The ROTYs for this year will be made public in tomorrow's (Nov 27) update, but if you would like a sneak preview before then, you can click here.
As the ROTY compiler, I feel a few summary comments are in order.
139 selections have come in from 29 members of the team, with one more who has promised me his will be on the way very soon after he returns from a month's holiday in the tropical sun. This is slightly down on last year (150 from 33).
139 selections have come in from 29 members of the team, with one more who has promised me his will be on the way very soon after he returns from a month's holiday in the tropical sun. This is slightly down on last year (150 from 33).
The spread of choices is much wider than 2008, when 14 recordings were selected twice - this year, there are only half that number:
- Edward German's Tom Jones on Naxos
- Volume 11 of The Cardinall’s Musick Byrd Edition on Hyperion
- the complete Haydn symphonies in mp3 format on Nimbus
- Handel's Alcina on Archiv with Joyce DiDonato
- choral music of William Mathias on Hyperion
- Bernstein's Mass on Naxos (the Chandos recording of this also had one entry)
- the very new Winterreise on Harmonia Mundi with Mark Padmore & Paul Lewis
My choice for Compiler's Recording of the Year is the Mathias (CDA67740) because neither of its ROTY nominations came from the reviewer who had lauded it in July when it was awarded a Recording of the Month.
- Edward German's Tom Jones on Naxos
- Volume 11 of The Cardinall’s Musick Byrd Edition on Hyperion
- the complete Haydn symphonies in mp3 format on Nimbus
- Handel's Alcina on Archiv with Joyce DiDonato
- choral music of William Mathias on Hyperion
- Bernstein's Mass on Naxos (the Chandos recording of this also had one entry)
- the very new Winterreise on Harmonia Mundi with Mark Padmore & Paul Lewis
My choice for Compiler's Recording of the Year is the Mathias (CDA67740) because neither of its ROTY nominations came from the reviewer who had lauded it in July when it was awarded a Recording of the Month.As with 2008, Naxos is Label of the Year, with 18 nominations. While this is obviously helped by the number of Naxos recordings we review, it must also be said that if they weren't any good, they wouldn't have been chosen as a ROTY. Chandos (12) and Hyperion (9) were next, with last year's runnerup - DG - falling to a single nomination.
Appropriately for the 200th anniversary of his death, the Composer of the Year is Joseph Haydn with six nominations.
Excellent work. This is always a remarkable snapshot of the year but once again also throws up numerous value judgements for reviewers. I note the Bernstein Mass on Chandos (for instance) has been chosen by us as a ROTY, and read today on the admittedly (on occasion) somewhat loopy Classics Today.com that this release is "Disgusting. Avoid at all costs." Also, of the complete Dowland lute music - one recommends the Bis/Lindberg recordings and another the North/Naxos (both pretty equal in merit as it happens). Such is the subjective nature of reviewing, but I can't blame the poor innocent punter for becoming confused on occasion!
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, Mass has always elicited extreme responses (mostly negative ones) so that's nothing new. I do wonder, though, whether some critics over the Pond are overly sensitive to 'foreign' performances of repertoire they regard as their own.
ReplyDeleteAs for punters being confused, 'twas ever thus. I remember when I first started reading revies three decades ago I soon discovered the reviewers I could trust and those I couldn't. I imagine the same applies to everyone else, although the sheer volume of comments available online is a bit overwhelming.
Hello all,
ReplyDeleteA belated reply, but I have been working on a review of the Naxos Bernstein Mass for a little over four months (the Word file says it was created 26 August) and am just about finished with it. I was one of the two critics who chose it for Record of the Year; I think the Chandos version deserves better than the treatment it got at ClassicsToday, but that it is inferior to the Naxos offering; my review, if it is finished, will suggest a few reasons for this.
(Yes, I am an American, but the German accents of many of the Chandos singers didn't bother me - in fact, they were rather cute.)