Though it may seem that the classical music niche is shrinking each year, there is a contrary movement in that there is more classical music being marketed to avoid that tag. While it saddens me a bit to see "classical" come to be seen as a commercial kiss of death, what matters most is that the music find an audience, and tastefully imaginative marketing that achieves that goal can only help the genre survive. So if your initial reaction to things on this list is that they belong elsewhere, think again!

1. Hilary Hahn/Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra/Esa-Pekka Salonen Schoenberg & Sibelius: Violin Concertos (Deutsche Grammophon)

On the basis of Hahn's performance of the Schoenberg, she moves into my Top Three of living violinists along with Aaron Rosand and Maxim Vengerov. Really, there's no excuse now for not loving this supposedly forbidding concerto, which if anything sounds more Romantic here than its disc-mate. Hahn has impeccable technique and dispatches this notoriously difficult piece, full of cadenzas, with aplomb. Schoenberg, well aware of how technically challenging the solo part was, even declared that it needed a violinist with six fingers on his left hand. Well, photos of Ms. Hahn show the typical five digits, and her legerdemain here, at faster speeds than the competition (as she puts it in her quite personal and personable booklet notes, "to the oft-ignored tempi printed in the score"), came only after two years of practice ("I had to train my hands to adopt positions completely new to me," Hahn writes). While that might seem sadly prosaic compared to genetic mutation, it does speak to a commendable devotion to her art and belief in the power of a supposedly unpopular piece. The payoff is a dazzling rendition; I don't want to say she makes it sound easy, because that would be impossible, but she moves the listener's focus beyond the physical aspect of playing so that the work's true musical value is more readily apprehensible. The orchestra and conductor -- and the recording engineer, Stephan Flock -- also deserve kudos, as this is an extremely unusual piece that presents a rather different sound picture from the norm, as Schoenberg avoids octave doublings (an observation gleaned from Michael Steinberg's invaluable The Concerto: A Listener's Guide (Oxford University Press, 1998)) and rarely utilizes all of his large orchestra at once. The usual recording technique of spotlighting the soloist to achieve balance would here unbalance things drastically in the soloist's favor. Much of the time, this sounds like chamber music rather than symphonic music -- the symphonic bits are for climactic points only -- and the orchestra collectively partners with the solo part in presenting Schoenberg's complexly ingenious structural interplay and unique textures. Of course, fine performances of the Sibelius, long an acknowledged masterpiece, are much more frequent, but Hahn's can stand proudly among the best in its alliance of coolly emotional and probingly cerebral powers.

2. Sarah Cahill Leo Ornstein: Fantasy and Metaphor (New Albion)

The musical discovery of the year: of the fifteen short solo piano works on this CD, only two had ever even been played in public before the talented and adventurous Sarah Cahill recorded them. Ornstein (1893-2002 [that's not a typo]) came to prominence in the second decade of the 20th century as the radically dissonant composer of such notoriously proto-modernist piano pieces as "Wild Men's Dance" (AKA "Danse Sauvage"), "Impressions of the Thames," and "Suicide in an Airplane," all prominently deploying tone clusters. But, also writing highly lyrical works when he felt like it, he fit into no movement, and after his retirement from public recitals he faded into obscurity. He and his wife then founded a music school in Philadelphia (John Coltrane is its most famous product), which lasted about two decades (early '30s to 1953). He continued to prolifically and unsystematically compose new pieces, eventually gathered and organized by his son; it is from his 1960s and '70s works that most of the repertoire on this disc is drawn. Their language is largely Impressionist, but with a jazz-like fluidity that suggests they were born as improvisations. Imagine a more rapturous Richie Beirach (or, if that's too obscure, imagine Bill Evans playing twice as many notes) and you'll have an idea of what this ravishingly beautiful and compellingly virtuoso music sounds like. Kudos to Ms. Cahill for bringing it to us in splendid fashion.

3. Murray Perahia J.S. Bach: Partitas Nos. 2, 3, 4 (Sony)

Perahia has concentrated on Bach this decade, and now ranks among the very finest Bach pianists ever, the equal of Glenn Gould, Sviatoslav Richter, and Angela Hewitt. In the Bach works he has so far essayed, I enjoy his playing more than theirs, actually: Gould's eccentricity sometimes draws attention away from the composer; Richter's Romantic inclinations and abiding seriousness don't ideally represent the music's true style and wit; Hewitt cannot quite match Perahia's pearly tone and liquiscent phrasing (not that I can think of anyone else active nowadays who can). Bach playing doesn't get more elegant and refined. In the Partitas at hand, the gracefulness of Perahia's rhythms and ornaments fully conveys the vivacity of Bach's dance movements at the same time that his perfect proportions, fine shadings of tone colors, and keenly judged dynamics match Bach's elevated composing in lifting the music above its kinetic origins. It goes without saying that I look forward to Nos. 1, 5, and 6 coming our way, and I fervently hope that his intermittent hand problems don't prevent him from eventually tackling the Well-Tempered Clavier, the French Suites, and The Art of Fugue.

