Norman Lebrecht, who attends concerts as frequently as falcons swoop over St John’s Wood, has declared 2025 to be a terrible year for music. We are at the mercy of political activists, he thinks, and he has a point. Zealots, particularly those who pursue pro-Palestinian causes, are relentless troublemakers for whom an undefended concert hall or opera house offers an easy target for protest.
But for this concert-goer, 2025 was a wonderful year, in terms of quality and variety. So far the inventory reads 43 concerts and nine operas. Not the grandest of totals, and nowhere near a personal best, but a decent tally – with power to add, too. December is full of plums, including a first-ever Messiah. Yes, pop-pickers, it is the only acknowledged masterpiece that has resisted capture in five decades of regular attendance.
In every egg a bird. January brought Jenufa at Covent Garden, conducted by Jakub Hrůša, the Royal Opera’s new music director. One of the great operas, Jenufa, and Hrůša is uncommonly gifted. The month also gave us a Benny Goodman tribute at Cadogan Hall, when a spirited band of British jazzers recreated the clarinettist’s famous 1938 Carnegie Hall concert.
David Briggs, organist and artist-in-residence at St John the Divine in Manhattan, banished the February fog at my old school chapel, improvising a 90-minute accompaniment to the silent-movie classic Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Cree-py! Paul Lewis, performing Schubert in Liverpool, and Andrew Manze conducting the Hallé in Vaughan Williams, topped and tailed the gloomiest of months. Lucky Mancunians. The Hallé are playing better than ever.
March was a corker. On successive days it was possible to catch Bach’s St John Passion at St Paul’s Knightsbridge, the Sitkovetsky Trio in Ravel and Shostakovich at Wigmore Hall, and the Sex Pistols at the Albert Hall. If you put a few bob on that trifecta, you’d never need to work again.
In April Ed Gardner conducted the London Philharmonic in Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, as dancers cavorted across the stage of the Festival Hall – unnecessary and distracting. Daphnis requires no ‘enhancement’. Berlin in May meant the Berliner Philharmoniker in Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde, conducted by Sakari Oramo, and the Ninth Symphony, directed by Kirill Petrenko. It was my 31st Mahler 9, disturbed by a solitary boo – a horrible sound anywhere and not far off a hanging offence in the Philharmonie. At Chipping Campden, which holds one of England’s most handsome annual festivals, Steven Isserlis played the Dvořák cello concerto.
It was back to Wigmore in June for the Belcea Quartet in late Beethoven. The Belceas used to be cheeky new bugs. Now they’re veterans. Up to Ilkley in July for a flamenco evening. Samuel Moore, an English student of Juan Martín, the Spanish master, supplied a viva on Iberian culture between strums.
The Proms occupied August and September. All hail the glorious Budapest Festival Orchestra and their founder Iván Fischer, who brought Beethoven and Bartók – Bluebeard’s Castle, no less. Mark Elder conducted an odd work, A Mass of Life, by Delius, which gets an outing when the moon is blue.
December is full of plums, including a first-ever Messiah
Berlin once more in October for a Ring Cycle at the Staatsoper, superbly played and sung. Daniel Barenboim, desperately ill, conducted Schubert and Beethoven. Music is keeping him alive. Back in London, at Wigmore, Mitsuko Uchida played Beethoven’s last three sonatas and everyone present felt a little bit closer to God.
Trick or treat in November. Simon Rattle brought the mighty Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra to the Phil, the hall where, in 1970, the 15-year-old Rattle heard them with Rafael Kubelík and vowed: ‘That is what I want to do with my life.’ What a life it has been, and he has finally reached the best part.
Now we approach the final furlong, with a visit to the Barbican of Arcadi Volodos, one of those formidable Russian pianists we hear but seldom, as well as that first Messiah.
Concert of the year: the Takács Quartet and Adrian Brendel in Schubert’s C major Quintet at – where else? – Wigmore. The greatest ensemble playing the greatest work. Discovery: Shostakovich’s Second Piano Trio. Rediscovery: Kind of Blue, a record acquired 40 years ago and now understood. Its recreation by those jazz stalwarts provided another happy evening at Cadogan Hall. Unexpected highlight: Paul Cook – ‘Cookie’ from Shepherd’s Bush – joining his mates for the Sex Pistols’ ‘frolic in the dorm’. The crowd was older than the one at Glyndebourne for Parsifal. The drummer is my pal, and friendship trumps even music. Naturally, I donned the Garrick tie for the occasion. So, as Sinatra used to sing as he wound down, ‘it was a very good year’. To get the most out of music, though, you really have to leave the house.
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