Evviva the classical independents

It came as no surprise to find that all the CDs I'd enjoyed most last year had come from small outfits, most of them promoting unusual repertoire and helping little-known artists to spread the word. The mascot of them all ought to be Odradek, the non-profit-making promoter of pianists based in Pescara. It burst upon us with its first disc, Mei Yi Foo's ingenious programme of contemporary miniatures Musical Toys, which only just got picked up in a mini-review for the BBC Music Magazine.

All of us present at the BBCMM Awards, I fancy, fell for her engagament and her choice of pieces; and I did so further at a squeezed-in Kings Place recital. Probably my most returned to track of 2013 was another Odradek pianist, Domenico Codispoti, playing Granados's 'El Amor y la Muerte' from Goyescas, which I must investigate further.

But I've written about those discs and, in passing here as well as for the BBCMM, about the Mythos accordion duo's phenomenal transcription of Stravinsky's Petrushka - Arts Desk colleague Graham Rickson's top choice in our obligatory best-of-year selection, and mine too. This film, in the absence of the excellent Orchid Classics' more perfect trailer for the CD, has enough of 'Petrushka's Room' to give you a good idea of how the amazing orchestral score works in this arrangement.

Top image is from Andreas Cellarius's 1660 Harmonia Macocosmica reproduced in the Accent label's gorgeous presentation of Bach's B minor Mass. The set was only one of many discs which Jan Kucera, a Prague-based music enthusiast, has been showering me with  - and if I haven't worked my way through a fraction of his gifts, I can at least thank him by acknowledging that the Collegium/Collegium Vocale 1704's performance under Václav Luks is perhaps the very best I've heard of this greatest mass.

Luks seems to have an uncanny instinct for the right tempi, by which I mean breathable ones with which I happen to agree (I used to say the same about Sir Charles Mackerras's Mozart). The six soloists, including two very natural basses, are superlatively good; it says much about the plethora of fine countertenors around that I'd not encountered Terry Wey before. The choral singing is both focused and, when need be, ecstatic, and the three trumpets - or should I say clarini - as remarkable as the ones I heard in a weekend of Bach before Christmas (the B minor Mass at Kings Place and four parts of the Christmas Oratorio at St John's Smith Square). I may not be re-embarking on the cantatas pilgrimage which only got up to Easter last year, but I'll be bathing at the source whenever I can.

Beethoven wouldn't usually figure among the must-hears for me, but Bettina Schimmer sent me a captivating disc which isn't even out yet: the young Ukrainian pianist Alexej Gorlatch in three very well-known sonatas - the Pathétique, the Moonlight and the Tempest - on the Oehms Classics label.

The wonder here, and some may not like it as much as I do, is the lightness, the deftness which avoids Sturm und Drang in favour of something much more delicately spiritual. The finales are a miracle of expressive precision. I can't wait to hear Gorlatch live, but I may have to travel to the continent to catch him some time soon*.

Ditto the most unexpected discovery, for me, of three days at the Stavanger Festival. It was a late night cabaret evening in the former workers' meeting place, and after much of the day spent travelling we thought we could always slip out after one or two numbers. But we were captivated by Music for a While, chanteuse Tora Augestad and the most unexpected of quartets (coolest of jazz trumpeters Mathias Eick, tuba-player Martin Taxt, percussionist Pal Hausken and man of many instruments, but chiefly accordion, Stian Carstensen - also a much-loved stand-up comedian in Norway, but needless to say his spiel went over our heads while everyone around us fell about).

The next day, inspired above all by their Weill arrangements including the best 'Surabaya Jonny' I've heard, I bought their CD from the charming lady who owns an adored music shop down the road in Sandnes and has a stand at most concerts. I've played it a lot. And when I bumped into the charming Tora at a Stavanger Cathedral concert, she said she'd send me a copy of their latest, 'Graces that refrain'. And she was as good as her word.

I wasn't quite so sold on the Dowland arrangements live, but there are treasures here too, most surprisingly a cool version of Desdemona's 'Ave Maria' from Verdi's Otello which, to my amazement, works brilliantly on its own terms. I'm campaigning to bring the group to the UK, so if there's any help or interest out there, let me know. In the meantime, here's 'Surabaya Jonny' on film.

Another Norwegian group I have yet to experience live - but will do so in Oslo later this month - is baroque violinist Bjarte Eike's Barokksolistene. This time not exactly my milieu, but I was genuinely captivated by their BIS collection The Image of Melancholy which, like Gorlatch's Beethoven, has yet to be released here. Like Music for a While's discs, it's eloquently annotated by the artist(s). There's a new concert-programming creativity in the air - I've just witnessed the best use of it in the Aurora Orchestra's 'Road Trip' at Kings Place on Saturday - and this bears witness to it.

