Between educated guesses and dumb luck, we usually manage to bring a good catch: prime material from artists we've come to trust, discoveries conducive to further exploration, and more. This time, I thought we could have done with some extra eureka moments. Can't win 'em all, and besides, there's always the wild card of personal taste. To listen in on any or all tracks, click through to the Apple Music playlist.

Ed Hughes: Time, Space & Change (Métier 2020)

New Music Players & Nicholas Smith

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To the well-honed investigative skills on display in her acclaimed biography of the Dionysian Robert Mapplethorpe, Patricia Morrisroe now adds the art of intuitive invention. Her first novel gives us the intractable genius of Ludwig (or as his Francophile contemporaries preferred, Louis) van Beethoven through the eyes of Countess Julie (or, as he preferred, Giulietta) Guicciardi, the dedicatee of his Piano Sonata No. 14, popularly as the "Moonlight" Sonata. The supporting cast listed at the outset goes on for pages, but never fear. Though researched to a fare-thee-well, Morrisroe's fiction never lets atmospheric historic detail slow the swift pace of intrigue, politics, art, and sex. Can the HBO miniseries be far behind?

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"Miss Scarlett with the candlestick in the ballroom!"

Perhaps to the uninitiated, answers to Bruce Adolphe's mind-bending Piano Puzzlers sound something like those surprise reveals in the classic board game Clue—except that the range of references is so much vaster and zanier. "'Puttin' on the Ritz' in the style of Beethoven!" would be an example. Or "'Eleanor Rigby' in the style of Brahms!" Or "'Hava Nagila' in the style of Bach!"

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Spirits of revolution

Leading with Beethoven, in whom the daemon of revolution never slept, we wound up, by happenstance, mostly in the company of other musicians driven by visions of a different and better world, for themselves and for the family of humankind. To listen in on any or all tracks, click through to the Apple Music playlist.

Beethoven: Révolution, Symphonies 1 à 5 (Alia Vox 2020)

Jordi Savall & Le Concert des Nations

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Is this the best of times, is this the worst of times? Maybe Charles Dickens could tell us.

In observance of Independence Day (though a day late) and of le Quatorze Juillet (though more than a week early), I put together a mostly Franco-American program, including a few personal favorites in various ways suitable to the occasion. Tracks available on Apple Music appear on our online playlist. Sad to say, our grand finale is one of the missing.

PBO & Caroline Shaw (Philharmonia 2020)

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale, Nicholas McGegan

From The Listeners (2019)

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