Albums to Hear Right Now?

The theory and practice of music criticism is a topic we kick around from time to time here and today a recurring feature at the New York Times provides some grist for our mill: 5 Classical Albums to Hear Right Now. This is a monthly feature and perhaps another time we can look over a few articles, but today I just want to glance at the June repertoire. New York journalism always seems to have a special flavour, a sense of place and a sense of time. It's music to hear right now! Here are the five albums:

1. American music recorded by the Lucerne Symphony. A reasonable selection of music by Leonard Bernstein, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Samuel Barber and Charles Ives. The musical examples are the usual 30 second bleeding chunks from Spotify. Say, has anyone ever looked into what the financial arrangements are between Spotify and the NYT and the WSJ? The only glaringly weird bit is the first paragraph: "How bold to title an album “Americans.” And what a lot to deliver on: a theme of near-infinite programming possibilities, and a concept under intense scrutiny these days, as classical musicians grapple with the United States’ history of exclusion in the concert hall." Bold? No bolder than Hilary Hahn titling her latest album "Paris" because it is all music composed there. Ah, but it all comes clear as we learn that "classical musicians grapple with the US' history of exclusion." It's as if no music or no composers were ever excluded from any concert hall anywhere, except in the US. One gets the impression that certain genuflections have to be made if one is a New Yorker.
2. The next album is by the Jihye Lee Orchestra and it is a fine example, but of jazz, not classical music. Isn't this rather the wrong place for it?
3. Next pianist Samantha Ege offers an album of music by Florence Price and we are told that "The Florence Price revival continues apace. In just the last few weeks, the Philadelphia Orchestra announced that it would record Price’s symphonies under Yannick Nézet-Séguin; the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective released a gorgeous premiere recording of her Piano Quintet in A minor on Chandos; and the musicologists Douglas W. Shadle and Samantha Ege gave notice that they are writing a biography of this long-overlooked composer." Fair enough, though I believe that musicology departments have been looking at her music for decades now.
4. I have put up a number of posts on French harpsichordist Jean Rondeau and this new release, "Melancholy Grace" is another example of his outstanding musicianship. A terrific new talent on the scene.
5. Finally pianist Leif Ove Andsnes presents an album of music from a particularly prolific year in the life of Mozart including three piano concertos with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra plus some solo and chamber music. Great idea. 1785 was a really spectacular year for Mozart especially if you consider that he also published his six Haydn quartets in the same year. Mind you, Mozart wrote something truly spectacular every few months.

Instead of engaging my own critical faculties here, I will just mention that this is the kind of closet music criticism that our day seems to specialize in. Speaking of exclusion, if you pick out just five albums to promote every month, then you have already gone through an extremely rigorous selection process of eliminating the vast majority of releases. All this is unnoticed because it is behind the scenes. But that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. The five albums selected are all promoted with uncritical enthusiasm of course, because we seem to believe that actually stating criticism is impolite or biased or something.

What do my readers think?