More Dowland, this time with Byrd and Holborne, but interspersed with Norwegian traditional numbers ( a wedding march is - and again I find myself using the word - captivating). Not sure about the Slovakian interpolation or the pure but to me bland soprano of Berit Norbakken Solset, but otherwise it's a wonderful sequence, and not all melancholy (though I'm told it's very much tied up with the death of Eike's father, and he thinks it's the most important thing he's ever done).  Niel Gow's lament for the death of his second wife makes for a transcendental conclusion.

I've been much more restrained in my CD choice than I was in what turned out to be not so much a pick of the classical/opera live scene for TAD as a survey of it. Where was I to stop? How could I have forgotten the magic of Irish tenor Robin Tritschler's Finzi Dies Natalis and Britten Serenade with the Britten Sinfonia in Gresham School's woods, capped by the horn sounding somewhere from within the high beeches surrounding the platform? Here he is as one of the BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists in a sublime Christmas song by Cornelius. Over the hols I'd been listening to all of Cornelius's little Weihnachtslieder, a sequence most famous for the 'Three Kings' setting, in Fischer-Dieskau's performance with Gerald Moore, and this compares well, to say the least. Shame the pianist isn't credited.

If Tritschler is definitely one young artist of the year, there are others among the singers I've heard, not least  Andrew Staples, Marcus Farnsworth and Kitty Whately doing the new generation proud in the Barbican Albert Herring - and that reminds me about another discovery on disc, mezzo Karen Cargill in Berlioz's Les nuits d'été and, best of all, La mort de Cleopâtre with fab Robin Ticciati and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Where does it come from, this intuition for greatness? Oor Karen seems an ordinary enough Glasgow girl in 'normal' life, but here she's a queen.

Ir was a shame there was no ballet choice of the year on TAD. I'm only reminded because I've been listening to so much dancy-dancy music in the early days of 2014, and reliving the splendours of English National Ballet's homage-to-Nureyev Raymonda Act Three (photographed below by Dave Morgan) in going through Alexander Anissimov's amazingly good complete recording of the fantastical Glazunov score.

Maybe Neeme Järvi can carry on the winning streak of his Tchaikovsky ballets with the Bergen Philharmonic, once The Nutcracker is in the can, with this. Though Anissimov's recording, to be honest, is fine enough, and I hope NJ will act on my pleas for him to follow in Ansermet's footsteps with his Suisse Romande Orchestra in a complete Delibes Coppelia and Sylvia.

I realize (7/1) I can also indulge a Best of Theatre 2013 slot, too, though I hardly ran the gamut. Even if I had, hopefully Best Actor and Actress would be the same. Among actors, Chiwetel Ejiofor excelled by a long way as a rangy, charismatic Patrice Lumumba in Joe Wright's joky-scary Young Vic staging of A Season in the Congo (photo by Johan Persson).

Wright's work would win him Best Production too, though equal contender was Richard Jones's characteristically unpredictable take on Ibsen's An Enemy of the People (as Public Enemy) in the same theatre (how I love the Young Vic, and what treasures it has in store this year). This time the play, a complex masterpiece, was as compelling as its treatment. Here's another risk-taking actor, Nick Fletcher, as Stockmann, photographed by Keith Pattison.

Kudos to the Barbican, too, for showcasing French classics I'd never seen on stage before from French companies, Rhinocéros and Ubu Roi, and linking them to the superb Duchamp et al exhibition. Standing out from what looked like a sea of middle-of-the-road stuff at the National Theatre were Joe Hill-Gibbins' disorienting production of Marlowe's Edward II, hopefully a sign of more experimental things to come under Rufus Norris, and the melting/zesty child's eye take on Emil and the Detectives accompanied by breathtaking designs/video projections

Best Actress award, again no question from my limited experience: Hilde Kronje as a spoilt young Afrikaaner of infinite variety in Mies Julie at the Riverside Studios (which need saving now from the greedy property developers). How she and Bongile Mantsai (the two pictured below by William Burdett-Coutts) kept up the intensity night after night is one of the mysteries of live theatre.

But now it's time to leave the self-indulgence and froth behind, get down to work and - sigh- sort out the tax return.

*Bettina tells me he's playing Beethoven and Chopin concerts with the Royal Northern Sinfonia in April, but I'm waiting on a recital.

Dream, Screw and Serenade in Norfolk - 1

Britten's two spookiest operas and his exquisite songs of sunset melting into night had the most poetic settings imaginable the other weekend. I was up in beloved north Norfolk to talk about the connections between The Turn of the Screw and A Midsummer Night's Dream - they turn out to be more legion than I thought - in the intimate little Granary Theatre of old-fashioned Wells-next-the-Sea, pictured in the middle above. Seastar Opera's all-women cast with piano had joined, by serendipity, with Yorke Trust Summer Opera's full-scale production of Dream in one of Norfolk's loveliest churches, St Mary's South Creake (above), players and singers from all over the world working mostly for free on a course with a very splendid end.