4. Los Angeles Master Chorale/London Sinfonietta/Alan Pierson Steve Reich: Daniel Variations (Nonesuch)

Reich's Daniel Variations (2006) were written in memory of Daniel Pearl, the American journalist murdered in Pakistan by jihadists in 2002. It combines text from the Biblical book of Daniel and Pearl's words from the video his captors released and from an off-the-cuff comment Pearl (himself an amateur fiddler) made referencing the title of a song played by the jazz violinist Stuff Smith, "I Hope Gabriel Likes My Music." The words are sung by sopranos and tenors (Los Angeles Master Chorale), while the instrumental forces (including members of the Steve Reich Ensemble) are two clarinets, four vibraphones, percussion, four pianos, and string quartet. The idiom is similar to Reich's The Desert Music. While there is tension in the first three movements, and knowledge of the tragedy grants huge emotional import to otherwise innocuous utterances, ultimately the half-hour work is a celebration of the spirit of Pearl, and that comes across in the finale. This CD also includes the 22-minute Variations for Vibes, Pianos & Strings (2005), played by the London Sinfonietta under Alan Pierson. For three string quartets, two pianos, and four vibraphones, it is similar in tintinnabulatory brightness to much of Reich's mature instrumental work featuring vibraphones. It's in three movements, the outer ones fast and sparkling, with distinctive asymmetrical propulsiveness from the accents of the pianos, the middle slow and pensive, emphasizing the strings more. In the long and distinguished career of this Minimalist icon, these works rank high.

5. Warsaw National Philharmonic Choir & Orchestra/Antoni Wit Krzysztof Penderecki: Symphony No. 8 "Lieder der Vergenglichkeit"; Dies Irae; Aus den Psalmen Davids (Naxos) Naxos' series of Penderecki's orchestral works benefits greatly from the spectacular contributions of Wit and his orchestra. Though he doesn't get the press of his more famous colleagues, Wit is clearly one of the finest conductors active now, a superb orchestra-builder and also an excellent shaper of performances. The Eighth, "Songs of Transience" (2005), is a genuine masterpiece. Twelve movements totaling 36:28 and ending in mystery, it is more monumental in scale than its timing might suggest, employing Mahlerian forces of three vocal soloists, chorus, and full orchestra. Each movement sets a German nature poem, the poets ranging from Goethe, Arnim, and Eichendorff, from the 19th century, to the moderns Hesse and Rilke. Pondering mortality and renewal, its ambitions are great, but entirely fulfilled; some of Penderecki's symphonies are rather heavy and dark, but this one, while hardly easy listening, often has a sparkling lightness that makes it much less ponderous. The symphony's discmates are related, but much older and more avant-garde. Using similar forces, Dies Irae (1967) is not a requiem movement but rather an expressionistic oratorio, using texts both sacred and secular, written for the unveiling of a concentration camp monument. Chilling in its stark textures and edgy timbres, utilizing vehement dissonances that groan and shriek, it's a protest against man's mistreatment of man, but ends with Paul Valery's injunction "Let us try to live." "From the Psalms of David" (1958), for chorus and orchestra, is less radically dissonant but still remarkably unsettling; it was one of the pieces that brought Penderecki international notice.

6. Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Stephane Deneve Roussel: Symphony No. 2; Pour une fete de printemps; Suite in F (Naxos)

There are two great things about Naxos. Their CDs are so cheap ($8-9) that it requires only a small investment to check out pieces or composers one hasn't heard before. And the quality of the performances and recording quality are not budget-label caliber -- Naxos CDs sound as good as anything the big boys put out, in terms of both performance and sonics. So even if you've never heard of criminally underrated composer Albert Roussel (1869-1937), who ranks among the top five 20th century French symphonists, you need not hesitate to take a chance on this CD. Roussel was a late bloomer, and his Second Symphony (1919-21) found him on the verge of his mature style, moving beyond the influence of Impressionism while maintaining its mastery of glinting orchestral colors. The outer movements are slow, dark, and moody, separated by a sparkling yet uneasy scherzo. It's not nearly as outgoing as Roussel's more popular Third Symphony, but it's very powerful on its own quiet terms. "Pour une ete de printemps" was written at the same time as the Second (David Cox, in his chapter "The Symphony in France" in Robert Layton's A Guide to the Symphony [Oxford, 1995], says it was originally intended as the Second's scherzo, but only in a few short bursts does it sound any more like a scherzo than the Second's atypically unhyperactive middle movement) and applies its musical language in this tone poem. The Suite in F is generally considered the first work of Roussel's fully matured style, marked by concision, sophisticated orchestration, and rhythmic vitality. Stephane Deneve (b. 1971), who paid his dues as assistant to Solti, Ozawa, and Pretre, is halfway through a Roussel cycle for Naxos. There's nothing flashy or distinctive about his conducting -- he just makes everything sound natural and balanced and clear.

