# best of the year



## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Just about every classical music publication, online and hardcopy, publishes some best of the year tribute by its critics. I have never found these lists useful, mainly because they come from people that got the music free and because it is limited to what they reviewed that year. I saw one of these recently in the New York Times called the best 25 _tracks _of 2021. This listed bests that included movements from symphonies, songs from larger collections, and parts of compositions. Is there anyone that buys a part of a symphony because someone else like it?


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## John Zito (Sep 11, 2021)

larold said:


> Is there anyone that buys a part of a symphony because someone else like it?


Well, in the case of that article specifically, you don't have to take the authors' word for it because they provide sound clips, which is kind of nice. But I think going by specific tracks and excerpts is not a bad way to draw in someone who is less initiated.

When I was first getting into classical music in my early teens, I had this six disc "Best Classics 100" set that contained 3 - 4 minute bleeding chunks from the EMI/Warner catalog. I wouldn't listen to anything like that any more, but it was a great way to pique my interest in the most accessible moments from the standard repertoire. That NYT list is basically a present-day version of a "greatest hits" kind of release.

And honestly, I _say_ I wouldn't listen to bleeding chunks any more, but that's often still how I get into new repertoire. I'm a Sibelius neophyte, but last year I randomly clicked on this clip, which turned out to be Blomstedt conducting the climax of the slow movement of the fourth symphony:






I was totally floored and replayed it again and again. Then I listened to the entire movement, and then later the entire symphony. That's probably not the "right" way to go about it, but whatever.


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