Heino Eller: Symphonic Poems – Night Calls, White Night, Twilight, Dawn Estonian National Symphony Orchestra/Olari Elts (Ondine)

William Mathias: Choral Music St John’s Voices, The Gentlemen of St John’s, Graham Walker (director) (Naxos)

Ginastera: Harp Concerto, Variaciones concertantes Sidsel Walstad (harp), Norwegian Radio Orchestra/Miguel Harth-Bedoya (Lawo Classics)

Sheku Kanneh-Mason: Elgar London Symphony Orchestra/Simon Rattle (Decca)

Beethoven: Symphonies 1-9 Danish Chamber Orchestra/Ádám Fischer (Naxos)

Schubert: Symphony No 9 Scottish Chamber Orchestra/Maxim Emelyanychev (Linn)

Classical CDs are still with us, even if the shops that sell them are rarer than hens’ teeth. Maybe this article should be renamed Downloads of the Year, or Cream of the Streams? That people are still listening to good music at all is a cause for celebration, and there’s still an abundance of interesting material being pumped out by labels great and small. Much of what really tickled my ears this year was off the beaten track. Here, in roughly chronological order, are twelve releases which got my pulse racing:

Schütz: The Christmas Story Yale Schola Cantorum/David Hill (Hyperion)

Bach: Christmas Oratorio Thomanerchor Leipzig, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig/Gotthold Schwarz (Accentus)

Josquin: Missa Mater Patris, Bauldeweyn: Missa Da pacem The Tallis Scholars/Peter Philips (Gimmell)