ZACHARY WOOLFE
Deathless Classics and Unmissable New Operas
The pleasure of a music critic’s job is how huge the purview is. From revivals of centuries-old items to the premieres of brand-new works, the sector I cowl is an ecosystem that takes satisfaction in each the previous and the longer term. My favourite performances this yr, in chronological order, spanned eras, however all had been 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 essentially the most pressing, vivid model of Handel’s basic oratorio that I do know of — alternately bracing and joyous. (Ryan James Brandau performed final December.) Much credit score is as a result of church’s vibrant period-instrument orchestra. And fairly than internet hosting the same old quartet of aria soloists, this efficiency has nearly 20 soloists emerge from the distinctive in-house choir, making it extra a communal ceremony than a stale vacation pageant. (Read our evaluation.)
Yunchan Lim
Chopin’s 24 études are solely an hour of music, however that hour is without doubt one of the most storied and troublesome within the piano repertoire. Yunchan Lim was simply 19 when he ran this old-school gantlet at Carnegie Hall in February, but he has a thoughtfulness and maturity that belie his years. At Carnegie, as on the recording he launched in April, he was unfazed by the études’ staggering technical calls for as he balanced note-by-note readability with delicate lyricism. (Read our opinions of the live performance and the recording.)
Lise Davidsen
One of the most effective singers of her technology, this Norwegian soprano has an enormous, coolly highly effective voice that sails simply by way of the lengthy strains of Wagner and Strauss. Verdi tends to profit from extra vulnerability and velvety heat, however Davidsen has grow to be an artist you wish to hear in every thing. In February she lavished her generosity, finesse and visceral influence on the much-suffering Leonora within the Metropolitan Opera’s forcefully performed new manufacturing of “La Forza del Destino,” stopping the present along with her 11-o’clock quantity, “Pace, tempo mio Dio.” (Read our evaluation of “La Forza del Destino.”)
Cleveland Orchestra
In May, Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” was solid with recent, youthful voices and performed with elegant transparency by one of many world’s nice orchestras at Severance Hall. It was the twentieth opera presentation of the conductor Franz Welser-Möst’s Cleveland tenure, which can finish in 2027 after a quarter-century — astonishing longevity in at the moment’s music world. The ensemble’s Carnegie Hall go to in January with Welser-Möst was additionally memorable, together with lucid performances of Prokofiev’s second and fifth symphonies, which ingeniously sandwiched Webern’s experiment in that style. (Read our opinions of “The Magic Flute” and the Carnegie live performance.)
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