MWI's Recordings of the Year

The process of compiling our Recordings of the Year is complete, and they will be live on the site on Wednesday. I thought it was appropriate, as compiler, to make a few comments, and felt here was as good a place as any.

In previous years, I have been surprised by how few recordings gained multiple nominations. This year, as I added each new set, I noted that there seemed to be more "double-ups". Of the 33 contributors and 150 selections, there are 14 recordings that have been nominated twice. Last year, there were 9.

It is probably worth listing the 14 for you (in no particular order):
- a collection of Jonathan Harvey's orchestral works on NMC
- a Dutch Rite of Spring on Exton
- Jonas Kaufman's aria recital on Decca
- VW conducting his 5th symphony on Somm
- Natalie Dessay & Juan Diego Florez in Donizetti's La fille du regiment on a Virgin DVD
- Trevor Pinnock's revisiting of the Brandenburgs on Avie
- Marin Alsop's New World symphony on Naxos
- the remastered Freni/Pavarotti/Karajan Boheme on Decca
- Sony's box set of Stravinsky featuring the composer himself as conductor
- Charles Mackerras and the Scottish CO with Mozart's last four symphonies on Linn
- Bax and Elgar string quartets by the Pavãos on Discrete
- the Warner box set of Svetlanov's Myaskovsky
- the Copenhagen Ring cycle on Decca DVD
- Janacek's The Excursions of Mr Broucek on DG

If I was to choose a Compiler's ROTY, then it would be the latter - Jirí Belohlávek and the BBC SO's Mr Broucek - because I know by email conversation that a third contributor would have nominated it as well, except that he was aware it had already made the list.

There is no doubt about the Work of the Year: La Bohème received four nominations across three different recordings: two for the Pavarotti reissue and one each for the Gheorghiu/Vargas on EMI and Netrebko/Villazón on DG.

My Composer of the Year is shared between Leoš Janáček and Benjamin Britten: each received nominations for recordings of three different works.

Naxos recordings received the most nominations with 15, DG being next on 11, but I'm going to award my Label of the Year to Decca (with 10) on the basis of many fewer recordings reviewed than the other two.

For those of you inconvenienced by the selection criteria (must have a MWI review in the 12 months before December 2008) I apologise and ask you to keep the ones that didn't make the deadline for 2009.

And finally, so that you can get a sneak preview before all our readers, the link to the 2008 ROTYs is here.