Best Classical Music Performances of 2023
ZACHARY WOOLFE
Financial Challenges, but Abundant Riches
Last year ended with something approaching normalcy for the performing arts after a long crisis. It turns out, though, it was normalcy with an asterisk: The pandemic may be over, but orchestras and opera companies have emerged struggling with ticket sales, and the cost of goods and labor has spiraled; putting on shows is now more expensive, with less revenue coming in to square the books. These financial challenges notwithstanding, there were abundant musical riches in 2023 — as these favorites, in chronological order, make clear.
‘L’Elisir d’Amore’
Revivals of Donizetti chestnuts don’t usually make it onto this kind of list, but the tenderly funny “Elisir” is one of my favorite pieces, and in January, it showed off the best of the Metropolitan Opera. The tenor Javier Camarena, glowing with sincerity, and the gentle yet spunky soprano Golda Schultz, led with spirit by the conductor Michele Gamba, trusted the piece to reach every corner of the vast theater without overstatement or caricature. (Read our review.)
Yuja Wang
The phrase “once in a lifetime” gets thrown around, but really: How often will you get to hear all five of Rachmaninoff’s works for piano and orchestra in a single concert? Let alone with forces on the level of this dazzling pianist and the Philadelphia Orchestra — with all its historical ties to Rachmaninoff — under Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who pulled off the feat at Carnegie Hall in January. A long, giddily virtuosic afternoon. (Read our review.)
Felipe Lara
The New York Philharmonic gave some remarkable concerts this year: I’ll particularly remember the very young (the pianist Yunchan Lim, 19, blazing in, yes, Rachmaninoff) and the very old (Herbert Blomstedt, 95, keenly conducting Ingvar Lidholm and Berlioz). But perhaps most notable was the New York premiere, in March, of Felipe Lara’s 2019 Double Concerto, which made Claire Chase (on many flutes) and Esperanza Spalding (vocalizing while playing double bass) into a seething and exuberant, if not always sunny, organism. My other choices for new works of the year: Kate Soper’s sneakily sagacious chamber opera “The Hunt,” at Miller Theater in October, and Steve Reich’s energetic yet meditative “Jacob’s Ladder,” which the Philharmonic premiered that month. (Read our review of the Lara concerto.)
