There is still one disc on its way but it's hard luck on Venezia 1700 by Thibault Noally because I have a hard enough job on my hands already.
How to go about deciding is the first step. We need to weed a few out. I can console the Couperin disc with the thought that it probably would have won did I not have a recording of it already but, as a disc, it is very unforgiving to mark it down for interrupting the choral glories with less spectacular instrumental interludes. The Mozart is very fine indeed but similar strictures can be applied in that more soloists and less choir would have made it better. The Abrahamsen is the most 'extreme', which is no mark against it, but might not be the choice if one could only keep one disc and had to lose the rest. Which leaves the marvellous account of Telemann that I can't really find any such ultra-critical fault with except that it is not a wonderful cello concerto by a composer of my generation, later augmented with a spectral vision of Purcell rising out of a Berlin-period David Bowie piece.
There are pieces in the middle of Errolyn Wallen's Photography that didn't do as much for me. There would have been ways of arguing the case for any of these five discs but Errolyn's is the last to be thrown over the side of my balloon.
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I have already dismissed Prof Sir Stanley Wells and those from the world of Shakespeare Studies for their cursory denigration of the Curtis-Green letter in the TLS. We remain interested in hearing from any of them if and when they come up with a reason why Hamnet Sadler could not have been father of Shakespeare's twins.
Meanwhile, how does one compare a great day at the races with a Monteverdi opera.
Namanja Radulovic put in an impressive late bid with his Khachaturian Violin Concerto.
It has to be a completely arbitrary decision.
The one that made me feel best, and helped a great deal towards another record profit for me vs. the bookmakers, notwithstanding that Cheltenham racecourse on a fine day is some way ahead of what Wordsworth said about being on Westminster Bridge, it's Cheltenham's April Meeting, and thanks to Nigel for taking us there and Richard Johnson for riding Fox Norton to the win that tied so many bets together in the novice chase..
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So, a new record profit, a profit for the Saturday Nap feature and, I'm surprised to find, more posts here than in any other year (which wasn't supposed to happen), as well as plenty of evidence in the award winnersto suggest it was a good year. Strange to reflect, then, what a godawful large affair and very bad year 2016 was for the 'liberal intelligentsia' that I'm allegedly one of. Bowie and Prince were shocking news items before the Referendum and Trump but what can you do.
As well as the Venezia disc, there are Delmore Schwartz, poems by Charlotte Newman, commentary by Stephen Burt on contemporary American poems and my introduction to the Avant Garde for Portsmouth Poetry Society to look forward to in the New Year. And then later, the third volume of Danny Baker's memoirs as well as the very long-awaited Selected Poems of Thom Gunn in which I hope Clive Wilmer will have done some annotating to make the wait worthwhile.
If that wasn't enough to look forward to, the novel Time After Time should be finished in its one-off draft by the Spring, to be read by only the very select few who both want to read it and I decide are allowed to, as well as, I hope, some pop songs I've had a hand in writing.
There should be no need to revert to the stand-by of the My Life in Sport series, which still has running, chess, pool and darts and possibly even my brief career in gaelic football to recount but that sporting memoir is always waiting to be completed.
Thus, it only remains for the Christmas Nap to be posted later this week and that will have been that for another year.Best Wishes to Everyone.
Keep the Faith.
It'll Never Be Over For Me.
