Classical Grammys
by Alex
I don’t put too much store in these things, but it is worth pointing out that the “Grammy nominations for classical albums”:http://www.grammy.com/GRAMMY_Awards/Annual_Show/48_nominees.aspx#30 are up (but not easy to find) on the Grammy website. As a diagnostic of a very particular take on classical music it’s interesting enough. Naxos’s Penderecki and Bolcom albums get multiple mentions, which almost makes me rethink my opinion of Bolcom. Hyperion is doing another recording of Lauridsen’s _Lux Aeterna_ to compete with the one from the LA Master Choral (or whatever they’re called). While I have no doubt that anything that comes out on Hyperion will be superb, I do wonder whether we need more recordings of this piece — on the one hand, the original recording is superb (and itself a Grammy winner iirc) and on the other hand since all of Lauridsen’s pieces sound so much alike, they could have recorded new material and still have produced the same album. What else? A new recording of Britten’s _Death In Venice_ (with Michael Chance rather than James Bowman) which definitely is underrecorded. The album of Carlo Chavez’s chamber music gets multiple nods. Ho hum. My far and away favorite piece of classical music this year is without a doubt Toby Twining’s utterly superb “Chrysalid Requieum”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000067DOM/002-8806560-6968065?v=glance&n=5174.