Classical music can be both timeless and intimately connected to the times we are living through today. As new music is written and old favorites reinterpreted, the music can connect the past to the present and the future.

As you wrap up your year, here are some of CapRadio Music's classical music hosts' favorite pieces from 2021.

Manu Martin and the London Symphony Orchestra: "Lim Fantasy for Companionship and Orchestra"

Music should speak to the times at hand, as should any good medium of art. This concerto is firmly anchored in the present as it explores the implications of burgeoning artificial intelligence. Surgeon Susan Lim recently presented a conference paper with a novel concept: that of AI’s becoming eventual companions for mankind. That same conference culminated with an AI giving a musical duet with a living human musician. Composer Manu Martin took that daring idea and ran with it. The result is this, the Lim Fantasy for Companionship and Orchestra. Well over 100 performers came together for this recording and each lush and exciting movement is a very different commentary on life, with all its future implications.

— Jennifer Reason   

Bryce Dessner: "Impermanence/Disintegration"

I couldn’t possibly give a more eloquent synopsis of this album than Dessner does himself, so I’ll quote him here: “Rafael [Bonachela] and I chose to create a piece inspired by the fragility of life, the impermanence of our world and our planet, and of so many things we think are eternal that are, in fact, extremely fragile,” he told Rolling Stone in March. His chosen collaborators for this project make those words all the more impactful: the Australian String Quartet as well as the Sydney Dance Project both perform in response to the savage wildfires that destroyed so much of their homeland. This is gritty commentary and a gritty performance as well, and who doesn’t love the powerful addition of choreography!

— Jennifer Reason

Craig Armstrong: "Nocturnes for Two Pianos"                       

In this album, Scottish composer Craig Armstrong gives a hearty nod to Chopin. The nocturne as a genre was popularized by Chopin in the early 1800’s, and has remained a favorite ever since. These nocturnes are particularly poignant as they are “lockdown nocturnes,” something Chopin surely never envisioned. Armstrong wrote these solely at night while walking outside alone, which was the only thing he could do while the pandemic raged freshly around him. This lovely recording was also recorded at home, and is a testament to the artist doing his best with what is at hand.

— Jennifer Reason

VOCES8: "Infinity"

Come for this track, where the singers’ “mmmmbops” imitate recorded samples of the Sputnik satellite. Stay for a whole album of these singers interpreting electronic music and original works by composers of electronic music.

VOCES8 is a vocal octet from the United Kingdom who made the best of the pandemic to create a digital music festival, as well as record their newest album "Infinity." The result is a dreamy, introspective collection perfect for a winter night. Save it for the next atmospheric river!

— Mike Nelson

Jeremy Denk & the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra: "Mozart Piano Concertos"

If you’re new or simply hesitant about the historically informed performance movement, this is a great gateway album! Although famed pianist Jeremy Denk and the SPCO use modern instruments in this live performance, they still adhere to some other elements of the HIP movement, including Denk freely embellishing and even improvising over what Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote on the page. If that seems sacrilegious, it’s actually what Wolfgang himself would have done — and expected others to do with his music!

This finale to Mozart’s "Piano Concerto No. 20" is the most famous selection from this album, but don’t miss the rest of the music, including a surprise melody in the "Piano Concerto No. 25" that sounds suspiciously like “La Marseillaise”, the French national anthem made famous in Tchaikovsky’s "1812 Overture."

— Mike Nelson

Randall Goosby: "Roots"

“For me, personally, music has been a way to inspire others.” And Goosby has been an inspiring fresh face ever since he burst onto the scene by winning a series of young artist competitions in the 2010s. Taking a moment from his burgeoning concert career, "Roots" is his debut album, focusing on music by Black composers and inspired by Black American culture.

This track features his longtime friend he first met at the Sphinx competition, composer and double bassist Xavier Foley. Blurring the lines between classical, bluegrass, and jazz, it’s a great opener for a whole album of outstanding music.

— Mike Nelson

Nathalie Stutzmann: "Contralto"

French-born conductor and contralto Nathalie Stutzmann is a star further on the rise. In December 2020 she was appointed Principal Guest Conductor of The Philadelphia Orchestra and in October 2021 as the next Music Director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

She’s also a fabulous contralto singer. In her 2021 release, “Contralto,” she conducts the period instrument ensemble she founded, Orfeo 55, and sings baroque arias by Vivaldi, Handel and others. Here she performs the act II aria "Caro addio, dal labbro amato" from the 1722 opera “Griselda” by Giovanni Bononcini.

— Victor Forman

Ensemble Resonanz: Pergolesi's "Stabat Mater"; Rossell: “Salve Regina”

Released in March 2021, Ensemble Resonanz from Hamburg, Germany, give a reverential performance of Giovanni Pergolesi’s 1736 “Stabat Mater” that conveys the awe and sorrow in this sublime work of 18th century sacred music. Here’s the opening “Stabat mater dolorosa.”

— Victor Forman

Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin: Mozart: "Gran Partita”; “Wind Serenades K. 361 & 375"

Mozart’s Serenade #10 in B-flat, “Gran Partita,” has long been a personal favorite. Our ears are likely accustomed to hearing it performed on modern instruments. But on this May 2021 release, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin play on period instruments as Mozart likely heard the music performed. It might take a moment to adjust but all the charm of the composer’s melodies shine through.

— Victor Forman

Daniel Hope: “Hope”

Many performing organizations and musicians turned to online performances during the lockdown of 2020. Most astonishing of these was violinist Daniel Hope. From his home in Berlin, he performed a series of approximately hour-long recitals featuring a guest or two with the highest of production values. About this series he wrote on Facebook, “We need to and must stay home at this time. But we also need to share music as a source of comfort and inspiration.”

Beginning in March 2020 and through different series, over 150 episodes were viewed online almost 11 million times by viewers around the world. In June through December of 2020, he returned to a studio with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, of which he is the Music Director, with guests to record a new album, released in Fall 2021, titled “Hope.” He says, “This album is my attempt to send out a ray of hope and to provide people, myself included, with a sense of support and perhaps even consolation.” The album features classics by Schubert, Elgar and Pärt, and a new arrangement of Misa Criolla by 20th century Argentine composer Ariel Ramirez. Here is its second movement, “Gloria.”

— Victor Forman