Because it was a good year, another Baker’s Dozen …

1. Matt Haimovitz and Christo­pher O’Riley, Shuffle.Play.Listen/Todd Reynolds, Out­er­bor­ough: Tied because they are so closely related and so very fine. There are musi­cal and styl­is­tic dif­fer­ences, but the under­ly­ing val­ues are shared, mak­ing these ideal com­pan­ions and, most of all, discs you should own.

Reynolds’ release is a disc of him play­ing his own com­po­si­tions and another where he plays music writ­ten for him by Michael Gor­don, David Lang, Phil Kline, David T. Lit­tle, Nick Zam­muto, Paul de Jong, Ken Thom­son, Michael Lowen­stern and Paula Matthusen. As a solo player, Reynold’s works with the loop­ing, struc­tur­ing and pro­cess­ing fea­tures of tools like Able­ton Live and Max/MSP, and the works writ­ten for him make cre­ative use of elec­tronic means as well, build­ing multi-tracked parts, rhythms and elec­tronic sounds. The over­all sen­si­bil­ity is at the pin­na­cle of pop-inflected Post-Minimalism, from Phil Kline’s gor­geous, intense “Nee­dle Pulling Fred” to the chat­ter­ing flow of de Jong’s “Inward Bound” to the thrash­ing crunch of Lang’s “Killer,” a piece that com­bines the best of Bang on a Can clas­sics “Indus­try” and “Lying, Cheart­ing, Steal­ing.” It’s fun­da­men­tally all Reynolds, the play­ing and the view. It’s his ecu­meni­cal view and smart, refined taste that brings the pieces together, and it’s his tremen­dous musi­cian­ship that is at the core. Across both discs, there is a sense of free­dom and spon­tane­ity that come out of his skill and expres­sion as a musi­cian and that gives every­thing the feel­ing that it is unfin­ished in the best sense, that when you hit the repeat but­ton (and you will) you will hear some­thing you didn’t the last play.

Out­er­bor­ough is the best exam­ple of the rest­less, cre­ative rela­tion­ship between com­po­si­tion and pop music going on in con­tem­po­rary clas­si­cal, as is Shuffle.Play.Listen. Where Reynolds is pio­neer­ing orig­i­nal work, Christo­pher O’Riley and Matt Haimovitz are mix­ing together a wide range of superb mod­ern clas­si­cal music with O’Riley’s trans­for­ma­tive arrange­ments of cur­rent pop music. The result is densely packed with great sounds.

The first of the two CDs is struc­tured through a suite of music from Bernard Herrmann’s excep­tional score for the movie “Ver­tigo.” In between move­ments, there is Janacek’s “Fairy Tale,” Martinu’s “Vari­a­tions on a Slo­vak Folk­song,” Stravinsky’s “Suite Ital­i­enne,” (a reduc­tion of his bal­let Pul­cinella), and “Le grand tango” from Astor Piaz­zolla. The play­ing is volup­tuously fab­u­lous, cham­ber music-making of the high­est order. O’Riley has great touch and is a sen­si­tive accom­pa­nist, while Haimovitz brings his unique abil­ity to vocal­ize melodic lines to each piece, and every­thing sings, even the non-vocal com­po­si­tions. The sequenc­ing of the music is fas­ci­nat­ing and rich.

The sec­ond CD tra­verses Arcade Fire, Radio­head, Cocteau Twins, Blond Red­head, A Per­fect Cir­cle and Mahav­ishnu Orchestra-era John McLaugh­lin. Like with Reynolds, O’Riley and Haimovitz accept as a given the qual­ity of the songs and the play the shit out of them. Haimovitz’s abil­ity to shape lines with the types of catches, fall-offs and the illu­sion of breath­ing that comes from the voice pushes these to an urgency of expres­sion that makes the orig­i­nals all sound a lit­tle cooler, and lit­tle more with­drawn. “The Pyra­mid Song” is haunt­ing and plan­gent, “Melody” is rav­ish­ing, “Heaven or Las Vegas” is a flow­ing pas­toral. The excep­tion to this full­ness they add to the pop music is the refined focus they give to “The Dance of Maya,” in a superb arrange­ment. The orig­i­nal is crush­ingly intense, here it’s qui­eter but just as provoca­tively obses­sive. This great record­ing closes with “A Lotus on Irish Streams,” in a beau­ti­ful impro­vi­sa­tion that rounds off all the music but leaves, like Out­er­bor­ough, ten­drils of ques­tions and pos­si­bil­i­ties that will have you play­ing the music all over again.

3. Simone Din­ner­stein, Bach: A Strange Beauty: Exquis­ite Bach play­ing, and refresh­ingly intel­li­gent think­ing about the composer.

