HERE it is: the annually anticipated choices from the classical music critics of The New York Times of the best recordings of 2014. First, though, a qualification: None of us remotely claims to have heard all the recordings of note released this past year. Still, among the ranks of music lovers, we are probably more aware than many of the range of what’s been issued. In the end, these are personal choices. The only ground rules were that we agreed not to duplicate one another’s selections, and that we would not pick more than five each.

Looking over the complete list, I am struck, as in recent years, by how much the small independent labels, including new ones, have been breaking through with exciting recordings. The majors are still making news, of course, with projects like Sony’s boxed set of the complete Beethoven piano concertos featuring the pianist Leif Ove Andsnes and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. In another continuing trend, orchestras, ensembles and even concert halls are issuing recordings of live performances on their own labels. Recently, the Seattle Symphony, under its dynamic conductor Ludovic Morlot, started Seattle Symphony Media, its own label. The orchestra’s recording of John Luther Adams’s “Become Ocean,” winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Music, which you will find among these choices, was just nominated for several Grammy Awards.

How much money these projects will earn for the institutions, and how the small labels will fare over time, is hard to say. For now, though, lovers of classical music are the clear beneficiaries.

JOHN LUTHER ADAMS: ‘BECOME OCEAN’ Seattle Symphony, Ludovic Morlot, conductor (Cantaloupe, CA 21101). Inwardly mechanical and outwardly entrancing, “Become Ocean,” the 2014 Pulitzer Prize-winning work, was intended to drown you in sound, and it succeeds. This absorbing, glittering release is testament to what a single piece can do for a composer, an orchestra and a conductor. DAVID ALLEN