Top Ten Performances of 2024
1. Daniil Trifonov in Mason Bates’ Piano Concerto. Lahav Shani/Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Daniil Trifonov capped the 2023 Top Ten Performances with his Chicago Symphony Orchestra appearances in Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3. Trifonov again finds himself topping this year’s list for his superb local premiere of Mason Bates’ Piano Concerto, again with the CSO (and conductor Lahav Shani), which closed the orchestra’s 2023-24 season in June. Trifonov’s artistry was on full display in Bates’ kaleidoscopic score, which the Russian played with his singular combination of transparency and power in a standout solo turn from this past year. (Tim Sawyier)
2. Music of Mozart, Copland, and Berio. Carlos Kalmar/Grant Park Orchestra
The highlights were many in Carlos Kalmar’s 25th and final summer leading the Grant Park Music Festival. But one August program was especially noteworthy and reflective of his distinguished quarter-century tenure. A bracing performance of Mozart’s “Jupiter” symphony displayed the freshness and vitality that Kalmar regularly brought to standard Austro-German rep. And the wistful, sensitive and idiomatic performance of Copland’s Appalachian Spring made an apt coda for the conductor who has done more for American music than any podium artist in Chicago history.
Let us hope that the lakefront festival’s commitment to quality American music—past and present— continues under his successor, Giancarlo Guerrero.
3. Nielsen: Symphony No. 5. Paavo Järvi/Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Sometimes one gets to hear a live performance of a complex work this is so rich in understanding and right that the piece makes complete sense. Such was the case with the extraordinary performance of Carl Nielsen’s Symphony No. 5 by Paavo Järvi and the CSO in February. The conductor nailed the myriad challenges of Nielsen’s score, giving great warmth to the soaring lyrical theme, conveying the surging chaos, and surmounting the structural challenges en route to a resounding coda.
Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s sensitive performance of the Elgar Cello Concerto and a bracingly fresh account of Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3 sealed one of the CSO’s best nights of the year.
4. Music of Shostakovich and Zinovjev. Klaus Mäkelä/Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Even with all the hoopla surrounding the announcement of Klaus Mäkelä as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s music director designate, the young Finnish conductor’s concert the same week in April largely lived up to the hype. There was a powerful Shostakovich Tenth, a fascinating new work in Sauli Zinovjev’s roiling Batteria, and an impressive debut by Sol Gabetta in Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1.
5. Music of Martinů, Strauss and Bartok. Jakub Hrůša/Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Jakub Hrůša has become a local favorite in his regular CSO appearances, and the Czech conductor’s two-week stand in March provided a virtual highlights reel for 2024. His second program was especially inspired with a rich account of Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra and a dazzling performance of Bartok’s lurid Miraculous Mandarin ballet. Most welcome was the Violin Concerto No. 1 of Bohuslav Martinů. With soloist Josef Špaček making a fiery Chicago debut, this galvanic performance helped to make up for the inexplicable neglect in this country of Martinů, one of the most prolific and consistent composers of the 20th century.
6. Mahler: Symphony No. 6. Sir Simon Rattle/Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
In his first Chicago appearance in 15 years, Sir Simon Rattle led a devastating performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 with the Bavarian Radio Symphony in April While not the equal of his former band, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Bavarians showed themselves a very impressive ensemble indeed and in hale musical heath in their 75th anniversary season.
7. Dover Quartet at Winter Chamber Music Festival
The Winter Chamber Music Festival at Northwestern University has always helped to warm the bleak midwinter. The Dover Quartet seems to have a continuing viola problem, with new member Julianne Lee announcing in September that she will depart the group at the end of this season. But last January, the Dover Quartet (with Lee) delivered one of the finest chamber concerts of the year with warmly spun Florence Price, a sympathetic account of an elusive Shostakovich quartet (No. 9) and a riveting account of Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” Quartet. (The Dover Quartet will opens the 2025 installment of the Winter Chamber Music Festival January 10.)
8. Blanchard: Champion. Lyric Opera of Chicago
In another largely lackluster year for opera in Chicago, Terence Blanchard’s Champion proved to be the sleeper event of 2024 at its local debut in January. The slender rewards of Blanchard’s overpraised Fire in My Bones, presented at Lyric in 2022, didn’t exactly make one eager to hear Blanchard’s Champion. As it turned out, the jazz trumpeter-composer’s first opera proved to be a vastly superior piece, a rich, epic tale of boxer Emile Griffith who wound up killing an opponent in the ring, and his subsequent dealing with the guilt, personal demons and incipient dementia. With a large, superb cast and a fast-moving, often eye-popping production, Lyric Opera delivered a brilliant, compelling and often moving show.
9. Mendelssohn: Elijah. James Conlon/Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus
Sometimes the oddball works can provide the most successful musical rewards, and such proved to be the case with the April CSO performances of Mendelssohn’s Elijah. The composer’s late oratorio, premiered under his baton a year before Mendelssohn’s early death at 38, is an unwieldy work with its episodic take on the Jewish prophet. But with Lucas Meachem in the title role leading a fine lineup of soloists in this crackling performance under James Conlon, the 130-minute epic seemed to fly by.
10. Haydn: The Creation. Dame Jane Glover/Music of the Baroque
While Music of the Baroque’s November performance of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio was just as noteworthy, the ensemble’s season-opening concert of Haydn’s The Creation proved especially delightful. Dame Jane Glover brought out every inimitable scoring detail of Haydn’s joyful oratorio and was aided immensely by an engaging trio of soloists in Brandon Cedel, Joelle Harvey and Aaron Sheen, as well as the MOB Chorus at their finest under chorus master Andrew Megill.
