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      Best Classical Performances of 2024

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      Standouts included the soprano Lise Davidsen and the Berlin Philharmonic, a new opera by Missy Mazzoli and bits of old ones by Schubert.ZACHARY WOOLFEDeathless Classics and Unmissable New OperasThe joy of a music critic’s job is how wide the purview is. From revivals of centuries-old pieces to the premieres of brand-new works, the field I cover is an ecosystem that takes pride in both the past and the future. My favorite performances this year, in chronological order, spanned eras, but all were marriages of imaginative spontaneity and meticulous craft.Trinity Wall Street’s ‘Messiah’Even after the departure of Trinity’s visionary arts director, Julian Wachner, in 2022, this has remained the most urgent, vivid version of Handel’s classic oratorio that I know of — alternately bracing and joyous. (Ryan James Brandau conducted last December.) Much credit is due to the church’s vibrant period-instrument orchestra. And rather than hosting the usual quartet of aria soloists, this performance has almost 20 soloists emerge from the exceptional in-house choir, making it more a communal rite than a stale holiday pageant. (Read our review.)Yunchan LimYunchan Lim performed Chopin’s piano études at Carnegie Hall.Chris LeeChopin’s 24 études are only an hour of music, but that hour is one of the most storied and difficult in the piano repertoire. Yunchan Lim was just 19 when he ran this old-school gantlet at Carnegie Hall in February, yet he has a thoughtfulness and maturity that belie his years. At Carnegie, as on the recording he released in April, he was unfazed by the études’ staggering technical demands as he balanced note-by-note clarity with sensitive lyricism. (Read our reviews of the concert and the recording.)Lise DavidsenOne of the best singers of her generation, this Norwegian soprano has a huge, coolly powerful voice that sails easily through the long lines of Wagner and Strauss. Verdi tends to benefit from more vulnerability and velvety warmth, but Davidsen has become an artist you want to hear in everything. In February she lavished her generosity, finesse and visceral impact on the much-suffering Leonora in the Metropolitan Opera’s forcefully played new production of “La Forza del Destino,” stopping the show with her 11-o’clock number, “Pace, pace mio Dio.” (Read our review of “La Forza del Destino.”)Cleveland OrchestraIn May, Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” was cast with fresh, youthful voices and played with elegant transparency by one of the world’s great orchestras at Severance Hall. It was the 20th opera presentation of the conductor Franz Welser-Möst’s Cleveland tenure, which will end in 2027 after a quarter-century — astonishing longevity in today’s music world. The ensemble’s Carnegie Hall visit in January with Welser-Möst was also memorable, including lucid performances of Prokofiev’s second and fifth symphonies, which ingeniously sandwiched Webern’s experiment in that genre. (Read our reviews of “The Magic Flute” and the Carnegie concert.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The London Contemporary Music Festival Trolls for Aesthetics

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      The directors of the London Contemporary Music Festival discuss this year’s edition, the event’s 10th anniversary.Recently, the London Contemporary Music Festival released a limited run of merchandise. There was a graphic T-shirt featuring the names of musicians whose creations have appeared at past festivals, plotted on a graph with two axes: the Y labeled “twee” to “brutal,” and the X “top” to “bottom.” Brian Ferneyhough was a brutal top, Cornelius Cardew a twee bottom, and Laurie Anderson was somewhere in between.The festival — equal parts adventurous and provocative — leans further into artistic trolling for this year’s 10th anniversary edition. Titled “LET’S CREATE,” it focuses on the trickster figure in art, which it describes as “shape-shifter, border-crosser, mischief-maker, lord of misrule.” This is a return to what the festival’s directors, Igor Toronyi-Lalic and Jack Sheen, see as its essence.“The trickster is our patron saint, for all experimental music,” Toronyi-Lalic said in an interview. “That is the impetus.”“LET’S CREATE” is a nod to the much-discussed set of principles and desired outcomes used by Arts Council England to inform their funding decisions. Similar trickery streaks through the program. Take Wednesday’s concert, “Sorry.” After the British premiere of Philip Corner’s 1969 performance “During This Concert the Hall Will Be Bombed — or Blown Up,” there’s a sci-fi opera (featuring Spam and the cost of living crisis) by the noise artist Russell Haswell and a pantomime by Adam de la Cour inspired by the Garbage Pail Kids, (which themselves are a 1980s parody of the Cabbage Patch Kids). Then, closing the evening, the electronic producer Aya plays music by the other 45 Ayas listed ahead of her on music database Discogs.Holding together a packed festival program — the music spans from the final notes that Plato heard to the present, with nearly 50 world premieres — are similar feats of niche trolling. To introduce “LET’S CREATE,” Toronyi-Lalic and Sheen asked ChatGPT what the 19th-century music critic Eduard Hanslick might have made of it. “It is not music they are creating but a chaotic charade masquerading as artistic rebellion,” the digital Hanslick replied.The initial impulse for the festival came as a reaction to the “Rest Is Noise” festival at the Southbank Center in 2013; Toronyi-Lalic thought that it was too focused on music written before 1940. Over a decade later, the London Contemporary Music Festival still feels driven by its directors’ dissatisfaction with programming, commissioning and even taste in England.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Czech Philharmonic Brings Musical Heritage to Carnegie Hall

