- Robert Levin: “Mozart: The Piano Sonatas on Mozart’s Fortepiano” (ECM)
- Diyang Mei, Oliver Triendl: “Viola à l’école de Paris” (Avi Music)
- Claire Bryant: “Whole Heart” (Bright Shiny Things)
In Richard Eyre’s 2004 film “Stage Beauty,” the London theater scene is at a crossroads when King Charles II allows women to legally perform onstage for the first time. This leaves Ned Kynaston, a male actor who spent half his life training to play women, out of a job. His acclaimed performance of Desdemona is taken on by an actress named Maria Hughes—the woman who had, up until that point, been his dresser (and star of after-hours underground performances of “Othello”). Ned, about to lose his entire identity, objects: He’s spent half his life training to do the work he does now; Maria doesn’t even know the Five Positions of Feminine Subjugation.