Our Top 10 of 2025 (available until 22nd Feb 2026) 1 to 10 of 10 results
As so often at the turning of the year, the huge pleasure of revisiting the discs we’ve reviewed during 2025 is tempered only by the difficulty of choosing just a couple of handfuls for our Top Ten. Against the prophecies of doom and gloom in the classical music world, it has been a pleasure to welcome so many excellent recordings this year, ranging from early music to contemporary, from standard repertoire to rarities and new discoveries. Coming up with a shortlist of recommendations has been a challenge, but the releases we’ve picked here have all been particularly impressive within the context of a highly competitive field.
Once again, it’s been an especially strong year for opera, thanks not least to the seemingly inexhaustible trove of treasures uncovered by the team at the Palazzetto Bru Zane. Focusing on the French repertoire, no fewer than three releases made our weekly picks: Massenet’s Grisélidis, Lalo’s Le Roi d’Ys and Ambroise Thomas’s Psyché, all eminently worth revival and performed with great commitment by splendid casts. Other operatic offerings included an early music rarity from the Academy of Ancient Music in the shape of John Weldon’s The Judgment of Paris, and an historic live recording of Janáček’s Makropulos Affair to mark the Mackerras centenary. However, our overall operatic pick of the year has to be the original 1857 version of Giuseppe Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, in a fastidiously researched new edition on the Opera Rara label. All doubts about the supposed shortcomings of this version are silenced by a cast headed by the benevolent baritone of Germán Enrique Alcantara in the title role, with Eri Nakamura’s radiant soprano (Amelia), Iván Ayón-Rivas’s ringing tenor (Gabriele), and bass William Thomas’s authoritative Fiesco/Andrea completing a superb central quartet of soloists. As we said in our original review, ‘With some 50% of music in the first half of the opera different from the “standard” 1881 version, this is essential listening for every Verdian’.
Among several concerto discs we reviewed – ranging from Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and the Piano Concertos of Ravel to Ruth Gipps’s Horn Concerto – we were particularly taken with the Violin and Piano Concertos of György Ligeti, in an excellent new recording from Harmonia Mundi. The soloists are Isabelle Faust and Jean-Frédéric Neuburger, in partnership with Les Siècles and conductor François-Xavier Roth. The performance of the Violin Concerto is especially captivating, requiring virtuoso teamwork in music that ranges from disorienting tuning and unusual instruments to edge-of-seat thrills. Hardly less compelling is the Piano Concerto with its snappy irregular rhythms, and both works bear the influence of Ligeti’s fascination with East European folk music. As does the much earlier Concert Românesc (1951), which lay unperformed for two decades and rivals Bartók at his most energetic. Completing an exceptionally absorbing programme are Aus der Ferne III and V by Ligeti’s close contemporary György Kurtág (who turns 100 in February 2026!), in which Faust is joined by three string soloists from Les Siècles.
The quality of chamber music discs we’ve reviewed this year has been outstanding. Three discs have made a special impact on us for their combination of expert musicianship, technical aplomb and visceral involvement. In July we welcomed a new recording of Alberto Ginastera’s three String Quartets on the Pentatone label. Vividly played by the Texas-based Miró Quartet, they span three distinct phases of the Argentinian composer’s career. The First is characterised by driving rhythms and a hauntingly nocturnal slow movement. The Second Quartet combines the Bartókian urgency of the First with nods toward the Viennese Expressionism of Webern and, above all, Berg. At its centre is a marvellously mysterious Presto magico, with unsettling textures peppered with pointillist gestures, another example of Ginastera’s particular penchant for spooky ‘night music’. The Third Quartet follows the precedent set by Schoenberg’s String Quartet no.2 by adding to the string players a solo soprano, here sung by Kiera Duffy. She conveys the texts (by Juan Ramón Jiménez, Federico García Lorca and Rafael Alberti) with a combination of immediacy and sensitivity to nuance, while the Miró players respond deftly to Ginastera’s ‘ever-changing universe of sound’.
Our second chamber music pick also features string quartets, this time by Bohuslav Martinů. The Pavel Haas Quartet is the leading Czech quartet of our time, and they bring their famed excellence in the music of their homeland to bear on the composer’s Second, Third, Fifth and Seventh Quartets. In the Fifth, which opens the disc, they combine ferocious attacking energy with a deep, lyrical soulfulness, and an impassioned account of the concluding Allegro. How nimbly they switch moods, yet never at the expense of complete unanimity of ensemble. The other works are more compact, but the performances are equally enthralling, from the Second (1925) which brought Martinů his international breakthrough, via the beguiling colours of the impressionistic Third, to the combined lyricism and neoclassicism of the Seventh (1947). Each of these works is superbly characterised by the PHQ players, the latest in their widely acclaimed series of Supraphon recordings.