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      Over three nights, the Czech Philharmonic presented Dvorak’s concertos and more, including a rare performance of Janacek’s “Glagolitic Mass.”You could be forgiven for thinking that there has been some kind of festival going on at Carnegie Hall.Recently, its calendar has been stuffed with appearances by some of the world’s top orchestras. The Berlin Philharmonic was quickly followed by the Concertgebouw Orchestra and, for most of this week, the Czech Philharmonic. This is the programming you would get at major European festivals like Salzburg and Lucerne.And in their festival-style juxtapositions, these concerts make comparisons irresistible. If the Berlin Philharmonic pairs showy gesture with technical perfection, and the Concertgebouw Orchestra has the polish of fine jewelry, then the Czech Philharmonic is more like a timeless treasure, impressive but easy to take for granted.The Czechs, under Semyon Bychkov, their chief conductor and music director, don’t always demand your attention or affection. At Carnegie, though, this orchestra was unpretentious, even unassuming, yet dignified and impeccably balanced. Above all, the Philharmonic was an excellent steward of its country’s musical heritage.In that regard, its visit was something like a festival: a celebration of the Year of Czech Music, an occasional event that began a century ago with the centennial of Bedrich Smetana’s birth. At Carnegie Hall, where musicians typically perform on a bare stage, members of the Philharmonic sat under banners, and in front of toadstool-shaped flower arrangements in the colors of the Czech flag. The president of the Czech Republic, Petr Pavel, flew in to attend Thursday’s concert. Bychkov conducted on his handsome walnut podium from the Rudolfinum hall in Prague.The Philharmonic’s programming had the feel of cultural diplomacy, from an ensemble with a mission to tend a flame. Over three evenings, it offered Dvorak’s three concertos, as well as symphonic and choral works by Smetana, Janacek and Mahler. (Mahler, who was born in Bohemia, isn’t typically discussed as a Czech composer; his sound was more a product of his Viennese education and maturity than his birthplace. And while he may be a name that sells tickets, I wish that someone like Josef Suk, who is thoroughly in this Czech lineage and chronically absent in New York, were represented instead.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How TwoSet Violin Won Fame by Poking Fun at Classical Music

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      The violinists Eddy Chen and Brett Yang arrived in the suburbs of Bangkok recently on a mischievous mission. They had come to record hip-hop videos about Beethoven, Bach and other titans of music as if they were alive today.“They called me calloused, called me unfeeling,” Chen, dressed as Beethoven, with a gray wig and crimson scarf, rapped in one video. “Can’t let them know what I am concealing.”It was just another day in the life of Chen and Yang, better known as the comedy duo TwoSet Violin, who have millions of fans for the humor and whimsy they bring to the often very serious world of classical music. Over the past 11 years, they have galvanized a younger generation of musicians and helped dispel their field’s stuffy image.Filming crews working with Eddy Chen, left, dressed as Bach, and Brett Yang, dressed as Shostakovich.Chen and Yang have performed Pachelbel’s Canon in D with rubber chickens, hosted wild composer-themed games of charades and brutally taken down actors pretending to play the violin in movies. They have produced skits about showboating musicians, pushy parents and high-stakes auditions.Some of classical music’s biggest names have joined in on the fun. Hilary Hahn joined Chen and Yang to perform Paganini caprices while hula-hooping. Ray Chen played a game in which he and the duo imitated violinists like Jascha Heifetz and Anne-Sophie Mutter.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Revolutionary Sound at the Heart of ‘The Nutcracker’

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      There comes a moment in “The Nutcracker,” a ballet full of fantasy of fantastical music, when the Sugar Plum Fairy dances to a tune you’ve probably heard before.Over plucked string instruments, a glassy, bell-like melody emerges from a celesta, evoking water drops and then more as those drops give way to flowing runs. It’s a transporting sound: mysterious and otherworldly, delicate and playful.This is the famous “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” a highlight of “The Nutcracker” and a holiday staple, born on the stage and heard today in commercials and on movie soundtracks around this time every year.Unmute to listen as Megan Fairchild dances the Sugarplum Fairy in New York City Ballet’s production of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker.New York City BalletThe “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” is so familiar that it’s difficult to imagine that when this music was new, in 1892, it was really new. And that’s because of the celesta.Only recently invented, the celesta was in its infancy when Tchaikovsky began to imagine how he might write for it. Since then, its sound has spread throughout classical music and into pop, often with the same magical effect you hear in “The Nutcracker.” More

