I judge the quality of the year by how many times I'm forced to visit the timber yard to acquire material to construct yet more new shelves for CDs (this year the CD collection has expanded by a fearsome 18 metres - there is a line in a Beckett novel about how astonishing it is that mathematics helps you to know yourself).
As Albion remarks above, it has been a wonderful year with Ivanhoe at one end and The Queen of Cornwall at the other - and all kinds of unsungs becoming sung at last in between. Thank you Hyperion, Chandos, Dutton Vocalion, Signum, Delphian, MDG, Divine Art, Timpani and many others not forgetting Naxos.
However for me what has proved especially treasurable has been the blossoming of Toccata. True, the label did exist before 2010, but it is in this last year that any (bar Telemann) Toccata recording has become a truly compelling purchase. Just contemplate:
Alkan - 2 CDs of organ music to keep company with the piano works
Algernon Ashton - a wonderful discovery
Vytautas Bacevicius - especially Symphony 2 with its harrowing fears of WW2 by a Lithunian Polish composer never to return to his homeland
Julius Burger - yet another Viennese late romantic who sought refuge in USA
Gernsheim - the CD of the year surely
Herzogenberg - delightful 4 hands music played by Goldstone & Clemmow
Jadassohn - another indispensable to those with ears and souls
John Joubert - wonderful song cycles from a distinguished British composer far less sung than he ought to be
Liszt - the Stradal transcriptions, 'astonishing' doesn't begin to do it justice
Ester Magi - an Estonian composer of whom we need to hear far more
David Matthews - please, please, may Volume 2 of the String Quartets follow on fast
Gunter Raphael - along with the CPO discs another startling discovery
Taneyev - the piano concerto
Matthew Taylor - hurrah for the vitality of contemporary chamber music
Boris Tchaikovsky - some very significant bits and not mere chippings from the composer's bottom drawer
Ferdinand Thieriot - I believe they're playing the String Sextet in heaven right now
Tovey - chamber music, and again, please, please, Volume 2
Harri Vuori - not sure whether I'd choose to spend my penultimate day on earth listening to this, but quite brilliant Finnish symphonic wizardry
Weinberg - may it become a complete survey of the Violin Sonatas!
Hugh Wood - marvellous stuff and don't be daunted by it
There are of course many other Toccata CDs. (My next Toccata order will probably include the piano music of Galynin and Lyadov - any views on these discs?) We get first class recordings together with notes and commentaries that put many other labels to shame (with the exception of course of the Graham Johnson commentaries on the Schubert songs on Hyperion, an act impossible to follow). Behind this steady stream of excellent and very welcome recordings is the manifest indefatigable energy of Toccata in making hitherto inaccessible or unknown music at last sung. Despite the wealth of things coming from other labels, does not Toccata deserve heartfelt thanks from those with a special interest in hearing unsung music? Let us hope that 2011 will see Toccata continuing to flourish.
Peter
PS And if anyone picked it up - my last day on earth? Insofar as I can arrange it that of course will be spent in the company of Die Meistersinger. What other?
