Submitted by John McKenna on
Paul Buchanan
You don't need this list of my 10 favourite discs of 2012. But I do. So, here goes...
Isabelle Faust: Berg/Beethoven Violin Concertos (Harmonia Mundi) Berg's music advances like an enormous torso of natural energy, whilst Faust rides the wave with a surfer's skill. Stunning.
Andras Schiff: J S Bach, The Well-Tempered Clavier (ECM) By not using the pedals, Schiff has had to carve all the colour out of Bach's masterpiece by sheer dexterity.
Fly: Year of the Snake (ECM) Mark Turner, Larry Grenadier and Jeff Ballard tear the trio format inside out.
Neil Young: Psychedelic Pill (Reprise) How to grow old, loudly and disgracefully.
Kurt Elling: 1619 Broadway (Concord) Mining the Brill Building song catalogue has brought forth some of Elling's most affecting singing.
The Killers: Battle Born (Lizard King) If we must have stadium rock, then let's have it The Killers' way.
Paul Buchanan: Mid Air (Linn) At moments, Buchanan's songs, in all their precious fragility, are genuinely spine-tiingling.
Vijay Iyer Trio: Accelerando (ACT) No one else understands rhythm in such a cerebral way as Iyer.
Leonard Cohen: Old Ideas (Columbia) Funny, mordant and inexhaustible. Just like Leonard.
Isabelle Faust: J S Bach, Violin Sonatas and Partitas (Harmonia Mundi) Faust takes Bach onto the high wire, and completes the most dazzling version of the sonatas and partitas for solo violin.