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      The Classical Music Our Critics Can’t Stop Thinking About

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      Watch and listen to five recent highlights, including performances by Davóne Tines and Lise Davidsen, and a new album by Ethan Iverson.The New York Times’s classical music and opera critics see and hear much more than they review. Here is what hooked them during the past month. Leave your own favorites in the comments.Davóne TinesAn installation view of “Living Room, Orlean, Virginia,” part of “Making Home — Smithsonian Design Triennial” at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesAndrew Carnegie’s 1902 mansion on Fifth Avenue, a Georgian homage on an immense, Gilded-Age scale, is currently the home of a more modest domestic scene: the bass-baritone Davóne Tines’s childhood living room.As part of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum’s triennial exhibition, “Making Home,” Tines has worked with the director Zack Winokur and the artist Hugh Hayden to create “Living Room, Orlean, Virginia,” an uncanny, poignant replica of the house of Tines’s grandparents, who raised him.‘Living Room, Orlean, Virginia’Sonic composition by Davóne Tines and Zack Winokur with Alma Lee Gibbs Tines, and John Hilton Tines Sr. Sound engineered by Al Carlson.The “Living Room” tableau, arranged on an enormous rocker, is a meditation on “home” as something soothing yet precarious for a musician like Tines, who spends much of his year on the road. On closer inspection, this installation, with its cozy arrangement of furniture, an upright piano and even a rug over carpeted flooring, has a dreaminess to it: Eerily, the photo frames are empty.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New York Philharmonic Looks to Philadelphia for Its Next Leader

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      Matías Tarnopolsky, who manages the Philadelphia Orchestra, will come to New York as the Philharmonic works to recover from a trying period.The New York Philharmonic announced on Monday that it had chosen a new president and chief executive: Matías Tarnopolsky, who currently leads the Philadelphia Orchestra.Tarnopolsky, 54, a veteran arts leader who oversaw the merger of the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in 2021, said he saw potential for an “auspicious new chapter” in New York, pointing to the arrival in 2026 of the star maestro Gustavo Dudamel.“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help shape the future of the New York Philharmonic,” said Tarnopolsky, who begins an initial five-year contract in January. “I embrace it with all my heart.”Tarnopolsky will take the helm of the Philharmonic, America’s oldest symphony orchestra, at a critical time.The ensemble has been grappling with a series of challenges, including the sudden resignation in July of its previous chief executive, Gary Ginstling, after only a year on the job. Ginstling left amid friction with Dudamel, board members, staff and musicians. Since then, Deborah Borda, a veteran Philharmonic leader, has run the orchestra on an interim basis.Borda, who led the orchestra from 2017 to 2023, has worked to stabilize the organization. After months of tense negotiations, the administration reached a labor deal in September with musicians, offering 30 percent raises over three years. And last month, the orchestra, hoping to bring to an end a long-running issue, dismissed two players over accusations of sexual misconduct.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Puccini Died 100 Years Ago. So Did the Great Opera Tradition.

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      There’s a knock at the door.A poor young poet is struggling to write in his attic apartment when he is interrupted by the sickly seamstress who lives downstairs. Her candle has gone out; can he light it?Barely 15 minutes later, these two strangers are singing ecstatically about their love. Implausible, right? But when a performance of Giacomo Puccini’s “La Bohème” is working its hot magic, nothing could be more believable.And nothing could be more essentially operatic than such a scene, with the emotions compressed and heightened through music. Puccini, who died 100 years ago, on Nov. 29, 1924, proved himself again and again a master of moments like this: unleashing a Technicolor extravagance of feeling while at the same time conveying plain, simple truth.A painter assuring his jealous girlfriend that her eyes are the most beautiful in the world. A prince, pursued by a city desperate to know his name, promising that it will remain a secret. A teenage geisha convinced her husband will come back to her.Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) was the Dickens of opera, able to manage the elusive combination of nearly universal accessibility and deep sophistication.A. Dupont/Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs DivisionOnce you know these passages, just thinking about them can bring you to tears. Spoken, the texts would be generic, sentimental, even laughable. Set to Puccini’s music, they suggest the most sincere and profound experiences that humans are capable of. More