13 outstanding Canadian classical albums of 2023

Each week on CBC Music's In Concert, I present a Record of the Week — a new album from the world of classical music that has seized my attention.

I also conclude each show with The Closer, drawing attention to a classical-adjacent album representing music from non-Western traditions.

Below, in no particular order, discover the 10 Canadian albums that stood out from the pack of my Records of the Week in 2023, plus three classical-adjacent "closers" that I'm singling out for special praise.

Join me for the New Year's Eve edition of In Concert for a look back at 2023, including music from some of the records below.

Silent Tears: The Last Yiddish Tango, Lenka Lichtenberg, Aviva Chernick, the Payadora Tango Ensemble

This moving and musically riveting record addresses music's power to heal unlike anything I've come across before, using music to tell the real-life stories of Holocaust survivors. The impetus was a project by gerontologist Paula David, who worked with Holocaust survivors at the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care in Toronto. David helped these survivors use poetry to process trauma from their childhoods in Poland. Some of the songs on the record come directly from the stories that emerged during those sessions; other texts come from a Toronto-based author and Holocaust survivor named Molly Applebaum. During World War II, Applebaum survived when a farmer agreed to hide her and her cousin Helen in a box barely larger than a coffin, buried underground with just a small hole to breathe through. There's pain on this record, but also perseverance and healing, delivered powerfully in searing vocal and instrumental performances from the members of the Payadora Tango Ensemble.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: Piano Works, Luke Welch

Not only is this gorgeous new record an overdue world premiere recording of brilliant piano music by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, but it was also my introduction to Luke Welch, an outstanding Toronto pianist who was appointed to the piano faculty at the Oscar Peterson School of Music at the Royal Conservatory in 2022. Welch has written eloquently about the challenges still faced by Black classical musicians, relating disheartening stories about the obstacles he's encountered due to the colour of his skin. He told me this album has been particularly special for him: it's part of a revival that's shining a light on Coleridge-Taylor's achievements as a Black British composer at the turn of the 20th century. It's sobering to reflect that musicians like Welch still have to be trailblazers 100 years later. But a record like this fills you with hope.

Infinite Voyage, Barbara Hannigan, Emerson String Quartet

This isn't just any recording; it's a major event. For one thing, it's the final recording by the Emerson String Quartet, one of the greatest chamber ensembles in history. The quartet disbanded in October, marking the end of a 47-year journey. How do you even begin to choose what to record as your final statement? They found their answer in the sensational Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan, the pride of Waverley, N.S., and one of the most distinctive musicians alive right now. For her thrilling ability to bring contemporary music to life, for the way she can turn on a dime, for the way she can conduct an orchestra and sing at the same time — there is nobody like Hannigan. She says she can't express how honoured she is to have had eight years of performance and collaboration with the Emersons, and what a gift their time together was, recording this album. Indeed, a great big gift to all of us.

Chorinho, Georgina Isabel Rossi, Silvie Cheng

With the exception of a few big names, Latin American composers are woefully neglected in the rest of the world, and violist Georgina Isabel Rossi wants to change that. Her debut album in 2020 celebrated music for viola by Chilean composers (Rossi is herself Chilean American). Now, she's shifted her focus to Brazil. For both records, she's joined by Canadian pianist Silvie Cheng, a.k.a. one half of Cheng2Duo. Together, Rossi and Cheng unearth gems like the Viola Sonata by Brenno Blauth. Born in Porto Alegre, Blauth also lived in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo and juggled two careers — one in music, and one in medicine, first as an ER doctor and later for a pharmaceutical company, which left him more time to compose. It'd be virtually impossible to even know Blauth existed — much less hear his music — without the efforts of musicians like Rossi and Cheng, whose stellar performances brim with passion and purpose.

Chamber Works by Robert Müller-Hartmann, ARC Ensemble

If you haven't heard of the award-winning Music in Exile series by Toronto's outstanding ARC Ensemble (Artists of the Royal Conservatory), get streaming immediately. The ensemble's mission is to "recover and record music suppressed and marginalized under the 20th century's repressive political regimes." Recover is the key word: sometimes artistic director Simon Wynberg has to dig it out of forgotten desk drawers in far-flung places, and usually, the music they play hasn't been performed in decades. Many of the composers they revive endured terrible hardships, and their life stories can infuriate you: how could this happen?

