CLASSICAL CDS

Andrew Clark

BEETHOVEN: Symphonies 3 & 8

Osmo Vanska

BIS

The question posed by any new Beethoven recording must be: do we really need it? The second in Vanska’s cycle of the symphonies is a revelation because it makes you listen to these masterpieces with fresh ears. The best since Carlos Kleiber’s Beethoven a generation ago with the Vienna Philharmonic, it shows how hard Vanska has worked to put the Minnesota Orchestra in the US top league. Spaciously recorded, these performances are stylish, intense, quick-witted and full of arresting surprises. My record of the year.

JOHN ADAMS: The Dharma at Big Sur

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Nonesuch

Adams’s concerto for electric violin, played by Tracy Silverman, takes his post-minimalist idiom to new expressive heights, with soaring melodies and rhapsodic slides that are as hypnotic as classic Indian song.

PETER MAXWELL DAVIES: Naxos Quartets 5 & 6

Maggini Quartet

Naxos

Max’s cycle of 10 quartets is turning into the most marvellous distillation of a lifetime’s creativity. Each work reveals a concentrated inwardness worthy of late Beethoven.

WAGNER: Der Ring des Nibelungen

Joseph Keilberth

Testament (Four box sets)

In a deluge of historical issues, the prize goes to a vividly recorded Bayreuth “Ring” from 1955. All four operas reveal Keilberth as a titanic Wagnerian, with casts led by Hotter and Varnay.

MOZART: Cosi fan tutte

Alexander Gibson

Ponto (Two CDs)

Scottish Opera’s classic Cosi from 1969 follows hot on the heels of its Rosenkavalier, also in English and starring Janet Baker. Gibson fans can rejoice, too, in his 1957 Tosca with Corelli on Royal Opera House Heritage.

BRUCKNER: Symphony No 4 in E Flat “Romantic”

Klaus Tennstedt

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Tennstedt enjoyed an alchemy with the LPO that is evident in this 1989 live recording - the most fervent account of this work I have heard.

MOZART: Mass in C Minor

Louis Langree

Virgin Classics

In a gush of releases for the Mozart year this comes top - and not just for the beguiling beauty of Nathalie Dessay’s (pictured right) soprano solos. What Mozart in his late twenties shows us is his understanding of man’s aspirations perfectly captured by Langree and Le Concert d’Astree.

MOZART: Piano Concertos K453 & K467

Maurizio Pollini

DG

This is Pollini’s first Mozart recording for 30 years, and it’s a stunner. Taped live with the Vienna Philharmonic, it might not please the style police, but Pollini’s insight, vitality and musicianship put him streets ahead of most “period-aware” interpreters. Ideal for the iPod.

SHOSTAKOVICH: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

Netherlands Opera

Opus Arte (2 DVDs)

The Shostakovich centenary has given us an equally rich crop, my favourite being this filmed performance from Amsterdam. Martin Kusej’s production, starring Eva-Maria Westbroek, is pitilessly graphic, while Mariss Jansons and the Royal Concertgebouw reveal the music’s terrible majesty.

SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphonies 3 & 14

Mariss Jansons

EMI

Jansons has crowned his recorded cycle of Shostakovich symphonies with a pairing of the innocent “First of May” Symphony and the death-fixated Fourteenth - making them sound like two halves of a whole. The competition may have hotted up, but Jansons is still my preferred Shostakovich interpreter.

TCHAIKOVSKY: Manfred Symphony

Vladimir Jurowski

London Philharmonic Orchestra

The LPO’s principal conductor-elect shows himself to be completely inside the Tchaikovsky idiom, drawing the sort of playing that raises an orchestra well above its game. His Tchaikovsky Suite No 3, recorded in Moscow for Pentatone, is just as impressive.

CPE BACH: Symphonies 1-4/Cello Concerto in A

Alison McGillivray with Andrew Manse

Harmonia Mundi

This talented baroque cellist shows how much heart and soul - not to mention style - is to be found in the “lesser” Bach. McGillivray jousts playfully in the outer movements while turning the Largo into a sensitive cantus.

SIBELIUS: Kullervo

Colin Davis

LSO Live

Sibelius’s first great experiment with Finnish folklore finds a supremely eloquent interpreter in Davis, who draws full-blooded responses from the LSO and Chorus.

POP & ROCK CDS

Ludovic Hunter-Tilney

MODERN TIMES

Bob Dylan

Columbia

“You think I’m past my prime,” Dylan sings (or rather croaks) to some mystery detractor - although there aren’t many left. The great man’s renewed relevance late in his career is a wonder to behold, and this album, a road trip through vintage Americana with stunning lyrical commentary, continues his resurgence.

