We’re a whole week into January now, but really, do those best-of lists from the end of the year ever get old? No, not really. And with the various music lists floating about, one could fuel months of listening from a comprehensive selection of genres! All thanks to the glorious best-of list. To that end, we’ve compiled some lists chronicling the best of classical music in 2014 from a few reputable and well-known online sources.
NPR Classical’s 2014 Best Classical Albums List is a particularly exciting place to start, as we hear right off the bat about what a wonderful year it was for classical recordings. There’s a delightfully varied mix here. Recordings of new music, old compositions, and everything in between. Recordings by large ensembles, small ensembles, and soloists. Even better, you can listen to samples as you scroll through the post and even purchase the music via iTunes or Amazon. They’re making it easy, folks! Dig on in!
Next we head over to The New York Times. There’s a lot here! Twenty-five albums, to be exact. John Luther Adams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Become Ocean tops both this list and the NPR Classical list. And with good reason! This is one of the most discussed new works of the year and is well worth a listen or twenty.
But, I digress. The music critics from The Times emphasize the fact that smaller record labels had a tremendous showing last year. There’s also a strong showing of classics here. So, if you generally prefer early 20th century, 19th century classical music, or earlier, this is a great list for you.
And then there’s Gramophone‘s Recordings of the Year. They really upped the ante. List, schmist. They have an entire e-magazine of recommended classical recordings from 2014. For each month, Gramophone selected a “recording of the year” along with nine Editor’s Choices. So cool!
Now that you have a boatload of fabulous music to keep you busy over the next few months, here’s a little bit of fun for the road:
The ever-ingenious ClassicFM has devised a list of the 7 best classical music viral videos of 2014. There is some good stuff here! The super-great trombone sneeze video, a 2cellos selection, an upside-down string quartet and more. Even more stuff for your procrastiworking list. Yes! Sorry.
What were your favorite albums and videos of 2014?