The bonus to those, and the events connected with them, was to discover that the Britten Sinfonia would be at the Theatre in the Woods of Britten's (and Auden's) old school, Gresham's of Holt, with its amphitheatre canopied by beautiful beech trees - third photo - and that we could squeeze it in between walks, bathes and other performances.

First of the major trio up was Susie Self's Screw; though there was a treasurable warm-up act. That great double-bass player Rodney Slatford, driving force of the Yorke Trust and seen here in the South Creake chapel where the smaller happenings took place,

had arranged a number of events to educate us all around the Dream. So King's Lynn-dwelling friend Jill and I hurtled to South Creake to hear Rodney in very, very lively conversation with that unstoppable but never boring or self-regarding anecdotalist, director John Copley, and the more quietly amusing violinist Nona Liddell, both of whom had participated in the 1960 Aldeburgh Jubilee Hall premiere of the Dream. Stories that made us laugh are too countless to record - all should have been mp3d but sadly weren't - but Copley had his own take on why Mackerras became a Britten ghost (I'd heard another, but this is choice). He was there when Mackerras was rehearsing Screw with the tenor who'd taken over from Pears on tour. Quint was out of synch offstage - 'miles out, miles out' as Charlie shouted - and apparently couldn't find the peephole in the drapes to see his conductor. 'I can't find Peter's hole' he wailed. 'Lucky for you', snapped back Mackerras.

Anyway, our Quint was very apparent over at Wells in the shape of Susie, singing the Prologue before heading to the conductor's stand, and her stage double, co-director Marina Sossi. Britten and Piper's very present ghosts can be a problem, especially in a smaller space;  I'd have liked more play with lights, and the valiant scene-shifters were just as distracting in the interludes as I, the great Bob Ling and a fellow Hesse student had been at Aldeburgh back in 1983 (Myfanwy Piper found us very irritating). But on a limited budget, Susie's wonderful Michael Christie did an excellent job as Lord High Everything Else. Here they are together outside the Granary.

And as you can hear in the Woman's Hour excerpt, Susie makes a very compelling Quint singing at tenor pitch.

Our Governess, of two, was Nazan Fikret, not so long ago the most frightening Flora anyone's seen at English National Opera. Her voice has a piercing sweetness and her innocence was touching, though the hysterical fixity needed a bit more playing up in a second half where everyone adopted bright colours. The church scene worked best as theatre, with the children at 'prayer' before turning gargoyles.

I suspect that just as you wouldn't have known Susie and Marina were women beneath that effective make up, you'd never know Eleanor Kramer wasn't a boy. Her 'Malo' was as touching as they come, her screams terrifying; again, only a bit more dramatic vividness as the screw turned wouldn't have gone amiss. The Flora (Alex Saunders, who took the two production photos) and Mrs Grose (Louise Mott) were impeccable, and we heard a big Wagnerian voice from Laura Wolk-Lewanowicz as Miss Jessel. Richard Black worked his socks off at the piano, but it only made you realise how specifically Britten, for all his wonderful pianistic skills, writes specifically for each of his 13 players.

Saturday morning was the talk, to a rather small but very participatory audience, followed by a round table in which I was specially impressed by the common sense and insights of Dream director Jennifer Hamilton. After our second F&C of the day, a later-arrived J went off to see the matinee while Jill and I walked out to the beach past the famous Wells huts/chalets (£60,000 a pop, can you believe).

The tide, alas, had retreated beyond reach of swimming, a pleasure to be postponed until the following day, and a haar was rolling in.

The Holt experience provided further confirmation - as guitarist Dario von Gammeran's Friday afternoon performance of the Nocturnal after John Dowland had suggested - that so much Britten would benefit from the al fresco treatment. Several of the works from Jackie Shave and her nearly all-women strings I'd loved at the Wigmore pre-centenary Brittenfest last year. But the works with tenor were fresh, and Irish-born Robin Tritschler is a new wonder on the scene. I'm indebted to Rodney Smith of the Photographers' Gallery at Holt for this picture.

Infinitely flexible, full of vocal colour, lightish but never forcing the sound, Tritschler was perfection in Finzi's Dies Natalis. And how wonderful that its newborn infant's-eye view of the world was paralleled by a gently mewling baby in the audience.

Inevitably, the Serenade crowned the glory of the late afternoon. Tritschler excelled in the difficult Dirge and flecked off the runs in Jonson's Sonnet to Diana. But an effect I'll never forget was fabulous horn player Stephen Bell's retreat to the woods for an offstage call to give us supernatural goosebumps. There were more of those in the Dream that evening, but I need to save it up for another day.