4. Vin­cent Royer, Scelsi, The Works for Viola: Of all the avant-gardeists, Scelsi is the most deeply strange and, sur­pris­ingly, the most acces­si­ble. Audi­ences that know lit­tle to noth­ing of clas­si­cal music find him com­pelling for the same rea­sons the clas­si­cal world has been slow to turn to him: he speaks with­out guile and with­out any inter­est in the accepted pro­to­cols of craft directly from his soul to ours. The voice of his soul is in achingly beau­ti­ful micro­tonal­ity, usu­ally best expressed through string instru­ments. This col­lec­tion of his works for viola is com­pletely stun­ning. I’m thor­oughly famil­iar with Scelsi’s work, yet the inten­sity of Royer’s play­ing was unex­pected. If Scelsi’s music is a direct com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the most abstract, non-verbal part of his mind and soul, then Royer seems to be com­mu­ni­cat­ing directly with the com­poser, or act­ing as a purely trans­par­ent ves­sel between Scelsi and us. It’s rare, even with the finest musi­cians, to hear such unman­nered dia­logue and expres­sion with and from the the music. This is music-making on par with Uchida play­ing Schu­bert and is at the top of what is a grow­ing Scelsi discography.

5. Chaya Czer­nowin, Shift­ing Grav­ity: I first heard Czernowin’s music at a Com­poser Por­trait in April of this year, and it was entic­ing, so the release of this CD was a wel­come balm for my curios­ity. This is more than infor­ma­tion, though, this is a ter­rific, vibrant col­lec­tion. The music is for string quar­tets and cham­ber ensem­bles, at times enhanced with elec­tron­ics. Czernowin’s lan­guage is right at the sharp point of con­tem­po­rary clas­si­cal tra­di­tion, mak­ing use of dis­so­nance, atonal­ity, ges­tures of tim­bre, the sonic power of rock and, always, a care­ful place­ment of musi­cal events through times. Her struc­tures and rhythms are sub­tle but so finely crafted that, as mys­te­ri­ous as the music can be, there is always the sense that some­thing log­i­cal and mean­ing­ful will hap­pen next, and it does.

6. Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Fran­cisco Sym­phony, Ives/Brant: A Con­cord Sym­phony: Charles Ives’ body of work is unfin­ished. When he reached his com­po­si­tional matu­rity, his work became rest­less, search­ing, striv­ing, sound­ing at times like it was putting itself together on the fly. He stopped writ­ing music long before he died, leav­ing an unfin­ished and expec­tant qual­ity about his career, and he rarely fin­ished a piece, in that he fre­quently went back to printed and pub­lished works and revised them. The notes on paper were a start, not an end.

Con­sider the sym­phonies — how many did he write? There are num­bers 1 through 4, then there are the four orches­tral move­ments that, when put together, become the Amer­i­can Hol­i­days Sym­phony. He left behind sketches for another sym­phony, sug­gest­ing that some­one put them together, and that become the Uni­verse Sym­phony which exists in more than one, widely dif­fer­ent, ver­sion. And there’s this, Henry Brant’s orches­tra­tion of Ives’ ‘Con­cord’ Piano Sonata. The ‘Con­cord’ is the sin­gle work that rep­re­sents Ives’ aes­thetic, intel­lec­tual, spir­i­tual and moral val­ues (expressed in the com­po­si­tion and also in his book length essay, “Notes Before a Sonata”). Brant’s adap­ta­tion turns this into another, true Sym­phony, and a great one, the most coher­ent pro­found of the bunch. The den­sity of the piano writ­ing opens up into clar­ity, and so the depth and com­plex­ity of the think­ing can really be heard. Ives wrote all the notes, and of course it sounds like him, but with Brandt’s supe­rior orches­tral craft, and sounds like bet­ter Ives, as if Brandt was the edi­tor that the older man needed all along to real­ize his ideas with the great­est expression.

It’s extra­or­di­nary music, and in the hands of the best Ives musi­cians of the cur­rent era Tilson Thomas com­bines intel­li­gence and insight with the demand­ing tech­ni­cal skill the music requires, and the orches­tra responds, in this live record­ing, with the type of energy and fer­vor that bor­ders on agi­ta­tion, and is really excit­ing. The paired piece, Copland’s cere­bral, cool Organ Sym­phony is played with just as much com­mit­ment. The usual exquis­ite record­ing qual­ity from the SFS Media engi­neers. This is some of the finest orches­tral play­ing you will hear, and per­haps the great­est work from America’s most impor­tant, per­haps great­est, composer.

7. Marty Brab­bins, BBC Scot­tish Sym­phony Orches­tra, William Wal­ton Sym­phonies: Is it a lie if you believe it’s true? Walton’s Sym­phonies are solid works, this CD makes them sound like extra­or­di­nary ones.

8. Joel Fred­erik­sen, Ensem­ble Phoenix Munich, The Rose of Sharon: A great sur­vey of Amer­i­can music up to and through the Civil War, rev­e­la­tory in some ways, and beau­ti­fully sung and recorded.