7. Charlemagne Palestine: The Apocalypse Will Blossom (Yesmissolga)

Palestine's repetitively clangorous piano style is simple in concept, but massive in execution and impressive in impact, spawning drones and harmonics of unearthly eeriness. This particular performance, on a magnificent-sounding Bosendorfer (gotta love those extra bass notes), may have been digitally magnified; it's a mostly a 42-minute 2000 concert performance "remixed and processed" by Christoph Heemann, who presumably also added the brief opening track of street noise, but the immense power of this performance is vintage Palestine, humming and throbbing like a vast note-factory assembly line, a sonic airplane takeoff, sonorous alarm bells, the vibration of the universe.

8. Stephane Ginsburgh Morton Feldman: For Bunita Marcus (Sub Rosa)

9. Steffen Schleiermacher Morton Feldman: The Late Piano Works 1: Triadic Memories (MDG)

I'm happy that this formerly esoteric composer's works are now much more frequently recorded than during his life, to the point where receiving two such superb-sounding performances in one year is business as usual. (Both are vastly superior to ECM's disappointing disc of The Viola in My Life; somebody please give them the memo stating that modern music need not be played with thin, scratchy string tone anymore.) Fitting on single CDs, these single-movement solo piano pieces -- respectively 71 minutes and 80 minutes -- are actually much shorter than some of Feldman's late pieces. On superficial listening these sparsely notated pieces seem repetitious, but it's something of an illusion, for though notes come around repeatedly, rhythm and timing are so varied that the effect is more like large, slowly rotating mobiles whose parts never form the same exact shape twice in a row. It's simultaneously meditative and stimulating. (I have also found it fun -- if conceptually heretical -- to play these discs simultaneously, which multiplies the effect while adding an additional spatial element.)

10. Franz Schmidt: Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln (The Book with Seven Seals) Johannes Chum, Robert Holl, etc./Robert Kovacs/Vienna Singverein/Vienna Tonkunstler-Orchester/Kristjan Jarvi (Chandos)

Austrian composer Franz Schmidt (1874-1939) combined the musical vocabularies of Bruckner and Mahler in a lush, dramatic style that looked back to earlier structural models -- here, the epic scale of Baroque oratorio, albeit with a Wagnerian sense of drama. While by the time he wrote this work in 1937, his Late Romantic style was considered passe, what with Stravinsky, Schoenberg, et al. manning various cutting edges, there's no denying Schmidt's ambition in this work: he condenses the Revelation of St. John the Divine's description of the Apocalypse into a massive, soul-shaking experience. Starting with Mitropoulos's mono 1959 concert recording, we've been given about one Book per decade. While it's debatable which is the best, there's no doubt that Chandos provides the best sound with this two-disc Super Audio set. I still lean towards Mitropoulos (leading the Vienna Philharmonic) as the best performance, but Rene Pape is wonderful as The Voice of the Lord on Welser-Most's imposing EMI recording from last decade. That part is this new recording's weakness; Robert Holl was in much better voice in 1984 for Orfeo's Zagrosek-led reading than he was here when this was recorded at two 2005 concerts. He's weakest -- with a horribly distracting vibrato -- at the beginning; I almost gave up on this recording then (having paid $30 for it gave me plenty of incentive to keep listening, which soon proved worth it). Conductor Kristjan Jarvi, though doing a fine job overall in a hard-to-wrangle composition, sometimes comes up a bit slack compared to all the previously mentioned conductors, but I'm inclined to be forgiving of anyone successfully climbing this choral Everest. And, saving the best for last, tenor Johannes Chum in the much bigger role of St. John is superb, exactly the sort of heldentenor voice Schmidt wanted.

11. Jonny Greenwood There Will Be Blood (Nonesuch)

Greenwood, whose day job is guitarist in Radiohead (he hinted at further talent with his string arrangement on their "How to Disappear Completely"), won't win points for originality here, but he sure does know his 20th century masters. On what was easily the most sinisterly evocative soundtrack of the year, he deploys what he's learned from them: Krysztof Penderecki for the menacing bits, Olivier Messiaen for ecstatic flights and the occasional quiet bliss, Minimalists for bated expectancy. This is head and shoulders above other rockers' forays into classical composition, and it wouldn't bother me one bit if Greenwood started taking scoring jobs away from Michael Nyman.

