Our wrap-up of The Year We Made Blog Posts.
The look back continues, with links back to reviews recalling the best hours spent at concert halls in 2010.
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| Valery Gergiev, plotting on how to win this award for 2011, too. Photo courtesy Columbia Artists Management Inc. |
Mr. Gergiev was all over New York's musical map this year.
- He conducted Shostakovich's The Nose at the Met.
- Then he lead a festival focusing on Stravinsky in the spring with the New York Philharmonic
- He followed with a week of Mahler symphonies in the fall at Carnegie Hall.
- And he found time to record a superb Parsifal with his Mariinsky forces.
Congratulation, Maestro--you're a busy man and we're the better for it.
Best Orchestral Concert: New York Philharmonic
Stravinsky's Firebird and the Symphony of Psalms
"Mr. Gergiev's freewheeling interpretation of the score caused more than one touch-and-go moment in the early movements. The conductor recovered, moving his fingers like the fluttering of a bird and drawing lovely sounds from the orchestra."
Comeback of the Year: Seiji Ozawa with the Saito Kinen Orchestra
"Mr. Ozawa moved with surety through the text, drawing fire from the brass and exquisite textures from the chamber-sized orchestra-within-an-orchestra that accompanies the soldiers' songs."
Best Music Festival: The Russian Stravinsky at the New York Philharmonic.
The concert series featured all the major Stravinsky works, including Les Noces, Oedipus Rex (with Anthony Dean Griffey and Waltraud Meier) and the Dhiagalev ballet scores.
Best Choral Performance Atlanta Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall
"When the magnificent ASO Chorus lifted their voices in the Kyrie, the full measure of Janáček's genius was revealed in this performance of the Glagolitic Mass."
Best New Composition: High Line by Ryan Francis.
Performed by the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall
"Swelling, surging figures in the brass and atmospheric percussion and winds to create the sound of a sunny day atop the elevated park."
Best Modern Music Performance: Kraft at the New York Philharmonic
"As the opening chords dwindle, the textures and rich ideas of Mr. Lindberg's music unveil themselves."
