New York Classical Review

1. Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht. Mahler: Symphony No. 1. Klaus Mäkelä/Royal Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra

Love was in the air on this November night at Carnegie Hall, as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, led by its chief conductor designate Klaus Mäkelä, cast its penetrating spotlight on two late-Romantic works, rooted in forbidden passion, by composers then in their 20s. Conductor Mäkelä, 28, delivered these end-of-an-era masterpieces in all their glory and desperation, aided by a band of musicians capable of making music jump off the printed page. (DW)

2. World Orchestra Week at Carnegie Hall.   

World Orchestra Week (WOW!) in August showed not just wonderful passion and commitment from the excellent National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America, but several ravishing concerts from orchestras around the world. On top of performances of Rimsky-Korskov’s Scheherazade and Barber’s Symphony No. 1 by the NYOUSA, and the Africa United Youth Orchestra playing Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9—performances that could stand with any professional ensemble—there was the fantastic social feeling of the musicians celebrating each other, the audience, and the music. (GG)

3. Stravinsky: The Firebird and The Rite of Spring. Klaus Mäkelä/Orchestre de Paris.

On the brink of leaving one prominent post for two even more prestigious ones in Chicago and Amsterdam, the young Finnish maestro transported listeners to the Paris of 1910 and 1913, or at least to the sensation of hearing these now-classic works as shockingly new. The March concert at Carnegie Hall showed that today’s Parisian musicians are at least as good as their predecessors at administering the shakes and shivers of these early Stravinsky masterpieces—and probably much better. (DW)

4. Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1. Vikingur Ólafsson with Manfred Honeck/New York Philharmonic. 

Manfred Honeck conducting the New York Philharmonic in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 was inducement enough to hear this concert. But it was Vikingur Ólafsson that made this concert outstanding. The pianist’s sparkling transparency and etched articulation, as displayed in music of Bach, Mozart, and Glass, was utilized to channel the expressive weight of Brahm’s massive concerto. The pianist makes music sing like few others, and, with this music’s long lines and lingering effects, that made for a memorable experience. (GG)

5. Yuja Wang playing music of Messiaen, Debussy, Scriabin, and Chopin. 

As always, Yuja Wang did this May recital at Carnegie Hall her way, with stunning attire, riveting presence at the piano, and changing the program order on the fly (including that of Chopin’s Four Ballades). She also inhabited each composer’s world fully while subtly suggesting links between them, and mining every ounce of drama from Chopin’s most epic works. (DW)

6. Michael Stephen Brown’s recital for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. 

The term “musician’s musician” refers to someone whose playing has impeccable technique and taste, yet often hides the fact that with those come extroverted qualities like style, energy, and expression. Michael Stephen Brown’s solo recital of Haydn, Debussy, Ravel, Mendelssohn, and his own compositions was beautifully programmed and played, full of the pleasures of the piano and Brown’s musical artistry. (GG)

7. Shostakovich: Symphony No. 14. Parlando/Ian Niederhoffer.

This gripping performance of Shostakovich’s rarely heard, penultimate symphony was one of the season’s intense and darker highlights. Ian Niederhoffer, Parlando’s founder and music director, has a probing intellect and eclectic musical tastes, reflected in pairing Aida Shirazi’s Umbra with the Shostakovich. The final movement of the symphony was a sublime musical depiction of bleakness and despair. (RP)

8. Music of Tan Dun, Joel Thompson, and Mendelssohn. Jaap van Zweden/New York Philharmonic. 

One of Jaap van Zweden’s final programs with the New York Philharmonic was, on paper, a random assortment of unrelated new music and Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony. But in execution, it was imaginative, skillful, public-facing music meant to excite and satisfy the listener, played with great skill and a palpable sense of fun. Before a robust performance of the Mendelssohn symphony, one full of focus and meaning, there was Joel Thompson’s colorful To See the Sky and Joseph Alessi performing Tan Dun’s amazing and idiosyncratic trombone concerto, Three Muses in Video Game. A wildly unlikely but winning combination. (GG)

9. Metropolitan Opera: Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette. 

The Met’s Roméo et Juliette in March was a perfect evening of opera. Tenor Benjamin Bernheim and soprano Nadine Sierra were ideally suited vocally and dramatically as Shakespeare’s star-crossed young lovers. Yannick Nézet-Séguin was also in top form, drawing exceptionally beautiful and expressive playing from the Met Orchestra. Bartlett Sher’s traditional staging is spare, efficient, and true to the drama. (RP)

10. Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 14. Emanuel Ax. Michael Tilson Thomas/New York Philharmonic.

