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Only four from me, as I have been able to hear fewer gramophone records this year than I would wish. Using as criterion: which of the records that have come my way have I heard most often—got out again and again after dinner to play to people, and not grown bored with myself—I find that three...

First on my list must be the magnificent, and widely acclaimed, performance and recording of Britten's War Requiem—Pears, Fischer-Dieskau, Vishnevskaya, Bach and Highgate School Choirs, LSO, Melos Ensemble, and the composer conducting. The profound and lasting impression made by this...

This has been another of those years in which just about six great jazz records were issued. I recall the great pleasure I had in listening to Don Ewell, with his Trio and alone and unaided (or impeded) by a rhythm section (Good Time Jazz mono LAG538), for here is true continuity of the art of...

Keyboard players take up the best part of my list. Very high on it must come Clifford Curzon's magisterial performance of the Liszt sonata (which is for me the best recording yet of it—and I'm not forgetting Horowitz in his prime); coupled with exquisitely poetic playing of some smaller Liszt...

Temporarily tucked away in the hills of Pennsylvania, I have been unable to review as many records as in previous years, though I hear the best of the new issues as a matter of course. Some of the following choices will therefore be borrowed from A.R., with (I hope) his permission. I confess to...