Honorable Mentions
The Balourdet Quartet’s Beethoven at the Winter Chamber Music Festival. Lyric Opera’s La Cenerentola. Music of the Baroque’s St. John Passion and Christmas Oratario. Haymarket Opera’s production of Handel’s Tamerlano. The Berlin Philharmonic’s Bruckner Fifth. With the CSO, Neeme Järvi’s Mahler 2; Stéphane Denève’s French program with Jean-Yves Thibaudet; Christian Tetzlaff’s Elgar Violin Concerto and the Janáček-Bruckner program, both with Carlos Kalmar and the GPO.
A Trifonov trifecta
In addition to his local premiere of the Mason Bates concerto with the CSO in June, this year also saw the pianist’s release of that concerto’s debut recording. Then in November, the Russian pianist opened his season as the CSO’s artist in residence with an excellent and offbeat recital program, which included sympathetic advocacy for Tchaikovsky’s rarely heard Sonata in C-sharp minor, a scintillating set of Chopin Waltzes and a staggering performance of Samuel Barber’s Piano Sonata.
Promising news at Lyric Opera
The long prayed-for exit of Lyric Opera CEO Anthony Freud finally happened this year as did the arrival of a capable and promising successor in October with John Mangum.
Not so promising news at Lyric Opera.
As the revival of Barbara Gaines’ execrable Le nozze di Figaro production showed this fall, Chicago opera audiences will still be dealing with Freud’s artistic decisions for years to come.
Worst opera production
Verdi’s Aida was the final Lyric Opera production of Freud’s reign and, fittingly, was in the same dispiriting tradition, with Francesca Zambello’s revisionist show ditching the grandeur and pageantry of ancient Egypt for a grim, militaristic fascist state.
A worthy Bruckner birthday bash
Despite a disappointing lack of Bruckner in the CSO’s 2024-25 season, Chicago collectively delivered an admirable number of excellent Bruckner performances in 2024 to mark the Austrian conductor’s 200th birthday year: the Symphony No. 3 (Marek Janowski/CSO), No. 4 (Carlos Kalmar/Grant Park Orchestra), No. 5 (Kirill Petrenko/Berlin Philharmonic) and No. 7 (Manfred Honeck/CSO).
Best premiere
Sauli Zinovjev’s tempestuous Batteria, heard in its U.S premiere by the CSO under Klaus Mäkelä in April.
Second best premiere
Lowell Liebermann’s engaging Flute Concerto No. 2, was given a stellar world premiere in March by Stefán Ragnar Höskuldsson with Susanna Mälkki conducting the CSO.
You can go home again
The Pacifica Quartet was resident at the University of Chicago for 17 years, and returned early in 2024 for a brief time as the Don Michael Randel ensemble-in-residence. The concluding program of their Hyde Park stand featured compelling accounts of quartets by Gruenberg, Shostakovich, and Dvořák from a longstanding ensemble that has retained its considerable polish over the years. (Tim Sawyier)
Best Chicago debut
Dima Slobodeniouk’s downtown debut with the CSO in December brought a commanding performance of Rachmaninoff’s rarely heard First Symphony and a laser-focused account of Lutoslawski’s complex Cello Concerto with Johannes Moser as the powerful and insightful soloist.
Symphony of a thousand decibels
Carlos Kalmar’s farewell performance of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony in August with the Grant Park Orchestra was nearly ruined by an oppressively deafening amplification. Of all the nights to have a technical disaster.
Most interesting opera excavation
Ferdinando Paër’s Leonora, presented in its belated U.S. premiere by Chicago Opera Theater, conducted by Jane Glover in October.
Where’s opera, Doc?
In addition to the hapless artistic leadership, even the handling of such mundane matters as scheduling a season can be disastrous under the Freud regime .
In the current 2024-25 season, Lyric Opera is not presenting a single mainstage opera performance between December 1 and March 15 of 2025. Yes, Sondra Radvanovsky is supposed to sing Puccini concerts in February, but that’s still nearly four months of no staged opera by Chicago’s largest company at what should be the peak of the winter music season.
It’s pretty hard to build—or in the case of Lyric, rebuild—an opera audience when you don’t present any opera for more than half the season. Pure administrative genius.
Yer out of luck, Chuck
In an astounding lack of historical awareness, Charles Ives’ 150th birthday season is being completely ignored in Chicago. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is not playing a single note of the pioneering American composer’s music all season and the same goes for nearly every other presenter and performing organization in the city. Nice way to ignore one of the most important and ground-breaking of American composers. Appalling.
One belated, hopeful note: The American Music Project will present Ives’ String Quartet No. 1 in a concert by the Kontras Quartet May 23, 2025.
Requiesat in pace
Among those passing away this year were former Lyric Opera music director Sir Andrew Davis, retired CSO piccolo player Walfrid Kujala, and Gerald Fisher, CCR’s longtime calendar compiler.
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4 Responses to “Top Ten Performances of 2024”
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Posted Dec 23, 2024 at 12:15 pm by Chris Sheahen
Really enjoyed your review of the year in classical music. The Piano Concerto by Bates was the highlight of my concert going. New music doesn’t get much better than the performance by Trifonov and the CSO.
Posted Dec 26, 2024 at 3:33 pm by John
The much desired exit of Mr. Freud was indeed the highlight of the year. Like someone coming out of a body cast, the Lyric can begin healing
Posted Dec 28, 2024 at 1:11 am by James Allen
Charles Ives’ birthday season isn’t being *completely* ignored: the Chicago Sinfonietta is presenting a concert of (mostly) his music on the University of Chicago campus. https://chicagosinfonietta.org/february-2025-charles-ives-america/
Posted Jan 06, 2025 at 10:19 am by David Fleener
IMHO, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra is fully equal to the Berlin Philharmonic.