WE SHALL OVERCOME: The Seeger Sessions

Bruce Springsteen

Columbia

The Boss has let his hair down and made his best album in ages, a collection of American folk songs recorded in his farmhouse with a gang of traditional musicians who seem to have tumbled in from a 19th-century saloon. Antique music, but Springsteen sounds reinvigorated.

THE INFORMATION

Beck

Polydor

An album so beguiling it almost makes Scientology tempting. Beck Hansen’s links to the cult are hinted at in references to exoskeletons and spaceships. Odd stuff, although the songs are peerless - a jumble of funk, hip-hop, psychedelia and much else - so deftly varied that the listener trails behind awestruck.

LOOSE

Nelly Furtado

Polydor

The combination of Nelly Furtado, the Canadian-Portuguese songstress, and Timbaland, the innovative hip-hop producer, sounds like a blind date gone wrong. But Loose is smashing: high-tech R&B beats, blaring Latin pop and one of the singles of the year, the mighty “Maneater”.

THE LIFE PURSUIT

Belle and Sebastian

Rough Trade

The veteran Scottish indie band decamped to California to record these sun-kissed, vibrant songs whose glam-rock and west-coast pop influences sit snugly with their characteristic lyricism. Old accusations of feyness are blown away by music so bright it’s guaranteed to make you cheerful.

BACK TO BLACK

Amy Winehouse

Island

Young north-London chanteuse Amy Winehouse has belied her years to produce an album deeply influenced by 1960s soul, all hip-twitching horns, shuffling beats and discreetly dramatic strings. The singer’s vocals are excellent, while songs about reasons not to go to rehab suggest the making of a promising diva.

WHATEVER PEOPLE SAY I AM, THAT’S WHAT I’M NOT

The Arctic Monkeys

Domino

Twisty punk tunes and smart lyrics about teen life delivered with panache and attitude. OK it isn’t the most original music ever, but the Sheffield teens, in a sort of sneery innocence, quite rightly don’t give a damn.

BROKEN BOY SOLDIERS

The Raconteurs

XL Recordings

Jack White’s vacation from the White Stripes is less high-voltage than his usual music. But this blend of power pop and hard rock offers different rewards: sharp melodies, buzzing guitars and the dynamics of a fully fledged band, a departure from the minimalism of the Stripes.

A Hundred Highways: American V

Johnny Cash

Lost Highway

Cash’s final album, made in the months between June Carter Cash’s death and his own, is a fitting epitaph. His voice has a frail majesty, resting on sombre throne of acoustic guitars and tearful violins.

THE LETTING GO

Bonnie “Prince” Billy

Domino

The alt-country singer-songwriter Bonnie “Prince” Billy went to Iceland to record his latest album, and the results are suitably eerie. Sparse acoustic guitar melodies and dimly lit vocals are given added heft by subtle string arrangements; the songs drift by like strangely evocative dreams.

ST ELSEWHERE

Gnarls Barkley

WEA

Named with the zany disregard of a novelty band, Gnarls Barkley demand respect with their hooky melange of hip-hop, psychedelic pop and old-fashioned soul. The songs have an unhinged sense of fun, as symbolised by singer Cee-Lo’s electrifying vocals.

THE WARNING

Hot Chip

EMI

The year’s best electronica album, The Warning’s playful, irresistibly catchy nature makes a mockery of accusations that electronic music is chilly or remote. The stand-out track is a sly celebration of musical repetition, as if proving that humans too have buttons that can be pressed.

YS

Joanna Newsom

Drag City

A harpist with a voice like Bjork after a dose of helium? Hmmm. Newsom is an idiosyncratic performer, but her music, which features orchestral arrangements by Van Dyke Parks, Brian Wilson’s collaborator on Smile, is entrancing and utterly original.

The Eraser

Thom Yorke

XL Recordings

Thom Yorke’s solo album reprises the spooky, stuttering electronica of Radiohead’s Kid A, his mournful voice floating through the computerised beats like a lost angel. His apocalyptic lyrics offer a bleak view of the world but the music is beautiful in a fragile way.

WORLD MUSIC CDS

David Honigmann

BURLESQUE

Bellowhead

Westpark

Jon Boden and John Spiers lead an 11-piece folk big band in a revue packed with drunken laments and sea shanties.

MARIONETA

La Cumbiamba eNeYe

Chonta

Rollicking Afro-Colombian drumming jostled with duck-feather flutes as these New York expatriates rolled up all of Colombia into one compact musical package.

BOULEVARD DE L’INDEPENDENCE

Toumani Diabate’s Symmetric Orchestra

World Circuit

Malian kora virtuoso in full flight with a pan-Mande band.

INTRODUCING ETRAN FINATAWA

Etran Finatawa

World Music Network

Touareg meets Wodabe in a Saharan explosion of clapping and guitar.

CITY ZEN

Kevin Johansen and the Nada

Wrasse

Delicate, deceptively light-hearted fun from the Alaska-born, Argentina-based convenor of the Buenos Aires Anti-Social Club.

SPRINTING GAZELLE

Reem Kelani

Fuse

Angry Palestinian folk music in a wide variety of arrangements.

THE LIFE AQUATIC SESSIONS

Seu Jorge

EMI/Hollywood

David Bowie’s first golden songbook, sung to an acoustic guitar bossa nova. In Portuguese. Who needs the Spiders From Mars?

FOREVER POLIDA

Moussou T e Lei Jovents

Le Chant du Monde

Occitan nationalism swaggers through the streets of Marseille on the way to the beach; the highlight is the mesmeric anthem “Sus L’autura”.

DUB AINU DELUXE

OKI

Far Side Music

Folk music of the Ainu people of northern Japan given an echoing, warped dub twist.

MUSIC FOR CROCODILES

Susheela Raman

EMI/Narada

Slinky jazz ballads interwoven with devotional Sri Lankan songs centuries old.

SOUNDS FROM A BYGONE AGE Volume 3

Dona Dimitru Siminica

Asphalt Tango

The sobbing falsetto Romanian cafe singer from the 1960s sounds just as startling today as 40 years ago.

RT: The Life and Music of Richard Thompson

Richard Thompson

Free Reed

Five discs of his live performances, covers and rarities; a historical perspective a millennium deep.

SAVANNE

Ali Farka Toure

World Circuit

The swansong of the Malian blues guitarist, who died in March.

DIWAN 2

Rachid Taha

Wrasse

The Rai rebel went back to his roots: French chanson meets Mahgreb bohemianism.

JAZZ CDS

Mike Hobart

Braggtown

Branford Marsalis Quartet

Marsalis Music

Brilliant acoustic jazz from saxophonist Marsalis’s working band, laden with insidious melodies, emotional contrasts and dazzling group interplay. Jazz album of the year.

Sound Grammar

Ornette Coleman

Sound Grammar

Live recording from 2005 capturing the veteran free-jazz saxophonist in lyrical full flight, playing new compositions destined to become classics.

The Carnegie Hall Concert

Keith Jarrett

ECM

Double album of last year’s concert by pianist Jarrett, ruminating on his own compositions with an iron inner logic and trademark touch.

Fearless Leader

John Coltrane

Prestige

All 11 of the searchingly soulful albums the saxophone iconoclast recorded as leader for Prestige in the late 1950s gathered in a fulsomely packaged six-CD box.

Happenings

Bobby Hutcherson

Blue Note

This wonderful reissue from 1966, showcasing Hutcherson’s percussively shimmering vibes, Herbie Hancock’s supple piano and an ultra-sharp rhythm-section, still sounds freshly recorded 40 years on.

Artist in Residence

Jason Moran

Blue Note

Haunting themes launch angular piano solos backed by Moran’s regular trio, with quirky voice-overs dissecting artist-audience relationships.

Big Night Out

Dennis Rollins’ Badbone & Co

Raestar

The velvet-toned UK trombonist uses a dancehall theme and funky beats to romp through the jazz trombone tradition.

Beyond the Wall

Kenny Garrett

Nonesuch

Garrett and an all-star studio band celebrate the intense saxophonist’s recent tour of China with a mix of modal jazz and Chinese musical traditions.

Psychoscout

Flat Earth Society

Crammed Discs

Belgian jazz collective welds together blustery big-band jazz, cartoon soundtracks and the occasional cha-cha into a coherent, though decidedly punkish whole.

Blue Note Sessions

Nigel Kennedy

Blue Note

The stubble-cheeked violinist, accompanied by a first-rate rhythm section, delivers a modern review of some Blue Note classics, and makes a surprisingly good fist of it.

40 Days

Troy Miller

J’Noir

Powerfully swinging UK drummer ranges through hip-hop beats and jazzy grooves to support lush orchestrations, bluesy vocals and edgy contemporary jazz.

DVDS

Peter Aspden

CACHE (Hidden)

Michael Haneke

Sony Pictures

Haneke draws out superb performances from Juliette Binoche and Daniel Auteuil, but even more impressive is his sleight of hand. The nominal subject of the film - the covert surveillance of the couple’s home - is almost irrelevant to its wider theme of alienation, which reveals itself with great craft. One to re-watch.

