentatone
The repertoire might be commonplace but Saskia Giorgini’s lustrous new collection is anything but. Standing out equally for its intimacy and its elation, for its charm and its expressive depth, for its purity and its technical panache, this is the richest and most charismatic Liszt recording I’ve heard in years.
Edward Seckerson:
Nielsen Symphonies Nos 4 & 5
Danish National Symphony Orchestra / Fabio Luisi
DG
This year’s choice was a no-brainer. The entire cycle made an immediate impression on me but what shone in particular was Luisi’s success at reconciling the theoretical and the emotional in these marvellous symphonies. The Fourth is for sure the most exciting account since Jean Martinon and the Chicago Symphony thrilled us back in the 1960s.
Pwyll ap Siôn:
Reich Music for 18 Musicians
Synergy Vocals; Colin Currie Group
Colin Currie Records
A marvellously crafted and sculpted performance of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians by the Colin Currie Group and Synergy Vocals. They succeed in capturing this timeless minimalist classic’s subtle nuances while also projecting its majestic, celebratory quality and epic architectural sweep.
Mark Seow:
‘Contra-Tenor’
Michael Spyres ten Il Pomo d’Oro / Francesco Corti
Erato
I was in a truly sullen mood when I first listened to ‘Contra-Tenor’, but Michael Spyres’s dynamism changed that in a matter of bars. In Handel’s Tamerlano, he conjures Bajazet’s rage with erect fierceness, and his virtuosity in the Vinci and Porpora arias is ludicrously enjoyable. Il Pomo d’Oro shine under the direction of Francesco Corti.
Harriet Smith:
Debussy Études. Pour le piano. Étude retrouvée
Steven Osborne pf
Hyperion
I had been anticipating borrowing from another critic’s reviews for my choice this year: Víkingur Ólafsson’s staggeringly powerful traversal of Bach’s Goldbergs. But right at the last moment another (differently staggering) album arrived, where no stealing is required: Steven Osborne’s Debussy Études. I expect to see both topping next year’s Awards.
David Patrick Stearns:
Nova Titration
The Crossing / Donald Nally
Navona
This 50-minute, 17-movement a cappella choral work seems high concept at first, but Shara Nova’s words and compositional wizardry confront core states of trauma with ecstatic, traditionally sung choral moments plus naturalistic effects, sometimes using a single note to consolidate the moment while going to a new musical place. The Crossing choir sings easily, flawlessly and with conversational directness.
Hugo Shirley:
Donizetti ‘Signor Gaetano’
Javier Camarena ten Coro Donizetti Opera; Gli Originali / Riccardo Frizza
Pentatone
Happily, solo opera recitals today are rarely the somewhat predictable affairs they once were, and this superb Donizetti album from Javier Camarena and Riccardo Frizza epitomises the trend towards carefully planned and dramatically involving programmes. The playing’s lively and engaging, and Camarena, singing with style and swagger, is superb. A joy!
David Threasher:
Mozart Piano Concertos – No 9, ‘Jeunehomme’, K271; No 24, K491
Paris Chamber Orchestra / Lars Vogt pf
Ondine
Immersing myself in Warner Classics’ 27-disc collection of Lars Vogt’s early recordings was a lovely way to remember this wonderful musician. Even more special was his coupling of Mozart piano concertos – the vivacious Jeunehomme and the brooding C minor – in what must have been among his very last studio sessions.
Richard Whitehouse:
BA Zimmermann ‘Recomposed’
WDR Symphony Orchestra / Heinz Holliger
Wergo
’Bernd Alois Zimmermann: Recomposed’ is a wide-ranging collection drawn from across his career. Alongside a representative selection of radio and ‘light’ music it features two seminal works, Symphony in One Movement and Stille und Umkehr, in performances that amply reaffirm Heinz Holliger as a conductor of the front rank.
David Vickers:
‘Ein deutsches Barockrequiem’
Vox Luminis / Lionel Meunier
Ricercar
Byrd’s quadricentenary yielded special things but 2023 was also packed to the rafters with marvellous 17th-century music, such as The Gonzaga Band’s little-known Milanese motets, a Versailles production of Charpentier’s David et Jonathas and, above all, Vox Luminis’s inventive choices of early German Baroque sacred repertoire to mirror the words in Brahms’s German Requiem.
Arnold Whittall:
‘Infinite Voyage’
Emerson Quartet with Barbara Hannigan sop Bertrand Chamayou pf
Alpha
The Emerson’s final recording has opened up new perspectives on early 20th-century tensions and diversities. As his Second Quartet underlines, Schoenberg played a pivotal role, yet the three very different works accompanying it are no less memorable, and played with exceptional expressive conviction.
Laurence Vittes:
‘Beethoven and Beyond’
María Dueñas vn Volker Kempf hp Vienna Symphony Orchestra / Manfred Honeck
DG
María Dueñas’s risk-taking performance expands the dimensions of Beethoven’s genius. With the Wiener Symphoniker and Manfred Honeck at her side, her narrative has poise, sweetness, intimacy and size. She nestles into trills, sweeps the music hypnotically into its big climaxes, and pays tribute to Spohr, Ysaÿe, Saint-Saëns, Wieniawski and Kreisler with her own cadenzas.
Richard Wigmore:
‘Schubert Revisited’
Matthias Goerne bar Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen
DG
Balancing discretion and imaginative flair, Alexander Schmalcz’s orchestrations of 19 songs for Matthias Goerne brilliantly realise the suggestive power of Schubert’s keyboard-writing. Goerne sings with his trademark intensity of line and feeling, whether in the anguished brooding of the Harper’s Songs or the tenderly caressed barcarolle ‘Des Fischers Liebesglück’.
William Yeoman:
‘Schumann & Brahms’
Benjamin Grosvenor pf
Decca
Of 2023’s outstanding crop of releases, this is one I’ve consistently returned to. Apart from the self-recommending repertoire, it’s Grosvenor’s lithe expressive power tempered by an almost self-effacing ability to avoid extremes that gives the illusion of allowing the music – and here Kreisleriana especially – space to work its own strange magic.
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