The Top 10 Classical Albums of 2021

The opening lines of Franz Schubert's song "An die Musik," his love letter to music from 1817, speaks of personal troubles, of being "caught in life's unruly round," and how the power of music can "lift you to a better world." Those sentiments have been hitting very close to the bone for many of us over the last year or so. Most of the albums on the list below were made while the pandemic was raging. And while musicians were largely sidelined from concert halls, many of them braved the recording studio and released perhaps the most meaningful albums of their lives. Musicians can't stop making music. Music lovers can't stop listening.

These 10 albums, presented here in unranked order, are my personal . I found great beauty in the voices of Emily D'Angelo and , delighted in the ecstatic moments within 's , trembled in the face of 's mammoth symphonic forces and found comfort in the symmetry of a sonata and the sweet collaboration between 's kora and the London Symphony Orchestra. They lifted me to a better place. I hope they do the same