One more quartet features on our third chamber choice: that by Maurice Ravel, the sesquicentenary of whose birth fell in March 2025. Among the many recordings issued in the composer’s honour, that by the Nash Ensemble – which recently marked its own 60th anniversary – brings together his two greatest chamber works, the String Quartet and Piano Trio, together with the Introduction and Allegro for harp, flute, clarinet and string quartet, and Ravel’s two-piano transcription of his poème chorégraphique, La Valse. It’s a sumptuous disc, with a performance of the Quartet that combines affectionate warmth with edgy observance of the fine detail. Even more captivating is the A minor Trio, with pianist Simon Crawford-Phillips partnered by violinist Benjamin Nabarro and cellist Adrian Brendel, its Passacaille slow movement reflecting both sombre unease and touching melancholy. Add to this a performance of the Introduction and Allegro that captures all its quasi-orchestral brilliance, and a La Valse where ‘every whirl and swirl is relished, every nuance pitched to perfection’, and you have a sure-fire winner.
We make no secret of our enthusiasm for Czech music, and among this year’s vocal releases was a song recital which served up some rare treasures. In recent years, tenor Nicky Spence has gained a formidable reputation as a champion of Janáček, but on his recital disc from Chandos entitled ‘Sparks from Ashes’ he uses his gift for the Czech language in less familiar corners of the repertoire. Dvořák’s Cypresses is a cycle of eighteen songs often heard sung by female voice, but here Spence’s pliant artistry makes the best possible case for performance by a tenor, bringing out a whole variety of emotions with superb projection. The album takes its title from a song-cycle by the tragically short-lived Vítězslava Kaprálová (1915–1940), a remarkably talented composer and conductor. A recurring theme throughout the disc is the reference to flames of love, and Spence conveys the passion underlying this music, as he does in Kaprálová’s Waving Farewell, a heartfelt farewell to the city of Prague. Béla Bartók’s five Village Scenes includes pianist Dylan Perez skillfully imitating the cimbalom in village bands, and this magnificently absorbing disc ends with the vibrantly witty Three Fables by Jaroslav Křička (1882–1967), centred on animal tales, which receives a sparkling performance.
French soprano Véronique Gens is one of the greatest exponents of the Francophone repertoire – from Baroque to modern – of our day, so we were delighted to welcome a disc devoted entirely to Offenbach arias under the title ‘Les Divas d’Offenbach’. Masterminded by the researchers at the Palazzeto Bru Zane, and appearing on the Alpha label, it pays tribute to the historic singers who first championed the composer’s music, and ranges from dreamy raptness to toe-tapping high spirits. Gens uncovers a wide range of moods and expression, splendidly partnered by the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire under Hervé Niquet, and rarities include numbers from such works as Le Roman comique and La Boulangère a des écus. It’s a disc that will gladden the hearts of all operetta lovers.
We certainly haven’t neglected more mainstream repertoire this year, but any discs making the final cut need to be exceptional, and ours certainly are. Our 2024 Disc of the Year was a remarkable account of Mozart’s Requiem from Raphaël Pichon and his Pygmalion ensemble of voices and period instruments on the Harmonia Mundi label. Two years prior to that, they also featured in our Top Ten, with an immersive performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion, and their more recent release of the B minor Mass was a Gramophone Award winner. However, it is their newest album that features in this year’s Top Ten: an account of Brahms’s much-recorded German Requiem that really blows away the cobwebs, with grainy, chamber-like textures and edge-of-the-seat thrills in the great choral fugues. It’s beautifully paced, taking its time in an unexpectedly broad account of the opening movement, and the soloists are of the finest calibre. Soprano Sabine Devieilhe is exquisitely pure-voiced in ‘Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit’, while baritone Stéphane Degout has a ‘vulnerable and confessional quality’ that fits perfectly with Brahms’s overall focus on comfort for the living rather than judgement of the dead.
One of our biggest sellers this year has been Dvořák’s ever-popular Slavonic Dances in a complete recording on the Pentatone label. The Czech Philharmonic have this music in their very bones, and they are conducted by their principal guest conductor, Simon Rattle, who brings wonderful attention to detail without (as he sometimes can do in Bruckner and Mahler, for example) getting in the way. Most of the complete recordings of these Dances have been made by the Czech Phil, under conductors ranging from Talich and Šejna to Mackerras, but Rattle’s account has the advantage of superb modern sound coupled with an orchestra at the peak of its game (they were 2024’s Gramophone Orchestra of the Year, and their appearances at the 2024 Proms were sensational). The disc is the latest in the collaboration between the Czech Philharmonic and Pentatone, and one of the best yet, with a palpable feel of the authentic Czech countryside, infectious in the faster dances, soulful in the slower ones.
Against such strong competition, our overall Disc of the Year has to be something special, and it is. Who would guess that a solo viola recital could come out tops? Yet Timothy Ridout’s Harmonia Mundi programme of works by Telemann, J.S. Bach, Britten and Caroline Shaw swept us away on its release back in February, and revisiting it recently we were every bit as captivated. A combination of absolute technical mastery, stylishness and sensitive musicality characterise his performances of two of Telemann’s Fantasias for solo violin and Bach’s mighty D minor Partita in transpositions for viola. There’s a rewarding intimacy to Ridout’s use of rubato, as if he were performing personally for each listener, and phenomenal dexterity in the faster movements. Shaw’s in manus tuas (one of her most recorded works) is played in an authorised version for solo viola. It captures the sensation of hearing Thomas Tallis’s eponymous motet, and employs a vast range of techniques and dynamics which Ridout handles with consummate mastery. The programme is completed by Britten’s 1930 Elegy for solo viola, where Ridout deploys a richer tone than in the Baroque pieces, but the ‘grain’ in his playing helps to emphasise the human dimension in this haunting early work, full of youthful anxieties. The whole programme is enormously satisfying, and Ridout’s virtuosic playing, coupled with a warm acoustic, makes this a very special disc, and a worthy winner in an exceptionally strong field.
Once again, it’s been an especially strong year for opera, thanks not least to the seemingly inexhaustible trove of treasures uncovered by the team at the Palazzetto Bru Zane. Focusing on the French repertoire, no fewer than three releases made our weekly picks: Massenet’s Grisélidis, Lalo’s Le Roi d’Ys and Ambroise Thomas’s Psyché, all eminently worth revival and performed with great commitment by splendid casts. Other operatic offerings included an early music rarity from the Academy of Ancient Music in the shape of John Weldon’s The Judgment of Paris, and an historic live recording of Janáček’s Makropulos Affair to mark the Mackerras centenary. However, our overall operatic pick of the year has to be the original 1857 version of Giuseppe Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, in a fastidiously researched new edition on the Opera Rara label. All doubts about the supposed shortcomings of this version are silenced by a cast headed by the benevolent baritone of Germán Enrique Alcantara in the title role, with Eri Nakamura’s radiant soprano (Amelia), Iván Ayón-Rivas’s ringing tenor (Gabriele), and bass William Thomas’s authoritative Fiesco/Andrea completing a superb central quartet of soloists. As we said in our original review, ‘With some 50% of music in the first half of the opera different from the “standard” 1881 version, this is essential listening for every Verdian’.Among several concerto discs we reviewed – ranging from Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and the Piano Concertos of Ravel to Ruth Gipps’s Horn Concerto – we were particularly taken with the Violin and Piano Concertos of György Ligeti, in an excellent new recording from Harmonia Mundi. The soloists are Isabelle Faust and Jean-Frédéric Neuburger, in partnership with Les Siècles and conductor François-Xavier Roth. The performance of the Violin Concerto is especially captivating, requiring virtuoso teamwork in music that ranges from disorienting tuning and unusual instruments to edge-of-seat thrills. Hardly less compelling is the Piano Concerto with its snappy irregular rhythms, and both works bear the influence of Ligeti’s fascination with East European folk music. As does the much earlier Concert Românesc (1951), which lay unperformed for two decades and rivals Bartók at his most energetic. Completing an exceptionally absorbing programme are Aus der Ferne III and V by Ligeti’s close contemporary György Kurtág (who turns 100 in February 2026!), in which Faust is joined by three string soloists from Les Siècles.The quality of chamber music discs we’ve reviewed this year has been outstanding. Three discs have made a special impact on us for their combination of expert musicianship, technical aplomb and visceral involvement. In July we welcomed a new recording of Alberto Ginastera’s three String Quartets on the Pentatone label. Vividly played by the Texas-based Miró Quartet, they span three distinct phases of the Argentinian composer’s career. The First is characterised by driving rhythms and a hauntingly nocturnal slow movement. The Second Quartet combines the Bartókian urgency of the First with nods toward the Viennese Expressionism of Webern and, above all, Berg. At its centre is a marvellously mysterious Presto magico, with unsettling textures peppered with pointillist gestures, another example of Ginastera’s particular penchant for spooky ‘night music’. The Third Quartet follows the precedent set by Schoenberg’s String Quartet no.2 by adding to the string players a solo soprano, here sung by Kiera Duffy. She conveys the texts (by Juan Ramón Jiménez, Federico García Lorca and Rafael Alberti) with a combination of immediacy and sensitivity to nuance, while the Miró players respond deftly to Ginastera’s ‘ever-changing universe of sound’.Our second chamber music pick also features string quartets, this time by Bohuslav Martinů. The Pavel Haas Quartet is the leading Czech quartet of our time, and they bring their famed excellence in the music of their homeland to bear on the composer’s Second, Third, Fifth and Seventh Quartets. In the Fifth, which opens the disc, they combine ferocious attacking energy with a deep, lyrical soulfulness, and an impassioned account of the concluding Allegro. How nimbly they switch moods, yet never at the expense of complete unanimity of ensemble. The other works are more compact, but the performances are equally enthralling, from the Second (1925) which brought Martinů his international breakthrough, via the beguiling colours of the impressionistic Third, to the combined lyricism and neoclassicism of the Seventh (1947). Each of these works is superbly characterised by the PHQ players, the latest in their widely acclaimed series of Supraphon recordings.One more quartet features on our third chamber choice: that by Maurice Ravel, the sesquicentenary of whose birth fell in March 2025. Among the many recordings issued in the composer’s honour, that by the Nash Ensemble – which recently marked its own 60th anniversary – brings together his two greatest chamber works, the String Quartet and Piano Trio, together with the Introduction and Allegro for harp, flute, clarinet and string quartet, and Ravel’s two-piano transcription of his poème chorégraphique, La Valse. It’s a sumptuous disc, with a performance of the Quartet that combines affectionate warmth with edgy observance of the fine detail. Even more captivating is the A minor Trio, with pianist Simon Crawford-Phillips partnered by violinist Benjamin Nabarro and cellist Adrian Brendel, its Passacaille slow movement reflecting both sombre unease and touching melancholy. Add to this a performance of the Introduction and Allegro that captures all its quasi-orchestral brilliance, and a La Valse where ‘every whirl and swirl is relished, every nuance pitched to perfection’, and you have a sure-fire winner.We make no secret of our enthusiasm for Czech music, and among this year’s vocal releases was a song recital which served up some rare treasures. In recent years, tenor Nicky Spence has gained a formidable reputation as a champion of Janáček, but on his recital disc from Chandos entitled ‘Sparks from Ashes’ he uses his gift for the Czech language in less familiar corners of the repertoire. Dvořák’s Cypresses is a cycle of eighteen songs often heard sung by female voice, but here Spence’s pliant artistry makes the best possible case for performance by a tenor, bringing out a whole variety of emotions with superb projection. The album takes its title from a song-cycle by the tragically short-lived Vítězslava Kaprálová (1915–1940), a remarkably talented composer and conductor. A recurring theme throughout the disc is the reference to flames of love, and Spence conveys the passion underlying this music, as he does in Kaprálová’s Waving Farewell, a heartfelt farewell to the city of Prague. Béla Bartók’s five Village Scenes includes pianist Dylan Perez skillfully imitating the cimbalom in village bands, and this magnificently absorbing disc ends with the vibrantly witty Three Fables by Jaroslav Křička (1882–1967), centred on animal tales, which receives a sparkling performance.French soprano Véronique Gens is one of the greatest exponents of the Francophone repertoire – from Baroque to modern – of our day, so we were delighted to welcome a disc devoted entirely to Offenbach arias under the title ‘Les Divas d’Offenbach’. Masterminded by the researchers at the Palazzeto Bru Zane, and appearing on the Alpha label, it pays tribute to the historic singers who first championed the composer’s music, and ranges from dreamy raptness to toe-tapping high spirits. Gens uncovers a wide range of moods and expression, splendidly partnered by the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire under Hervé Niquet, and rarities include numbers from such works as Le Roman comique and La Boulangère a des écus. It’s a disc that will gladden the hearts of all operetta lovers.We certainly haven’t neglected more mainstream repertoire this year, but any discs making the final cut need to be exceptional, and ours certainly are. Our 2024 Disc of the Year was a remarkable account of Mozart’s Requiem from Raphaël Pichon and his Pygmalion ensemble of voices and period instruments on the Harmonia Mundi label. Two years prior to that, they also featured in our Top Ten, with an immersive performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion, and their more recent release of the B minor Mass was a Gramophone Award winner. However, it is their newest album that features in this year’s Top Ten: an account of Brahms’s much-recorded German Requiem that really blows away the cobwebs, with grainy, chamber-like textures and edge-of-the-seat thrills in the great choral fugues. It’s beautifully paced, taking its time in an unexpectedly broad account of the opening movement, and