Classical Music 2021

Here is a smattering of notable classical music released in 2021.

Isata Kanneh-Mason
Summertime
Decca
2021

Isata Kanneh-Mason's debut, Romance: The Piano Music of Clara Schumann (Decca, 2019) was a shrewd business decision disguised with clever production, selections at the edge of the standard repertoire, looking deeply into an infrequently recorded composer. Before Romance cooled, the pianist released Summertime, a tightly focused recital of 20th century American music. Kanneh-Mason achieves an informative juxtaposition of George Gershwin's 1920s metropolitan jazz age (as seen through arrangements by Earl Wild and Percy Grainger) with Samuel Barber's dense modernity, tempered with the pastoral touches of Samuel Coleridge Taylor and Amy Beach. This is New World music in full bloom.

Key Selection: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: "The Bamboula" (After Louis Moreau Gottschalk).

Randall Goosby
Roots
Decca
2021

Itzhak Perlman protégé, Randall Goosby, joined by fellow Youth Concert Artists bassist/composer Xavier Foley and pianist Zhu Wang, ambitiously debuts an eclectic survey of New World music, composed or influenced by African-Americans. Roots is a blues suite from the Piedmont Pines of Foley's "Shelter Island" and the Mississippi Delta sweat of Perkinson's Blues Forms shone through George Gershwin's jazz age urban visions, while finally making the performance hall with William Grant Still and Florence Price (with premier recordings) before ending in Antonín Dvořák's culturally informed Sonatina in G major. This is a smart recording, smartly programmed and performed.

Key Selection: Xavier Foley: "Shelter Island."

Víkingur Ólafsson
Mozart & Contemporaries
Deutsche Grammophon
2021

Pianist Víkingur Ólafsson's touch is as soft as a suggestion and authoritative as a handshake. These characteristics manifest in his recordings. Ólafsson's Glass is chilly crystalline, his Bach revelatory, and his Debussy/Rameau provocatively informed. Now, Ólafsson presents Mozart et al., that composer is in good company with a series of brief pieces by Galuppi, C.P.E. Bach, and Cimarosa, while the recording is anchored by two Mozart and one Haydn sonatas. It is the shorter pieces by the lessers seizing the day, the two Cimarosas (single-movement sonatas) being exceedingly fine. These performances are elegant, even sublime, playing that rewards with each listening.

Key Selection: Mozart: Ave verum corpus, K. 618 (Transcribed by Franz Liszt).

Daniil Trifono
Bach—The Art of Life
Deutsche Grammophon
2021

There is a trend away from a single artist surveying entire repertoires in favor of said artists recording intelligent and thoughtfully curated selections of music. Witness Víkingur Ólafsson's wildly successful Bach. Daniil Trifonov, known for his Late Romantic programs, dives into J.S. Bach's creative finale, The Art of Fugue, surrounding it with other Baroque offerings from Bach's family and associates. The result is an entertaining and educational presentation of late Baroque. Trifonov sounds like a romantic specialist playing baroque (think Lang Lang), his articulation roundly measured while his intensity ringing solidly, not unlike Horowitz's Scarlatti. This recording illustrates Bach's high signal among those of his contemporaries.

Key Selection: "Christian Petzold -Minuet in G Major (BWV Anh. 114)."

Kit Armstrong
William Byrd & John Bull: The Visionaries of Piano Music
Deutsche Grammophon
2021

Renaissance composers William Byrd (1539 -1623) and John Bull (1562 -1628) predate the High Baroque of J.S. Bach with a keyboard style extending into the present day. In every generation, the two have their interpreters. Presently Kip Armstrong plants his spear, declaring the importance of these composers on future pianism. With emotive grace and determination, Armstrong wields these period masterpieces on the modern piano, revealing a pathos that would define the Romantic period 200 years later. Compared to the clinical clarity of Glenn Gould, Armstrong drills deep into the pieces revealing the molten emotional core of the composer's intent. Armstrong prepared and executed this neglected music with enlightened determination and gentle care.

Key Selection: Byrd: The Battle (Nevell 4, MB 28/94)-The Flute and the Drum

Kuniko
Tribute to Miyoshi
Linn Records
2021

Kuniko Kato has established herself as the premiere percussionist in classical music from her Baroque project Bach: Solo Works For Marimba (Linn, 2017) to the minimalism of Steve Reich on Drumming (Linn, 2018). She honors her mentor, Akira Miyoshi (1933-2013) with an exposition of five Miyoshi compositions, including the impressive "Six Prelude Etudes for marimba." A marriage of melody and rhythm, each selection highlights the different anatomical parts of musical composition, all performed beautifully..

Key Selection: "Six Prelude Etudes for marimba."

Graindelavoix / Björn Schmelzer
Josquin the Undead: Laments, Deplorations and Dances of Death
Glossa
2021

Josquin I. This year marks the quincentenary of the death of Josquin des Prez. Considered the bridge between Dufay and Palestrina, Josquin was the first master of the high Renaissance style of polyphonic vocal music. Björn Schmelzer unleashes his Graindelavoix (in an all-male iteration) on a provocatively titled program honoring the event with a collection of Josquin compositions from Susato's publication of the composer's chasons 19 years after his death, including three laments for the composer's death, by Gombert, Vinders, and Appenzeller. Captured here is the same granular organicity displayed on the group's previous award-winning Gesualdo -Tenebrae (Glossa, 2020).

Key Selection: "Nimphes, nappes."

Stile Antico
The Golden Renaissance: Josquin des Prez
Decca
2021

Josquin II. A mostly sacred recital by mixed chorus Stile Antico, this release chooses to color within the lines, surveying Josquin's most recorded mass setting ( Missa Pange Lingua), some better known Marian Motets, plus two laments on Josquin, the Vinders "O Mors Inevitabilis," shared with the Graindelavoix release. The ensemble's approach and performance are equally precise and punctilious, if a bit distant. Comparing the Stile Antico and Graindelavoix Vinders is a revelation in disparate choral and recording techniques. These performances are polished silver, displayed in a cathedral compared to Graindelavoix's urgent immediacy of newly struck pewter, sung outdoors.

Key Selection: Missa Pange Lingua Cycle.

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