It was a year of many endings and few beginnings. Marcus Elder Halle after 24 years he went to Manchester as the music director of the orchestra, during which time the group took on even bigger dates. Kirill Karabits ended his 15-year tenure as principal conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra; Judith WeirA decade as Master of the Royal Music came to an end (Errolyn Wallen now he wears that crown). Radio 3’s Sean Rafferty is hanging up on Tune headphones after 28 years. Roger Wright curated at the last Aldeburgh festival and David Pickard He has stepped down from his role as director of the BBC Proms.
Pickard was in charge the most delightful of Proms times of recent years, although there are noticeably fewer international star orchestras than a decade ago. Naysayers bemoaned the non-classical elements of the eight-week festival, but packed events that included tributes to Nick Drake, Lonely Night Blues by Tinariwen and Florentino + Machines’ ecstatic 2009 debut Lungs brought in new audiences and found everyone interested. the tops of their games.
But the core of the classical events had provided the greatest csel: the Finn Klaus Mäkelä, 28, was introduced. an electrifying performance of Stravinsky’s Petrushka and Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique which had the audience in all their notes. Proms regular Aurora Orchestra produces magic yet again, with its imaginative and captivating a dramatized exploration of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Drama also comes in the form of a semi-staged Netia Jones production for the keenly observed Garsington Opera Cantilena’s A Night’s Dreamwith Lucy Crowe’s imperious Titania.
Bruckner’s 200th birthday was at the Royal Albert Hall with performances that included Simon Rattle’s charming account Fourth Symphony with the Bavarian Radio Symphony. The Glasshouse Center for Music in Gateshead on an ambitious March morning The Great Bruckner Tour – five concerts that included his last three symphonies, including his Grand Mass and String Quintet, with Halle, BBC Scotland and the Liverpool Philharmonic. Vladimir Jurowski’s life is recent and unconfirmed Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony I pay at the top in one year.
Mahler’s symphonies are also rarely absent from concert platforms. In October, Michael Tilson Thomas, despite suffering from brain cancer, led the London Symphony Orchestra in a poignant and uplifting performance. the second “resurrection” symphony. In the following month in the year 97 Herbert Blomstedt he was also seen with the ninth Philharmonic composer plant to criticize his teachers. Daniel Barenboim was also a very welcome but frail visitor Southbank Centre and in proms with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. Also at the SBC, the great London Philharmonic concert under its principal conductor Edward Gardner showed that his predecessor Jurowski was not such a difficult act to follow after all.
English National Opera’s own dramas were mercifully reserved for the stage this year. Simon McBurney’s stage came alive and warm Magic Flute works sung by foreigners and the like of the ancients. In the month of Nov The plans of the company are revealed to Manchester as his second home – Einstein’s Glass on the Beach and project on the face – and under artistic director Annelise Miskimmon brought back two new stages to the Coliseum: the Cantilena writer. Turn from rape and larky country girl-style dress Donizetti’s Elixir of Love.
But the concert presented our critics the most delighted. They placed Miskimmon Sister AngelicaPuccini’s tragedies about faith and human cruelty, from the 17th century in a Florentine convent to one of Ireland’s Magdalena laundromat in the 1960s, in a restrained yet rampant population of institutional abuse and present indictment. Sinéad Campbell-Wallace as Angelica and Christina Rice as her bitter, moralistic aunt each gave performances of their own.
At Covent Garden, Antonio Pappano held his end of 22 years as music director in high regard young Andrea Chénier. Jakub Hrůša will collect his staff in September 2025. Ted Huffman’s zeitgeist and iconoclastic Eugene Onegin have divided critics, but everyone agrees. Liparitan AvetisyanLensky stood. Puccini’s centenary was celebrated with the productions of La boheme, Tosca and Madama Butterfly; Pappano kept the party going in his new role with the London Symphony Orchestra, where he led a troupe of soldiers in a superb concert performance of a lesser-known composer. Swallow.
New music was less visible this year. Francisco Coll’s Cello ConcertoSol Gabetta’s compositions stood out among the new Proms commissions. The flashy thing was a full variety of iridescence packed into four choppy movements. Elsewhere, Freya Waley-Cohen is cleverly inventive with her spell book spell and to him the LPO commission of the Mother Tongue, and not Anna Clyne with Atlas Indeed, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra has produced some of the most remarkable and memorable new works.
Violinist Vilde Frang’s fabulous playing means that concert with archangel and soprano Julia Doyle at the Tetbury festival was one of this year’s life highlights. And it was a revealing and authoritative reading of Elgar’s Violin Concerto his memory (by Robin Ticciati and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchestre Berlin) our disc of the year. “From the first note to the last Frang never puts a bad foot.” wrote Andrew Clements.
Also not put on a wrong foot was the Welsh National Opera, whose collaboration with the Circus did not agree amazing mixed skills in the Cirque Cantilena an extraordinary and memorable stage of death in Venice. Unfortunately, the WNO – its vital funding diminished – can no longer be in any condition suitable to sustain the kind of work of integrity that has always been admired.