The Fanfare meta-Want List

Every year I read through the Fanfare Want Lists for new classical music releases, and collate the new recordings that are recommended by more than one person as one of the five most noteworthy releases of the year.  This time around I noticed the following as multiple nominees:

1. Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony, Beethoven Symphony number nine.

2. Daniil Trifonov, Silver Age, two CDs of Russian music.

3. Pavel Kolesnikov, Bach, Goldberg Variations.

I am happy to give another thumbs up to each.

If you google the word “self-recommending,” the first three items are all connected to me.  Yet I learned the term by reading Fanfare, where it is used repeatedly.  Of these three items, the Trifonov is the one that comes closest to being self-recommending.  The performers on items #1 and #3 are highly regarded, but to invoke the name Daniil Trifonov is a kind of magic, and as far as I know without fail.  It is hard to give any praise to #2 that goes much higher than simply stating that Trifonov has produced a recording of that music.

For those who need it, here is a (only slightly out of date) 2009 MR vocabulary guide.