Vol. 7 of the series brings to light the music of Jewish German composer Robert Müller-Hartmann, who fled Nazi Germany in the late 1930s and settled in England, only to be thrown in an internment camp by the English as soon as the war started. He was released after a few months thanks to the efforts of his friend Ralph Vaughan Williams. If there's any mention of Müller-Hartmann in music history today, it's only as a footnote to Vaughan Williams' career. That should change now that the ARC Ensemble has set out to revive his music and make sure his story gets told.

Britten, Bruch: Violin Concertos, Kerson Leong, Philharmonia Orchestra, Patrick Hahn

These two concertos have little in common, and yet Kerson Leong makes a convincing case that they belong together. Leong has impeccable technique and his playing is packed with emotion, but there's a lot more going on than virtuosity or showmanship: you can tell that he has thought deeply about this music. In his notes, Leong says he wanted to express no less than the purpose of music on this record, asking, "What's it all for?" Two answers came to mind for him: first, that music can capture what it means to be human — the good, the bad and the ugly; and second, music can help us escape. That's how he settled on these two concertos. The lyricism of Bruch takes care of job No. 2: the escape. And the Britten concerto is very real indeed, being in some ways a response to the brutality of the Spanish Civil War and World War II. "With the onset of the last few years, in which the world has experienced much difficulty and uncertainty due to pandemic, war and crisis, [making this record] was a profoundly cathartic moment, and it is in this spirit of catharsis that I offer this album," Leong says in the notes. Gramophone Magazine calls his recording of Britten's Violin Concerto the best there is.

Portrait, Cheng2Duo

Pianist Silvie Cheng and cellist Bryan Cheng have been mainstays on In Concert for the past decade, both individually as two of the most outstanding young musicians in Canada, and together as the brother-and-sister Cheng2Duo. Their previous recordings have focused on classic repertoire from France, Russia and Spain, but this release marks a new chapter. They've always played new music, and they wanted to showcase this other side of their musical identity, from the relationships they've built with living composers, to a more personal picture of who they are as Canadian siblings born to Chinese parents. They call the record a vignette of their life journey thus far. The album features two Chinese folk songs, arranged by the Chengs, plus four original compositions written especially for them by Alexina Louie, Dinuk Wijeratne, Vincent Ho and Paul Wiancko — each of whom has a multi-faceted cultural background stemming from a journey of immigration from Asia, just like the Chengs. It's a record that could only be made by these particular musicians at this moment in time, and as usual, the Chengs knock it out of the park.

Basta Parlare!, Les Barocudas

The name of this ensemble is a play on words, combining the name of the predatory fish, barracuda, and the Baroque period. Their second album has a great name, too: Basta Parlare! means "stop talking" in Italian. Baroque violinist Marie Nadeau-Tremblay and recorder player Vincent Lauzer are hearkening to how music changed in the 1600s in Italy, when instrumental music gradually took the spotlight away from vocal music. They say, "lovers of 17th-century Italian music share an almost spiritual je ne sais quoi which brings them together — and sets them apart." It's easy to hear that on this record: both the je ne sais quoi, with the two soloists playing complex lines that leap over each other and entwine almost chaotically, and that virtuoso playing, which definitely sets them apart.

Things Lived and Dreamt, Francine Kay

Pianist Francine Kay grew up in Montreal but has called New York City home for more than two decades, and as a result we don't get to hear her enough in Canada. She first moved there as a student at the Juilliard School of Music, made her Carnegie Hall debut in the early 2000s, and nowadays she's a faculty member at nearby Princeton University in New Jersey. On this record, Kay explores a facet of Czech piano music that doesn't get nearly as much attention as it should, such as the album's title track, taken from Josef Suk's gorgeous set of 10 pieces called Životem a snem (Things Lived and Dreamt). Kay also shines the light on Vítězslava Kaprálová, the early 20th-century composer who died at 25, just as she was bursting onto the scene. As too often happens, her compelling musical voice faded into obscurity. But the flame has been kept alive by Toronto's Kaprálová Society, and it's gratifying to hear Kaprálová's music being revived by an accomplished virtuoso performer like Kay, perhaps one of Canada's most undersung classical musicians.

