In a year short of opera recordings and orchestral music, it was a chance to hear
music by Elizabeth Lutyens, Francisco Coll, John Cage, Ronald Stevenson, Mahler, Brahms and Shostakovich
In 2020, the schedules of the classical record industry hardly seemed to miss a beat, despite all the disruptions of Covid-19. Live performances mined from the archives and a backlog of studio-made recordings provided more than enough material to maintain a near-normal stream of releases. And even this year, when such reserves have surely been depleted, there has been no obvious slackening in the pace of new issues. The range and variety has however very clearly changed, with certain areas of the repertory significantly less well represented in comparison with previous years.
Those shortages have been most acutely in the areas of opera and orchestral music. Even before the pandemic, major studio recordings of opera were becoming increasingly rare, with most new issues stemming from live performances; now, with most of the world’s opera houses closed for large parts of the last two years, even that source is starting to dry up, if only temporarily one hopes. Perhaps the most significant operatic release of the year came on DVD from the Bayerisches Staatsoper’s new label, its 2019 production of Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt, with Jonas Kaufmann and Marlis Petersen leading the cast.