First the highs: the Lithuanian conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla raised spirits as new music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Chineke!, Europe’s first BME orchestra, really took off and witnessed the success of two younger members, both aged 17: cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason won BBC Young Musician 2016; Elodie Chousmer-Howells is the new leader of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. Radio 3 celebrated its 70th birthday with strong ratings. Vasily Petrenko, popular chief conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, was awarded honorary citizenship of the city. Pianists Igor Levit and Daniil Trifonov had a good year: contrasting in style but both virtuosos with, we hope, long futures. Martha Argerich and Daniel Barenboim, decades ahead in age and wisdom, played magical Schubert – four hands, one piano – at the Proms.
The painful saga of English National Opera, battling harsh Arts Council cuts and internal unrest, continued: the year began with a chorus pay dispute and the resignation of music director Mark Wigglesworth and ended with an outcry against next year’s Carousel, starring Katherine Jenkins and Alfie Boe. A promising new creative team is in place: Martyn Brabbins as music director and Daniel Kramer as artistic director. Ears and eyes will be on them. In performance, standards have remained consistently high: from Wigglesworth, in his short time as music director, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, The Magic Flute, Jenůfa, Lulu, and from the entire company, not just those you see on stage, in Akhnaten, Tristan and Isolde and more.
The Royal Opera had success with rarities: Enescu’s Oedipe and Shostakovich’s The Nose, as well as (not quite so rare) Bellini’s Norma. Philip Venables’s 4.48 Psychosis (ROH/Lyric Hammersmith) grabbed headlines for invention and style. Opera North excelled with Wagner’s Ring on tour, Billy Budd, Il tabarro/Suor Angelica and Mark Simpson’s Pleasure. Welsh National Opera continued its themed seasons, winning particular acclaim for Figaro Gets a Divorce. Scottish Opera made a mark with Stuart MacRae’s The Devil Inside (with Music Theatre Wales) and Handel’s Ariodante.
In Hampshire, Grange Park Opera left the Grange to build a new Theatre in the Woods in West Horsley, Surrey, opening in June next year. An entirely different if similarly named company – the Grange festival – moved into the vacant venue. Garsington at Wormsley scored with a fine Eugene Onegin. So too did enterprising Dorset Opera. Opera Holland Park, newly independent, had a critically acclaimed year with a dark and thrilling Queen of Spades. Glyndebourne, struggling somewhat with all this competition, came out on top with one of the world premiere hits of the year, Nothing, performed by 14- to 19-year-olds of Glyndebourne Youth Opera.
Post-Brexit vote, plans for the proposed Centre for Music in London collapsed. Scotland is doing better. Edinburgh has announced a new concert hall, home for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, with a 1,000-seat auditorium. The Royal Scottish National Orchestra, too, has a new base in Glasgow’s Killermont Street, an acoustically adjustable, 600-seat auditorium with world-class recording facilities. Abroad, among the usual switches around, Jaap van Zweden became new chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, succeeding James Levine, was named music director at the Metropolitan Opera, only the third in the Met’s history.
There were final farewells: composers Pierre Boulez, Peter Maxwell Davies, Peter Reynolds and Pauline Oliveros; conductors Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Neville Marriner, pianist-conductor Zoltán Kocsis; soprano Daniela Dessì, tenor Johan Botha. The year ended with a resurrection: a lost manuscript by Stravinsky played in St Petersburg by the Mariinsky Orchestra for the first time since 1909. Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia will give its UK premiere on 19 February.
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