From big orchestral showpieces to intimate chamber-music programmes, grand operas (including on Blu-ray/DVD) to solo piano recordings, The Times and Sunday Times critics select the best new classical albums for you to buy or stream this year. We will review the latest releases from the starriest conductors, singers and instrumentalists, but also go off the beaten track, choosing from boutique record companies as well as the major labels, and spotlighting less well-known artists for you to explore.
Anna Clyne
Abstractions
Naxos
Several emotions, mostly happy, dominate this new album of music by the imaginative genre-bending British composer Anna Clyne, long resident in the United States. Marin Alsop conjures up excellent live performances from the organisation she conducted for 14 years, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
Grieving comes to the fore in the moving opening track, Within Her Arms, written after the death of Clyne’s mother. The next work, Abstractions, suggests, well, abstractions. But that hardly characterises the swirling textures of its second movement, Auguries, one of five musical portraits inspired by contemporary artworks. Textures and colours equally dance and throb in Color Field from 2020. The album is 52 minutes long, and I enjoyed every single one of them. GB