12. Jeanne-Michele Charbonnet, Catherine Wyn-Rogers, Stuart Skelton, Gerald Finley, Trinity Boys Choir, Crouch End Festival Chorus, Philharmonia Chorus, BBC Symphony Chorus & Orchestra, Leon Botstein John Herbert Foulds: A World Requiem (Chandos)

Personal confession time: Performing under Maestro Botstein 15 years ago was so unpleasant and uninspiring an experience that I wrote off him and his work. But he does like to explore interesting repertoire that would often be unheard otherwise, and this was just too fascinating to pass by: the premiere recording of a colossal symphonic choral work written in the wake of World War I by an underrated English composer. Foulds (1880-1959) was an outspoken leftist and pacifist; after four consecutive years of this 90-minute commemoration of the casualties of The War to End All Wars being performed on Armistice Day (1923-26), it was ditched in favor of less anti-war material. Monumental in the best English choir-festival tradition, somewhere between Stainer and Faure in style (slightly more modern) and nowhere near as bombastic as its 20-movement length and large forces might suggest. It is mostly a gentle, soothing work, somewhat longwinded and not as memorable overall as its obvious future analog, the Britten War Requiem, yet nonetheless often inspired and imaginative. My only complaint with this performance is the extremely wide vibrato of soprano soloist Charbonnet and a slightly unpleasant tone when she forces her volume up. Otherwise, this is a thoroughly enjoyable and uplifting two-SACD set.

13. Gloria Cheng Piano Music of Salonen, Stucky, and Lutoslawski (Telarc)

There are four world premiere recordings here, including Witold Lutoslawski's Sonata for Piano -- something of a surprise given that Lutoslawski died 14 years ago and the Sonata dates from 1934. Honestly, it is the Lutoslawski alone that makes me include this disc on this list. Esa-Pekka Salonen's pieces (2005's Three Preludes are premiered here; also heard are 1985's "Yta II" and 2000's Dichotomie), erratic in inspiration, are sometimes sonically impressive but usually unlovable, perhaps because they seem inadequately served by the instrument -- his gestural music only fully blossoms in orchestral colors. Steven Stucky's miniatures -- 2002's Four Album Leaves and 2001's Three Little Variations for David, both premieres -- are well-crafted and attractive, and the former deserve a long concert life. But ah, the Lutoslawski Sonata is another matter entirely. It is larger in design than anything else here, three movements lasting a bit over 26 minutes. It is an early work, a student work, but quite assured in its amalgam of Impressionist harmonies and Eastern European brooding. Stucky, who wrote the booklet notes, speculates that dissatisfaction with the finale led to the piece's suppression, but while it is more episodic than the more tightly focused opening and middle movements, in Cheng's performance it is thoroughly enthralling, and its quiet ending convincingly magical.

14. Johann Johannson Fordlandia (4AD)

A melodic European Minimalist, sounding more like Arvo Part than Steve Reich or Phillip Glass because his music floats on light, slow pulses rather than hammering on insistent percussion beats, Johannson adds an electronic ingredient (at times) and gets issued on a rock label, albeit the ECM of rock labels. A lot of the people who buy it probably consider it chillout fodder, but it's more than that. Johannson's sense of proportion is unerring, both structurally (usually arcs) and dynamically (ditto); his deployment of timbres is masterful. With so many tracks here put together in similar ways, the latter is especially important, and the variety from track to track - strings/electronics, solo organ, clarinet, strings/organ, strings alone, and so on - keeps the listener's ear from tiring.

15. Mahler: Symphony No. 7 London Symphony Orchestra/Valery Gergiev (LSO)

Gergiev and the LSO released other Mahler in 2008, but this was most impressive for having the highest degree of difficulty. There are plenty of great Sixths around, but few even good Sevenths. Well, here's another one to add to the short list. Although, if you're looking for refinement and attention to detail -- or a warm and affectionate reading -- look elsewhere. In a famously problematic and episodic work, Gergiev's solution is to rely on headlong momentum to keep from bogging down; some other readings require two discs, but the Russian gets through in 72 minutes. The result is far from crude or rushed, however; in fact, by not dwelling overlong in the weird and warped middle movements, Gergiev makes them all the more effectively grotesque. And it's nice that even though this is a concert performance, we are not assaulted by applause at the end. - Steve Holtje

Mr. Holtje is a Brooklyn-based poet and composer who splits his time between editing Culturecatch.com, working at the Williamsburg record store Sound Fix, and editing cognitive neuroscience books for Oxford University Press. No prizes for guessing which pays best.