Joan Tower's undervalued Concerto for Piano (Homage to Beethoven) received a tremendous reboot at the hands of Marc-André Hamelin, and we now have a fuller picture of Missy Mazzoli the orchestral composer in the album Dark with Excessive Bright, highlighting four harmonically fresh, dramatically charged works.Īside from the symphonic bonanza, there were heavenly vocals this year. Finnish composer Lotta Wennäkoski, a new discovery for me, displays a bold Van Gogh sensibility for radiant coloration and quirky textures in three rigorously built pieces played by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. It's endlessly fascinating to hear how composers choose to wield their symphonic forces. Like its namesake's famous 14th century poem, Adès' 90-minute ballet score guides us down into hell and back up, through purgatory, into paradise - and seemingly beyond, thanks to an astonishing performance by Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Perhaps buoyed by the terrific orchestral concerts I saw, symphonic recordings resonated with me this year, none more so than the kaleidoscopic escapade that is Thomas Adès' Dante. These concerts were among the year's delights, and while live music is always best, the bulk of my classical music nourishment came, once again, from recordings. And I'm still a little buzzed from a visit to Cologne, Germany - a modernist music stronghold - to bask in a centennial György Ligeti concert (including Poème symphonique for 100 metronomes), conducted by Matthias Pintscher. To hear flutist Claire Chase and the Helsinki Philharmonic brilliantly navigate the dreamscape sounds of Kaija Saariaho, who suddenly died three weeks after that May performance, now seems like a balm for a deep musical wound. Still, this year I did jump back in the saddle to experience a carefully curated selection of live performances.Ĭonductor Rafael Payare led the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in a dynamic, youthful account of Mahler's 5th, while Yuja Wang's blur of fingers made for a ripsnorting Bartók Piano Concerto No. So far, I've dodged the COVID bullet (yes, an outlier), though I'm still squeamish about large crowds. Since the pandemic began, I've not been going to concerts - as in none since March 2020 - until this year. In 2023, pianist Awadagin Pratt released a terrific comeback album, his first in 12 years.

Sibelius strings quartet sib