THE PASSENGER

Michelangelo Antonioni

Sony Pictures

At last a DVD release for one of Antonioni’s most assured works, and a classic of 1970s cinema. The director’s occasionally portentous style is offset here by the wit provided by his American protagonist Jack Nicholson, on great form. The pace is funereal, but the cinematography ravishing.

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN

Ang Lee

Entertainment in Video

Lee’s gay romance accomplished little in the way of action or plot exposition, but is a wondrously handled examination of suppressed emotion and societal hypocrisy. The build-up of tension towards the film’s resolution is brilliantly achieved, and we are moved in a way that is rare in contemporary cinema.

GRIZZLY MAN

Werner Herzog

Revolver Entertainment

Another of Herzog’s eccentric outsiders, Timothy Treadwell spent 13 summers with grizzly bears in Alaska.

Herzog uses Treadwell’s own footage to warn against the romanticisation of nature; his delusional protagonist loses our sympathy with his megalomaniac ranting, but this is a remarkable portrait.

GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK

George Clooney

20th Century Fox

Home Entertainment

Clooney’s tribute to television journalist Ed Murrow is beautifully crafted. The smoke-filled rooms reek with paranoia, and the claustrophobic newsroom corridors ratchet up the tension. It is far from a definitive account of the McCarthy era, but never less than compelling.

JUNEBUG

Phil Morrison

Eureka Entertainment Ltd.

This deft puncturing of the excesses of the modern art world was somewhat neglected on release, but it is a clever, adult work. Not many of the characters engender our sympathy - always a good sign of a director resisting cliche - and the wider philosophical warning, that we should be careful not to confuse art with life, is well made.

THE WEST WING, SERIES 7

Warner Home Video

A poignant reminder that some of us still fantasise about an articulate, philosophical, self-questioning rational man or woman of principle one day taking over the White House, where young, glamorous sidekicks would deliver killer dialogue as they sped along latte-fragrant corridors and devoted their brilliant minds to a better world.

THE SOPRANOS, SERIES 6

Warner Home Video

Magisterial sixth and penultimate series, in which its bovine protagonist pondered on life’s issues with a shade - but just a shade - more profundity than usual. Portends well for next year’s finale. The best thing on television, ever.

INGMAR BERGMAN: 30 Disc Box Set

Ingmar Bergman

Tartan

Never can so much Nordic angst have been packaged into such a small (but expensive) bundle. Not to be taken in one sitting, but it is a joy to discover some of the early works and always a cerebral pleasure to revisit the masterpieces.

HOTEL DU NORD

Marcel Carne

Soda Vintage

Marcel Carne’s adaptation from Eugene Dabit’s award-winning novel is full of elegant Gallic touches. The highly literate screenplay and freewheeling direction dovetail beautifully, and we can taste the vivacity and amorousness of Paris.

MARLENE DIETRICH: The Movie Collection

Universal Pictures Video

Marlene Dietrich is one of those movie stars whose iconic status far outstrips the quality and profile of her film work (try naming three of her films). Universal’s box set includes 12 DVD premieres, of frankly varying distinction. Dietrich veers from over-the-top (Angel) to fabulous (Shanghai Express) - but who needs an excuse to see her again in Touch of Evil?

LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN

Max Ophuls

Second Sight Films Ltd.

Max Ophuls’s story of unrequited love is told with such flair that it is easy to trace its effects on such masters as Truffaut and Scorsese.

PARIS NOUS APPARTIENT (Paris Belongs to Us)

Jacques Rivette

BFI Video Publishing

Jacques Rivette’s 1961 debut, full of nouvelle vague vigour and iconoclasm, is seen as a period piece today, but there is much to admire in its originality, not least a notable musique concrete score and vivid black-and-white photography.

THE DEATH OF MR LAZARESCU

Cristi Puiui

Tartan

Blackest humour of the year was provided by Cristi Puiu’s award-laden comedy, which shows what can happen when real hardship stumbles across well-intentioned bureaucracy. The decline of the film’s sickly protagonist is told with brilliantly sharp sketches that combine pathos and satire - and forget its provenance, this cry against the modern world is a work of universal relevance.

OFFSIDE

Jafar Panahi

Artificial Eye

A jewel from Iran, Jafar Panahi’s story of football-besotted women who attempt to crash a men-only crowd to see a vital match played by the national side is charming, and its points are well made. One can’t help the feeling that rueful reflection of this nature can do more to change the way the world sees a nation than any number of blunder-headed foreign-policy announcements.