Classical gasses

Biggest news. In a media blitz, Keith Lockhart, whose good looks got more attention than his musicianship, came from Cincinnati to become the 20th new conductor of the Boston Pops. And New England Conservatory's cherished Jordan Hall, after an $8.5 million renovation, reopened its elegantly refurbished doors with a poorly planned program that showed off how much the acoustics had changed (and mostly for the worse).

Best news. After 30 years of playing the piano almost exclusively with his left hand, Leon Fleisher, whom many people consider America's greatest pianist, seems to have found a successful treatment for his repetitive stress syndrome. This year he played Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 12 in DC, in Cleveland, and (most significantly for us) in an unforgettable and deeply moving performance -- especially of the solemn, elegiac slow movement -- with the BSO at Tanglewood.

Best new works. Sir Michael Tippett has announced that his shimmering new orchestral score, Rose Lake, would be his last work (he's now 90). It might also be his best. It received its American premiere in a radiant performance by Ozawa and the BSO, one of its three co-commissioners. John Harbison's Recordare, a gorgeous, otherworldly setting of a section of the Dies Irae, was composed -- and then abbreviated -- to be part of a multi-composer Requiem in Stuttgart. Its complete version got its world premiere by Emmanuel Music. And Gunther Schuller's moving 1994 Pulitzer-winning Of Reflections and Reminiscences, which still hasn't been done in Boston, came close in its strong Tanglewood debut.

Most exciting performance. If I had to pick one, it would be Stephen Drury playing a scintillating and sensual Ravel G-major Piano Concerto with Benjamin Zander and the Boston Philharmonic. I can't believe anyone has ever played it better, and I seriously doubt anyone else ever will. On the same program, Drury also played the great piano part (really the title role) in Zander's exhilarating, marvelously theatrical version of Stravinsky's Petrushka.

Most beautiful singing. To end the 20th anniversary season of Scott Wheeler's noble Dinosaur Annex, John Harbison conducted the extraordinary Lorraine Hunt -- at her extraordinary best -- in the Boston premiere of Harbison's own Due libri dei Mottetti de Montale, the dazzlingly orchestrated second half of his 50-minute vocal masterpiece for voice and piano, a setting of the great Italian poet Eugenio Montale's 1939 "Motets." Hunt's sumptuous sound, intelligence, and emotional commitment, which both the poems and Harbison's music demand in high degree, are rare in this naughty world. And in a brief, heartstopping solo, soprano Nancy Armstrong floated out a pianissimo verse in the Ave maris stella section of Boston Baroque's wonderful performance of Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers under Martin Pearlman (the best early-music performance I heard this year). It was the only time I heard a sound really blossom in Jordan Hall since its renovation (see #1).

Most welcome visitors. Three guest conductors brought the BSO to youthful, buoyant, sometimes even ferocious new life. Latvian-born Mariss Jansons led searing performances of Schoenberg's devastating cantata A Survivor from Warsaw and Rachmaninov's last orchestral score, the modestly titled Symphonic Dances, which mixes eroticism, folklore, and a head-on confrontation with mortality. Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, through the subtlest dynamic gradations, turned the inevitable bombast of Shostakovich's wartime Seventh Symphony into one long, seamlessly hypnotic climax. And Austrian elder statesman Hans Graf, with considerable support from pianist Imogen Cooper, proved that the BSO can play Mozart without condescension or a phony idea of "classical style." The Bank of Boston Celebrity Series had the chutzpah to bring to Boston another great orchestra, the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam, under its brilliant new director, Riccardo Chailly, in one of BSO's cornerstone works, Bartók's Koussevitzky-commissioned/BSO-premiered Concerto for Orchestra, in a breathtaking performance that, for a change, wasn't merely a showpiece.

Best performance by a local group. Hands down, Emmanuel Music's participation in Mark Morris's L'Allegro, Il Penseroso ed il Moderato at Lincoln Center. It was thrilling to see conductor Craig Smith and his wonderful cast (Lorraine Hunt, Jeanne Ommerle, Frank Kelley, James Maddalena) as part of a series of sold-out performances that made New York rise to its feet. And the New York State Theatre fit them like a glove. Here in town, Emmanuel's performance of one of Handel's greatest oratorios, Samson (with Kelley in the title role), was nothing to be ashamed of either.

Most surprising performance. Cantata Singers music director David Hoose is loved and respected for conducting some of the world's most serious music. This year he did magnificent versions of Beethoven's intense Missa Solemnis and Haydn's The Seasons. But he surprised us all with the sparkling wit and sly insinuation he got out of the BU student orchestra in a production of Rossini's seldom-performed Count Ory.

Most important recording. Thanks to the vision of WGBH's Brian Bell, the BSO has a new record label, BSO Classics, and its first release couldn't be of greater historical or musical significance: the BSO's earliest recordings, an astonishing variety of music brilliantly conducted by legendary Wagnerian specialist Karl Muck (who, though a Swiss citizen, was interned as an enemy alien during the epidemic of anti-German feeling here during World War I; his name was even expunged from the record labels). There are also Serge Koussevitzky's first BSO recordings -- all contemporary music (you know, those radicals Stravinsky and Ravel) and with the sound sumptuously restored.

Opera. The BSO's staging of Stravinsky's greatest opera, The Rake's Progress, gets the nod by default over three Rossini operas. Laurence Senelick's breathless staging for the Boston Lyric Opera's Barber of Seville was straitjacketed by tacky borrowed sets and costumes. The Boston Academy of Music's uncut Turk in Italy with Elizabeth Parcells was delightful but -- did I already mention this? -- uncut. And at BU there was that lively Count Ory with a student cast and orchestra (see #8). The Rake has one of opera's most eloquent librettos, but you couldn't understand W.H. Auden's words (you seldom can). Still, David Kneuss's staging had flair, there was a terrific cast (especially Philip Langridge in the title role), Seiji Ozawa obviously loves this score, and Tim Morrison's heartbreaking trumpet solo alone was worth the price of admission.

-- Lloyd Schwartz