the soloists are of the finest calibre. Soprano Sabine Devieilhe is exquisitely pure-voiced in ‘Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit’, while baritone Stéphane Degout has a ‘vulnerable and confessional quality’ that fits perfectly with Brahms’s overall focus on comfort for the living rather than judgement of the dead.One of our biggest sellers this year has been Dvořák’s ever-popular Slavonic Dances in a complete recording on the Pentatone label. The Czech Philharmonic have this music in their very bones, and they are conducted by their principal guest conductor, Simon Rattle, who brings wonderful attention to detail without (as he sometimes can do in Bruckner and Mahler, for example) getting in the way. Most of the complete recordings of these Dances have been made by the Czech Phil, under conductors ranging from Talich and Šejna to Mackerras, but Rattle’s account has the advantage of superb modern sound coupled with an orchestra at the peak of its game (they were 2024’s Gramophone Orchestra of the Year, and their appearances at the 2024 Proms were sensational). The disc is the latest in the collaboration between the Czech Philharmonic and Pentatone, and one of the best yet, with a palpable feel of the authentic Czech countryside, infectious in the faster dances, soulful in the slower ones.Against such strong competition, our overall Disc of the Year has to be something special, and it is. Who would guess that a solo viola recital could come out tops? Yet Timothy Ridout’s Harmonia Mundi programme of works by Telemann, J.S. Bach, Britten and Caroline Shaw swept us away on its release back in February, and revisiting it recently we were every bit as captivated. A combination of absolute technical mastery, stylishness and sensitive musicality characterise his performances of two of Telemann’s Fantasias for solo violin and Bach’s mighty D minor Partita in transpositions for viola. There’s a rewarding intimacy to Ridout’s use of rubato, as if he were performing personally for each listener, and phenomenal dexterity in the faster movements. Shaw’s in manus tuas (one of her most recorded works) is played in an authorised version for solo viola. It captures the sensation of hearing Thomas Tallis’s eponymous motet, and employs a vast range of techniques and dynamics which Ridout handles with consummate mastery. The programme is completed by Britten’s 1930 Elegy for solo viola, where Ridout deploys a richer tone than in the Baroque pieces, but the ‘grain’ in his playing helps to emphasise the human dimension in this haunting early work, full of youthful anxieties. The whole programme is enormously satisfying, and Ridout’s virtuosic playing, coupled with a warm acoustic, makes this a very special disc, and a worthy winner in an exceptionally strong field.Format CD
Pricing Over £15.00
Harmonia Mundi HMM932772
CD (1 disc)
Brahms - Ein deutsches Requiem
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special offer ending 22/02/2026
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Artists: Sabine Devieilhe (soprano), Stephane Degout (baritone), Pygmalion
Conductor: Raphael Pichon
Onyx ONYX4270
CD (1 disc)
Ravel - String Quartet, Piano Trio, Introduction & Allegro, etc.
£16.10 £10.40
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Artist: Nash Ensemble
Alpha ALPHA1168
CD (1 disc)
Offenbach - Les Divas d’Offenbach
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Artists: Veronique Gens (soprano), Choeur et Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire
Conductor: Herve Niquet
Pentatone PTC5187414
CD (1 disc)
Dvorak - Slavonic Dances
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Artist: Czech Philharmonic
Conductor: Simon Rattle
Supraphon SU43682
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Martinu - String Quartets 2, 3, 5 & 7
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Artist: Pavel Haas Quartet
Chandos CHAN20338
CD (1 disc)
Sparks from Ashes: Songs by Dvorak, Kapralova, Bartok & Kricka
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Artists: Nicky Spence (tenor), Dylan Perez (piano)
Pentatone PTC5187412
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Ginastera - String Quartets
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Artists: Miro Quartet, Kiera Duffy (soprano)
Harmonia Mundi HMM905382
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Ligeti - Violin & Piano Concertos, Concert Romanesc
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Artists: Isabelle Faust (violin), Jean-Frederic Neuburger (piano), Les Siecles
Conductor: Francois-Xavier Roth
Opera Rara ORC65
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Verdi - Simon Boccanegra (Original 1857 Version)
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Artists: German Enrique Alcantara, Eri Nakamura, William Thomas, Ivan Ayon-Rivas, Sergio Vitale, David Shipley, Beth Moxon, Chorus of Opera North, Royal Northern College of Music Opera Chorus, The Halle
Conductor: Mark Elder
Harmonia Mundi HMM902750
CD (1 disc)
Timothy Ridout: Telemann, Bach, Britten, Shaw
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Artist: Timothy Ridout (viola)