Don Satz gives his picks of the year.  Since I don't know when anything
came out, I can only talk about the stuff I enthused over this year.
In no particular order,

Heading my list, several discs by David Lamb, available from the composer.
Lamb has continued to compose despite neglect.  The music is engaging,
craft-worthy, and artistically honest.

Benjamin Lees: Symphonies 2, 3, and 5, and Etudes for Piano and Orchestra.
Albany TROY564/565.  Strong, consequential music from an American composer
who has quietly built up one of the best catalogues of classic Modernism.

Geirr Tveitt: Variations on a Folksong from Hardanger for 2 pianos and
orchestra.  Piano Concerto No. 4 "Aurora Borealis".  Naxos 8.555761.
Anything new about Tveitt is welcome.  If you like Scandinavian music,
this should be a winner.

Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No. 11 "The Year 1905." LSO Live LSO0030.
Rostropovich has issued, I think, the currently great performance of
this symphony, surpassing even Stokowski and Mravinsky.  It's certainly
revised opinions (way upward) about the stature of the work within the
Shostakovich canon.

Arnold Rosner: Sextet for Strings Nun komm' der Heiden Heiland, op. 47
(1970, rev.  1997).  Besos sin cuento, op. 86 (1989).  Sonata for
Trombone and Piano, op. 106 (1996).  Albany TROY553.  For me, any release
of a Rosner work is an event, but this just might be my THE Record of
the Year.  Two masterpieces and one excellent sonata.  I think Rosner
composes chamber music at the level of Brahms.  The performances are
heroic.

Jerome Moross: Frankie and Johnny.  Those Everlasting Blues.  Willie the
Weeper.  Naxos 8.559086.  Okay, so he's a minor American composer, but
he's also witty and entertaining and absolutely his own man.  You will
never mistake the work of Moross for anybody else's.

Coleman: New York Sketches.  Strouse: String Quartet; Sonata for 2 Pianos.
Kander: 3 Poems by Lucile Adler.  Schmidt: Monteargentario: 7 Dances for
Solo Piano. Bay Cities BCD 1038.  "Classical" pieces from Broadway
composers, and a real pleasure.  The eye-openers are the pieces by Charles
Strouse, a man who could have been the next Irving Fine, had he not
wanted to make a real living.

Ernst Toch: String Quartet No. 6 op. 12.  String Quartet No. 12 op.
70.  cpo 999 776-2.  The works have been recorded before, but the Verdi
Quartet deliver powerful, insightful performances.  For me, the disc
represents as much a discovery of one of the world's great chamber
ensembles as it does the rediscovery of terrific chamber music.

Bohuslav Martinu: La Revue de Cuisine.  Sonatina for clarinet and piano.
Pastorales (Stowe).  Quartet for clarinet, horn, cello, and side drum.
Summit DCD214.  Two familiar works and two obscure ones from the Czech
master in stunning performances from super-clarinettist Michele Zukovsky
and some of the best musicians in Los Angeles.  A joy.

Robert Simpson: Symphonies 2 and 4.  Hyperion CDA66505.  Two masterpieces
from probably the best postwar British symphonist in superb performances
led by Vernon Handley.

Akio Yashiro: Piano Concerto (1962).  Symphony (1958).  Naxos 8.555351.
My introduction to the music of Yashiro, a Japanese composer strongly
influenced by Bartok and, at his best, as good.  Terrific stuff.  Although
the later piano concerto outshines the symphony, the symphony would grace
many a composer's catalogue.

"Steve Schwartz" <[log in to unmask]>