Photo courtesy of Roman Tiraspolsky / Shutterstock.com
The verdicts are in.
The New York Times came out with The Best Classical Music of 2016 earlier this month with critiques by veterans in music journalism including Anthony Tommasini, Zachary Woolfe, Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, David Allen, and James R. Oestreich. The Frederick Symphony Orchestra highlights the best of the best in this comprehensive overview:
Symphony Conductors and Composers
In began with Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, who made headlines after conducting The Metropolitan Opera in the production of Elektra. The NYT noted that, “Salonen conducted the score with a composer’s insight into its complexities and splendors. It was an immediate Met milestone.”
Salonen hit another homerun after conducting the New York Philharmonic in Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie, as the new composer-in-residence. However, he wasn’t the only one taking over The Big Apple.
American conductor and violinist Alan Gilbert stole the show during the New York Philharmonic Biennial with his final programs, “including William Bolcom’s…Trombone Concerto; John Corigliano’s Conjurer for percussion, string orchestra, and brass; and Steven Stucky’s…Second Concerto for Orchestra, ending with the American premiere of Per Norgard’s Eighth Symphony.”
The top spot in this tremendous trio went to English conductor Simon Rattle, who took up “an all-but-fall official residency in New York this year,” beginning with the Met’s performance of Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Rattle even imagined an 11th Symphony by Gustav Mahler in which he combined 14 individual works from Austrian trio Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg.
Operas
There was no doubt that “the most anticipated event of the international opera world this year was the premiere of Thomas Adès’ The Exterminating Angel, adapted from Luis Buñuel’s film, at the Salzburg Festival in Austria. In his intense and surreal opera, Mr. Adès explores the terrifying undercurrents of Buñuel’s macabre comedy.”
Another powerful work that took center stage was Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in the first New York performance of the Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen’s Let Me Tell You.
A close third was De Materie, which combined theatrical novelty and musical variety, as “a philosophical opera that resists categorization.”
The director Heiner Goebbels’ original production, “presented in Drill Hall at the Park Avenue Armory [in New York], dramatized…overlapping themes of this work’s audaciously assembled libretto,” which included “documents of Dutch independence, 17th-century shipbuilding manuals, texts by mathematicians, Madame Curie’s diaries, and more.”
Lastly, the Manhattan School of Music “used its relative freedom from financial pressures to give students and audiences” a fresh experience of Persée et Andromède. The NYT called it “the American premiere of a glowing mini-masterpiece, fitted with a talented cast and a lithe, delicate orchestral performance led by Pierre Vallet.”
Classical Music Performances
Topping this list was the showstopping performance at Carnegie Hall from Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostosky, which included a program of Mikhail Glinka, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, and Richard Strauss.
The singer has been undergoing treatment for brain cancer, “but accompanied by his longtime pianist, Ivari Ilja, [he] sang with his trademark smoky colorings and affecting expressivity, including several bleakly poignant Russian songs that deal with death, grief and longing.”
Closely behind were Diamanda Galás and Meredith Monk, who also made notable appearances in New York. Galás, “a gloomy siren” was at a deconsecrated church in Harlem as part of the Red Bull Music Academy Festival, while Monk, “winsome and whimsical,” was at National Sawdust in Brooklyn.
However, it might’ve been Taylor Mac’s A 24-Decade History of Popular Music that took the trophy for originality this year. It became “a queering of the canon, an insertion of racial diversity, a test of fortitude for artist and audience alike. But the glittery, unforgettable spectacle…was also a vocal master class, as [Mac] made it — and then some — through 246 songs, performed essentially without stopping…”
If you’re interested in reading more about The New York Times top picks in classical music from 2016, including the revived legacy of an American dancer in Paris and an original opera that’s romantic and “successfully political,” check out the full article here.
If you’d like to stay current with local classical music, subscribe to the Frederick Symphony Orchestra’s blog below. We post weekly updates on news, concerts, volunteer opportunities, and more: