Randall Goosby makes Washington Post’s 2021 “Best Classical Music List”
Best Classical Music of 2021: Noseda reunites with the NSO, ‘Fire’ lights up the Met
The Washington Post
By Michael Andor Brodeur
December 8, 2021
The return of live performances in 2021 after 18 months of shuttered halls and scattered orchestras was enough to disabuse any critic of their crankier faculties.
After such a long and fraught silence, I’m not gonna lie: Everything sounded amazing. It may take a few months for my critical nails to grow back to full talon status, but that’s not to say that the weird blur of 2021 didn’t have some clearly discernible musical highs.
The pandemic shook every end of cultural life and, in doing so, gave composers, musicians and institutions alike fresh impetus to examine the very foundations of the art form. This year was the first step in putting the house back together, and addressing some urgent repairs in the process.
Randall Goosby
One of the most intriguing young talents in my January “21 for 21” watch list, 25-year-old violinist Randall Goosby had a stellar year atop an impressive debut album for Decca. “Roots” gathered new works (such as Xavier Foley’s “Shelter Island”) alongside newly discovered pieces (including a pair of Florence Price’s “Fantasie” works) and undersung composers who factored heavily into Goosby’s development, including Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and William Grant Still. In the spring at the Kennedy Center Honors, he delivered the third movement of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in a soaring tribute to honoree Midori. Goosby sounds perfectly at home and positively on fire in any era. randallgoosby.com.
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