Predictably, the Mozart Year dominated classical recordingsin 2006. Less predictably, it showed how far Mozart interpretation has comesince the last Mozart year (1991, marking the 200th anniversary of his death)thanks largely to the transformation that historically informed performancepractice has worked on this continually amazing music.
Claudio Abbado's Die Zauberfloete (DG), his first, brimmed with the wisdom achievedthrough trials that is at the heart of the work.
Conducting a fine cast and hisown Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Abbado led a reading that showed how much he hasgleaned from his early-music counterparts. His sublime, ideally balancedperformance allowed this Flute towork its magic while also allowing each listener to decide what theunfathomably mysterious piece actually means.
Seven recordings of La Clemenza di Tito hinted that Mozart's problematic opera seria,composed simultaneously with Flute,was having its year, too.
Charles Mackerras' fine CD set (DG), like Abbado's,showed his debt to his historically minded colleagues, but it was Rene Jacobs'unapologetically period-style rendition for Harmonia Mundi that blew thecompetition away, showing how a work generations of Mozart-lovers wereinstructed to appreciate could actually be dramatic and involving.
Early music magus Andrew Manze followed his ear-openingrecordings of four Mozart sonatas for fortepiano and violin with Richard Egarr(Harmonia Mundi), which caused a complete rethinking of the pieces, withequally precedent-setting, marvel-inducing accounts of the Violin ConcertosNos. 3-5 (Harmonia M
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Like restorers of great old paintings, Marc Minkowski and his period-instrumentLes Musiciens du Louvre similarly startled the warhorses, bringing new insightsand finding arresting new sonorities in Mozart's last two symphonies (DG).
The Shostakovich Year brought its share of fine recordings,but none better and more deeply revealing than Han-Na Chang's of the CelloConcerto No. 1 and Cello Sonata (EMI), both accompanied by Antonio Pappanoleading the London Symphony on piano.
Pappano was as remarkable with IanBostridge in the tenor's Hugo Wolf song recital (EMI), the most individual andimaginative accounts of these high-water marks of song in a generation.
Bostridge also braved the precedent of Benjamin Britten'slifelong partner and muse, Peter Pears, with his CD of the song cycles fortenor and orchestra (EMI), with the Berlin Philharmonic under Simon Rattle.Hitting and missing as he recorded what felt like the rest of classical musicin 2006, Rattle was never better than with Bostridge.
In addition to a fine new Mozart disc, Richard Egarr madethe most important new recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations (Harmonia Mundi) in years. Deeply thought out andusing the most up-to-date edition, Egarr's masterful playing makes a powerfulcase that the Goldbergs are attheir best played on the harpsichord. The only other keyboard recording of itsstature was Mitsuko Uchida's of Beethoven's last three piano sonatas (Philips),on modern piano.
Her incomparably fine touch and probing insights achievedheights belied by the CD cover of the year, featuring a photo by the lateRichard Avedon that makes Uchida look like the Madwoman of Chaillot enactingMunch's Scream.
Mozart aside, the opera recording of the year was of OsvaldoGolijov's Ainamadar (DG), conducted byRobert Spano with Dawn Upshaw giving the performance of a lifetime as MargaritaXirgu, lesbian lover of the great gay Spanish poet, playwright andrevolutionary Federico Garcia Lorca. The composer's tireless invention wasrealized in a thoroughly transfixing performance.
Two new CDs of her husband's music attended the tragic earlydeath of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. It was said she was teaching him how to writefor voice, and I merely wish there had been more time for learning before shedied. Two DVDs that capture her art at its white-hot beginning as Sestoin Handel's Giulio Caesare and DonnaElvira in Mozart's Don Giovanni,both directed by Peter Sellars (Decca) are how I remember her.
In that vein, my CD of the Year was Lux Feminae (AliaVox), in which the equally astoundingMontserrat Figueras, the heart and soul of the early-music enterprise headed byJordi Savall, sings a selection of vocal works from the years 900-1600 aboutthe feminine archetype in all its dimensions. Her rapturous, incantatory singingand the richly sonorous accompaniments, many of them from Muslim sources,embody then release a force that, Figueras leaves no doubt, could heal theworld men have brought to the brink.
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