Welcome to the 4th annual Nereffid's Guide Awards, revealing the best-reviewed classical albums of the year. Yay!
These Awards first came to life as a by-product of my efforts to keep track of all the classical CD reviews I'd been reading. For the first 2 years they were focused on albums that were available on eMusic, but last year I expanded the process to cover all labels. The Awards reflect not my opinion but the general consensus from several review sources: the print publications Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine, International Record Review, American Record Guide, and Fanfare and the web sites Classics Today and MusicWeb International. This year, additional reviews come from 3 other sites: Classics Today France, Klassik Heute, and Audiophile Audition. Over the past year I've been noting all the albums that have received high praise from one or more of these sources, then I've collated all the findings and compared them using a magic formula that may or may not have some sort of statistical validity.
The result: 1 winner and 4 runners-up in each of 14 categories. Scroll down the page to see each award in turn, or click on these links to jump to the relevant post:
Medieval & Renaissance
Baroque - Instrumental
Baroque - Vocal
Solo Instrumental
Chamber
Concerto
Symphony
Orchestral
Solo Vocal
Choral
Opera
Opera Recital
Living Composer - Instrumental
Living Composer - Vocal
In the near future I'll post some sort of rambling gibberish in which I try to make sense of what the results mean for the future of humanity, plus a bunch of 8tracks mixes. At the moment all I shall do is applaud again the musicians, record labels, and composers who have given such great listening pleasure over the past year, and exhort all you good people out there to go buy as many of these albums as you can.
These Awards first came to life as a by-product of my efforts to keep track of all the classical CD reviews I'd been reading. For the first 2 years they were focused on albums that were available on eMusic, but last year I expanded the process to cover all labels. The Awards reflect not my opinion but the general consensus from several review sources: the print publications Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine, International Record Review, American Record Guide, and Fanfare and the web sites Classics Today and MusicWeb International. This year, additional reviews come from 3 other sites: Classics Today France, Klassik Heute, and Audiophile Audition. Over the past year I've been noting all the albums that have received high praise from one or more of these sources, then I've collated all the findings and compared them using a magic formula that may or may not have some sort of statistical validity.
The result: 1 winner and 4 runners-up in each of 14 categories. Scroll down the page to see each award in turn, or click on these links to jump to the relevant post:
Medieval & Renaissance
Baroque - Instrumental
Baroque - Vocal
Solo Instrumental
Chamber
Concerto
Symphony
Orchestral
Solo Vocal
Choral
Opera
Opera Recital
Living Composer - Instrumental
Living Composer - Vocal
In the near future I'll post some sort of rambling gibberish in which I try to make sense of what the results mean for the future of humanity, plus a bunch of 8tracks mixes. At the moment all I shall do is applaud again the musicians, record labels, and composers who have given such great listening pleasure over the past year, and exhort all you good people out there to go buy as many of these albums as you can.
2 comments:
Huge thanks for all the work you put into this (yet again!).
!!!
once again, emusers making the world safe for ears. good work!
68
Post a Comment