Images oubliées, Stéphane Tétreault, Olivier Hébert-Bouchard

This album's title is French for "Debussy's back catalogue." OK, I jest. It actually means "forgotten images," a poetic way of summing up what it's all about, namely a deep, sonorous and gorgeous exploration of some lesser-known musical gems by Claude Debussy. But there's a twist: Debussy didn't actually write much music for cello and piano. So cellist Stéphane Tétreault and pianist Olivier Hébert-Bouchard decided to raid the well-stocked pantry of Debussy piano pieces, do a little arranging, and voilà: this record that looks at Debussy's music through a new lens, adding another shade and texture, you might say, to his impressionist sound world. (In the liner notes, they quote Debussy: "L'art est le plus beau des mensonges" — "Art is the most beautiful of all lies.") Of course, they do include the one major statement Debussy wrote for cello and piano: his Cello Sonata. Gorgeous stuff.

3 classical-adjacent albums:

Canciones de mi abuelito, Antonio Figueroa, la Familia Figueroa

I can't get enough of this irresistible record from Montreal tenor Antonio Figueroa and the Familia Figueroa (the family band). They bring Mexican folk songs to life with a mariachi sound that can only be called orchestral. Figueroa's grandfather got his first taste of Canada when he travelled to Montreal from Mexico to perform at the Mexican Pavilion during Expo 67. He liked it so much that a few years later, he returned — with 11 kids in tow. Mariachi became the family business. "This disc is a family story; the story of a family of Mexican immigrants who integrated into their society by cordially sharing the culture of their original home," Figueroa says. It's also an homage to Figueroa's grandfather: the record is called Canciones de mi abuelito — My Granddad's Songs.

Seré libre, Eliana Cuevas & the Angel Falls Orchestra

Growing up in Venezuela, Eliana Cuevas absorbed the folk music of her homeland through the efforts of her father and grandfather. In the late 1990s, Cuevas moved to Toronto, where she established herself on the Latin jazz and global music scene. This latest venture is the realization of a dream for Cuevas: to fuse her beloved Afro-Venezuelan folk traditions with Western classical music.

On Seré libre, she sings with a specially convened ensemble: the Angel Falls Orchestra, named after the world's tallest waterfall, a national symbol in Venezuela. The orchestra features top-flight classical stalwarts like violinist Erika Raum, cellists Amahl Arulanandam and Bryan Holt, bassoonist Nadina Mackie, and more. Cuevas says the album explores loss — specifically, the deaths of her father and grandfather — and continues the centuries-old tradition of folk music she learned from them. Her voice and passion, backed by the orchestra, make for a knockout combination, and you start to feel nostalgic for Venezuela, even if you've never been there.

Self-titled, Taraf Syriana

One day in 2014, a violist named Omar Abou Afach was rehearsing with the Syrian National Symphony Orchestra in Damascus. The rehearsal was disrupted when a mortar struck the music conservatory complex. There were many casualties. "We were sure that no one would attend that evening's concert at the opera house, just 100 metres away, but that night the hall was full," Abou Afach says in the album notes. "Even during wartime, I think it was the only place where people could get a breath of normal life." Abou Afach now lives in Montreal and plays with the outstanding new band Taraf Syriana, along with Moldovan accordion wiz and raconteur Sergiu Popa and Swiss-born cellist Noémy Braun, who makes her cello sound as though it was always meant to be a Middle Eastern instrument. Their addictive blend of Syrian music, Sephardic Jewish music, Balkan music and music from the Romani diaspora is a mix that reminds Abou Afach of home. "In Aleppo, Damascus and other cities, you can hear this diversity in music, on the streets and on the radio."