Walking onstage to open the New York Philharmonic season with this September concert, the beloved conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and pianist Emanuel Ax, in their late 70s, were greeted with an ovation so warm and prolonged that they embraced each other before a note had been played. Then they gave such a vital and even sensual performance of Mozart’s “Barbara Ployer” Concerto that one hoped the management of Lincoln Center Inc., which axed the Mostly Mozart Festival after a 50-year run, was listening and reflecting. (DW)

Honorable Mention

An April New York Philharmonic program marked the debuts of conductor Karina Canellakis and pianist Alice Sara Ott. Alongside polished performances of Webern’s Six Pieces for Orchestra, Strauss’s  Tod and Verklärung and Scrabin’s Poem of Ecstasy, Ott played Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major in one of the most alert, vibrant, and exciting performances of the work one has heard, full of chamber music-like interaction between a virtuosic Ott and the orchestra. (GG)

Most ambitious undertaking 

Was Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder, performed by Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra the best-played concert of 2024?  Maybe a little short of that, but it was certainly the biggest. Schoenberg’s massive late-late-Romantic song cycle, calling for 150 players, six soloists and a chorus of 200, has achieved mythic status for its supposed impossibility to stage a performance of, but Botstein assembled the necessary forces in Carnegie Hall in May, and guess what? The fearsome creature turned out to be a pussycat. The lushly Romantic garland of songs, with a Tristan-like medieval love triangle at its center, eventually branched out into other characters, a bit of comic relief, and some rousing choruses. All in all, a satisfying evening of daring but accessible music. (DW)

Biggest surprise

With Gustavo Dudamel not set to take up his post as the next music director for two seasons, the New York Philharmonic is being led by a series of guest conductors. One had anticipated some inconsistency from that, but the fall season has been just the opposite—not only top-level instrumental and ensemble technique but an eager energy in every concert that one is not always used to hearing across every subscription program. This has been a laudable season so far for every Philharmonic musician. (GG)

Most rewarding debuts

Two New York debut recitals stood out in 2024. Yukine Kuroki, first-prize winner of the 2022 Dublin International Piano Competition, played Romantic and Impressionistic pieces in October in Weill Recital Hall. Kuroki showed her mastery of touch in the myriad ways she addressed the keys to produce bold (yet never banged) fortissimos and feathery leggierissimos, a roar of octaves that suddenly dissolved into a shower of pearls, and layered textures that gave every voice its own role in the drama.

Australian cellist Benett Tsai, winner of last year’s Young Concert Artists Susan Wadsworth International Auditions, made his bow in Merkin Concert Hall in December with a program that bypassed the usual cello showpieces in favor of piano-heavy works by the likes of Ginastera, Beethoven, and Brahms. Furthermore, he partnered with pianist Hyejin Kim, whose energy, tonal range and imagination were on a par with his own. The result was not just a successful solo debut but an exceptional evening of chamber music.

Despite having to share the audience’s attention with a surrealistic film about the USSR, conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson made her belated New York Philharmonic debut in December with a majestic, brutal, tender, and bracing account of Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony. (DW)

Biggest disappointment

Charles Ives is the single most essential figure in American classical music, and more important than any individual conductor or administrator has been in this country. For his 150th anniversary, the major New York City classical institutions of the Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center played absolutely none of his music. They didn’t even rise to the basic parochial connection of Ives’s life as a New Yorker. Utterly shameful. (GG) 

Music and architecture 

The Gesualdo Six created a memorable and moving experience combining history, music, and architecture with “Secret Byrd” at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. This immersive concept was a break from tradition for Music Before 1800, the longest-running early music concert series in New York City. The program’s centerpiece was a pristine performance of Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices. (RP)

Best-tasting performance

For a few cold February nights at the SoHo coffee bar The Lost Draft, the roving company On Site Opera staged a delightful performance of J.S. Bach’s “Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht,” BWV 211—the Coffee Cantata—while three varieties of the stimulating drink were brewed and brought steaming to the patrons. Few would have suspected Bach of having a rom-com sensibility, at least until they encountered this classic generation-gap tale of a headstrong daughter who ignores her father’s pleas to behave more respectably and give up her coffee habit. Updated with a new English translation and with a laptop figuring in the action, listeners lucky enough to score a ticket to the tiny venue found this Bach cantata both relatable and tasty. (DW)

Best musical archaeology

The German-born, Boston-based American composer Charles Martin Loeffler (1861-1935) is remembered, if at all, for dark, sensuous music inspired by French Symbolist poets. The clarinetist and arranger Graeme Steele Johnson was intrigued to find the manuscript of an unpublished 1897 Octet by Loeffler for clarinets, harp and strings in the Library of Congress. Years of deciphering and editing followed. 

In May, joined onstage at the Morgan Library by an all-star band of noted chamber musicians, Johnson presided while the work emerged from 127 years of silence, sounding not like Debussy or Ravel but like Chadwick, Beach, and other New Englanders who spoke the musical language of Brahms and Dvořák with an American accent. (DW)