Lucas Debargue. Here are 10 amazing albums from 2019 that ask — sometimes demand — that we look inward to ourselves and outward to humanity as we listen.The Pulitzer-winning composer's debut album is an object lesson in how to steer the 250-year-old formula of the string quartet deftly into its next chapter.
Kait Moreno/Nonesuch Records Bach: Partita for Violin No. 2 Dusapin: Penthesilea. Ms. Rana, at 26 one of the finest pianists of the new generation, is at her best on this recording, which includes solo piano transcriptions of works by Ravel and Stravinsky. Classical music boasts a long, rich history — about 1000 years — of transformation, adaptation, tumult and triumph. Signum: SIGCD569. Violin lines emerge, as if from far away, to mingle with Ms. Du’s earthy, murmuring, sometimes choking voice. “Migrations,” an album of his work, includes “A Shout, a Whisper, and a Trace,” a vibrant homage to Bartok. Traditions worth saving still need need practitioners and advocates who are willing to propel them forward.

But this is the first full-length recording that documents his approach to the orchestra, which encompasses Boulez-influenced harmony and Mingus-style propulsion. An English Coronation 1902-1953. 1 Véronique Gens: Chausson. Here, he captures both the angry idealism and the ingenious daring of Mr. Rzewski’s “Which Side Are You On?” in a teeming, and beautiful, performance. Ten years ago, a young Norwegian named Lise Davidsen hadn't even seen an opera; last month, she debuted on no less a stage than New York's Metropolitan Opera. “Concurrence”; Iceland Symphony Orchestra; Daniel Bjarnason, conductor (Sono Luminus)In this quartet of contemporary works, you’ll find Haukur Tomasson’s Second Piano Concerto (the best way to hear Vikingur Olafsson on an album this year). From radical, boundary-bashing composers to brave and bold interpreters, the music has remained vibrantly alive even as prognosticators routinely forecast its demise.The list below offers tip-of-the-iceberg evidence that those who compose and perform this music have, in the past year, been thinking about the future. Proof: a Cavatina that sings with divinity and yet with humanity; that neither wallows in beauty nor looks the other way; that, put frankly, is eight perfect minutes. No. This eye-opening album is an invitation to consider the familiar — whether it’s the centuries-old form of the string quartet or, in the case of “Valencia,” the everyday orange. A decade filled with fabulous new releases ends with a bang. The brio of the best Americana is present throughout the work, particularly in its rousing climax. 3 and 4; San Francisco Symphony; Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor (SFS Media)The grand, glorious chaos of Ives’s Fourth Symphony — with its mad layering of different tempos, its discontinuities, its need for two conductors merely to keep the whole thing together — has rarely had this clarity. “The Tchaikovsky Project”; Czech Philharmonic; Semyon Bychkov, conductor; Kirill Gerstein, piano (Decca)Although this boxed set has its share of longueurs — it’s bound to, with more than eight hours of Tchaikovsky interpreted, for the most part, with an extremely level head — you can skip to the First Piano Concerto, presented here in its original form: a revelation of delicacy, and a war horse as you’ve never heard it. This, the first movement, is a dizzying melting pot of folklike rhythms, droning tunes and pungent modernist harmonies, spiked with bursts of wailing jazz. 3 Feldman: Piano. Kait Moreno/Nonesuch Records “Black Noise”; Boston Modern Orchestra Project; Gil Rose, conductor (BMOP/sound)Mr. Sanford’s big-band bona fides have long been established.
“GTM (Syntax) 2017”; Tri-Centric Vocal Ensemble (New Braxton House)A dozen vocalists riff through Mr. Braxton’s pulsing “Ghost Trance Music” works, while improvising and layering other pieces atop the core material. Two stars have returned as well: Michael Spyres as Faust and Joyce DiDonato as Marguerite, with a touching blend of hope and sad beauty in this lieder-like aria.