9. Paci­fica String Quar­tet, The Soviet Expe­ri­ence Vol­ume 1: Fol­low­ing on their great Shostakovich Cycle at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Museum from 2010 — 2011, the Pacific Quar­tet is start­ing to release their stu­dio record­ings of the music, filled out with quar­tets by Shostakovich’s con­tem­po­raries (in this first set, the Miaskovsky String Quar­tet No. 13). If my mem­ory is still rea­son­ably func­tional, the stu­dio results are even bet­ter than the con­certs. This first vol­ume spans Quar­tets No. 5 — No. 8, and the per­for­mances have a sinewy tough­ness and a real under­stand­ing of psy­cho­log­i­cal and aes­thetic shifts, both quick and sub­tle, inside the pieces. I really like their lean sound in all this music, and their con­vey a spe­cial haunt­ing qual­ity when the com­poser calls for con sor­dino play­ing. One of their great strengths as a group is vio­list Masumi Per Ros­tad, who is one of the finer quar­tet vio­lists in clas­si­cal music, and the beauty and musi­cal­ity of his voice — so impor­tant to Shostakovich — really makes these record­ings sing.

10. Matthew Jones and Michael Hamp­ton, Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet (arr. Borisovsky): I find Prokofiev’s beloved bal­let score has its longuers, but not on this record­ing. The arrange­ment, by the composer’s col­league Vadim Vasi­lye­vich Borisovsky, is excel­lent, pre­serv­ing and empha­siz­ing the melodic inven­tive­ness, and the per­for­mance by Jones and Hamp­ton is tremen­dous. They play the music as if it’s the finest they’ve heard, and want to tell us the good news. Hamp­ton is a sen­si­tive and pow­er­ful accom­pa­nist, and Jones is a tremen­dous vio­lists, with a beau­ti­ful, pow­er­ful and flex­i­ble sound. A real plea­sure throughout.

11. Marek Janowski, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Henze Sym­phonies 3–5: Amid the fer­tile plains of Twen­ti­eth Cen­tury sym­phonies, Henze’s work stands out. His fas­ci­nat­ing idiom con­stantly wres­tles with the legacy of Roman­ti­cism in music, in a con­stantly shift­ing pas de deux of rejec­tion and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. That gives his sym­phonies a com­pelling mix­ture of unset­tling thrills and sooth­ing moments of clar­ity and intro­spec­tion. His own record­ings of these works are an essen­tial part of any clas­si­cal library, and the think­ing and play­ing from Janowski and orches­tra are even bet­ter here. These works are no longer new, yet they are still fresh, and the time they’ve had to mar­i­nated in musi­cians minds and under their fin­gers pays off here. I hope these musi­cians will be record­ing the rest of this body of work, and if so the project will rival the cur­rent Edward Gard­ber Lutoslawski project as mon­u­ments to the most impor­tant music of the pre­vi­ous 100 years.

12. Chiara String Quar­tet, Jef­fer­son Fried­man: Quar­tets: These are fine pieces, Friedman’s voice is a really wel­come explo­ration of what Roman­ti­cism means and how it sounds after post-Minimalism. The com­bi­na­tion of fer­ver and agi­ta­tion, and the bal­ance between tonal­ity and dis­so­nance, the over­all clear-speaking, is rem­i­nis­cent of and and wor­thy addi­tion to the great, impor­tant legacy of George Rochberg (see any and all of the Naxos and New World discog­ra­phy for his won­der­ful music), and, since this is New Ams­ter­dam, you get remixes from Matmos!

13. Car­los Kalmar, Ore­gon Sym­phony, Music for a Time of War: I missed this pro­gram at the Spring For Music fes­ti­val at Carnegie Hall in May, and it was the con­sen­sus pick as favorite con­cert. So it’s been a treat to lis­ten to this SACD, from a series of life record­ings from the orchestra’s home. It’s a great selec­tion of music, pieces that have ques­tions about exis­tence, how we treat each other, how we view the future dur­ing times in which we may think there is none, from Ives’ exis­ten­tial “The Unan­swered Ques­tion” to Vaughan Williams’ blis­ter­ing Symphony No. 4. It’s not just a polemic — these are great pieces that stand on their own as works of beau­ti­ful art — but as a whole it does remind us that, despite the rel­a­tive com­forts of our lives, our coun­try is not only at war but com­mit­ted to being at war for … well, for­ever. We’ve become the very model of a Nine­teenth Cen­tury deca­dent empire, and if the musi­cians are the only ones to ask the ques­tions we need, then so be it. A riv­et­ing, mov­ing way to get the mind rac­ing with thoughts of how things are, and how they might be.

Hon­or­able men­tion: Qua­tour Dio­tima, Agrip­pina, Ezio, Edward Gard­ner and the BBC Sym­phony Orches­tra, Kepler Quar­tet, Vladimir Jurowski and the Lon­don Phil­har­monic Orches­tra, Brad Lub­man and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin