by It was a year with many endings and fewer beginnings. Mark Elder leaves the Hallé after 24 years as music director of the Manchester Orchestra, during which he led the group to ever greater heights. Kirill Karabits ended his 15-year tenure as principal conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra; Judith Weir’s decade as Master of Royal Music came to an end (Errollyn Wallen now wears that crown). Radio 3’s Sean Rafferty has hung up his In Tune headphones after 28 years. Roger Wright curated his final Aldeburgh festival and David Pickard stepped down from his role as BBC Proms director.
Pickard oversaw one of the most enjoyable Proms seasons in recent years, even if the number of international star orchestras is significantly smaller than a decade ago. Critics criticized the non-classical elements of the eight-week festival, but packed events that included a tribute to Nick Drake, late-night desert blues from Tinariwen and Florence + the Machine’s ecstatic performance of Lung’s 2009 debut attracted new audiences and found everyone anxiously at the top of their games.
English National Opera’s own dramas were fortunately reserved for the stage this year
However, the core classical events offered the greatest thrill: 28-year-old Finn Klaus Mäkelä conducted an electrifying performance of Stravinsky’s Petrushka and Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, which carried the audience along with every note. Proms regulars the Aurora Orchestra brought magic once again with their imaginative and captivating dramatized take on Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Drama also came in the form of a semi-staging of Netia Jones’ sharply observed production of Britten’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” for Garsington Opera, starring Lucy Crowe as the imperious Titania.
Bruckner’s 200th birthday was celebrated at the Royal Albert Hall with performances that included Simon Rattle’s graceful performance of the Fourth Symphony with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. The Glasshouse Center for Music in Gateshead reached its peak early on with the ambitious Big Bruckner Weekend in March – five concerts of the final three symphonies as well as his Grand Mass and String Quintet with the Hallé, the BBC Scottish and the Liverpool Philharmonic. Vladimir Jurowski’s fresh and informal live recording of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony was one of the top releases of the year.
Mahler’s symphonies were also rarely far from the concert stage. In October, despite suffering from brain cancer, Michael Tilson Thomas conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in a poignant and uplifting rendition of the Second Resurrection Symphony. The following month, 97-year-old Herbert Blomstedt also appeared to defy his doctors with a riveting performance of the composer’s Ninth with the Philharmonia. Daniel Barenboim and his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra were also a welcome but frail guest at the Southbank Center and at the Proms. At the SBC, too, the London Philharmonic’s extensive concerts under its chief conductor Edward Gardner showed that his predecessor Jurowski was not that difficult to imitate.
English National Opera’s own dramas were fortunately reserved for the stage this year. Her lively and warm revival of Simon McBurney’s production of The Magic Flute enchanted opera newcomers and old-timers alike. In November, the company unveiled plans for its second home in Manchester – Glass’s Einstein on the Beach and public relations at the forefront – and brought two new productions to the Coliseum under artistic director Annilese Miskimmon: Britten’s Turn of the Screw and A Witty Country Girl “Style interpretation of Donizetti’s Elixir of Love.
But it was a concert production that most excited our critics. Miskimmon relocated “Suor Angelica,” Puccini’s tragedy of faith and human cruelty, from a 17th-century Florentine monastery to one of Ireland’s Magdalene laundries in the 1960s, in a restrained but damning indictment of institutional abuses, past and present . Sinéad Campbell-Wallace as Angelica and Christine Rice as her bitter, moralizing aunt each delivered unique performances.
At Covent Garden, Antonio Pappano ended his 22-year tenure as music director on a high with a stirring Andrea Chénier. Jakub Hrůša will take over his baton in September 2025. Ted Huffmann’s zeitgeisty and iconoclastic interpretation of Eugene Onegin divided critics, but all agreed that Liparit Avetisyan’s Lensky was outstanding. Puccini’s 100th birthday was celebrated with performances of La bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly; Pappano kept the party going in his new role with the London Symphony Orchestra, where he led his top brass in a magnificent concert performance of the composer’s lesser-known La Rondine.
New music was less visible this year. Among the new composition commissions at the Proms, Francisco Coll’s Cello Concerto, composed for Sol Gabetta, stood out. It was a glittering performance full of dazzling details, packed into four succinct sentences. Elsewhere, Freya Waley-Cohen produced some of the most striking and memorable new works with her witty inventive song cycle Spellbook and her LPO commission Mother Tongue, and Anna Clyne with Atlas for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
Violinist Vilde Frang’s incredibly expressive playing made her concert with Arcangelo and soprano Julia Doyle at the Tetbury Festival one of this year’s live highlights. And her insightful and authoritative interpretation of Elgar’s Violin Concerto made her recording (with Robin Ticciati and the German Symphony Orchestra Berlin) our CD of the Year. “From the first note to the last, Frang never makes a mistake,” wrote Andrew Clements.
Nor did the Welsh National Opera go wrong, whose collaboration with No Fit State Circus combined breathtaking circus skills with Britten to create an extraordinary and unforgettable production of Death in Venice. How sad it is then that the WNO – whose vital funding has been cut – may no longer be able to sustain the uncompromising work for which it has always been admired.
