Biggest news (part 2). The biggest classical-music story of 2001 was the resignation of Seiji Ozawa as music director of the BSO and the appointment of the Metropolitan Opera’s James Levine as his successor, and it remained the biggest story of 2002. For his final program Ozawa selected Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, and it eventually grew into one of his better performances. Levine’s first concert following his appointment, after months of indecision about what to play, was too long and tried to cover too many bases. But it had wonderful things, especially György Ligeti’s almost silent Ramifications (1969) and a Schumann Second Symphony that kept blossoming with each performance.

This fall, Ozawa was hardly missed. The single best BSO concert of the year was surely the one marking the first return to the BSO of Cleveland Orchestra director laureate Christoph von Dohnányi after his disastrous BSO debut almost 14 years ago. He included one of the most compelling pieces of contemporary music the BSO has ever played, the young English composer Thomas Adès’s Asyla, and two warhorses, Schumann’s Fourth and Dvo<t-75>ˇ<t$>rák’s New World Symphonies, that he gave radiant new life. I also loved Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos’s gripping and sexy performance of Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps, which was paired with another "pastoral" work, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 (Walt Disney used both of them in Fantasia), and the touching concert version of Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel led by Marek Janowski.

Biggest numbers. Anyone who doubts there’s an audience for opera needs to see the staggering attendance figures for the Boston Lyric Opera’s two free performances of Georges Bizet’s Carmen on Boston Common: 130,000! The statistics were more impressive than the actual performance, which lacked nuance. But it was certainly lively, with a promising newcomer, 26-year-old mezzo-soprano Jossie Pérez, exuding vitality and sex and a ripe, rich voice in the title role.

Major premieres. Thanks to Monadnock Music director James Bolle, Harvard’s Sanders Theatre was the place to hear the first American performance of Elliott Carter’s vast — and wise — orchestral masterwork, Symphonia: sum fluxae pretium spei ("I am the prize of fleeting hope" — a line from a Richard Crashaw poem that uses a soap bubble as an image for the fragility of life and art). Carter was in his 80s when he began this piece, in 1993. Its three movements were commissioned separately by the Chicago, BBC, and Cleveland Orchestras; the BBC played the world premiere. American orchestras have scheduled only individual movements; Bolle, celebrating his 70th birthday, gave this great and moving work the performance it deserved.

Martin Pearlman’s Boston Baroque presented the first Boston performances of an earlier work, Monteverdi’s 362-year-old Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria ("The Homecoming of Ulysses"). This semi-staged concert was as notable for its scholarship as for its dramatic effectiveness. The surviving score indicates almost no orchestration, so Pearlman created his own convincing performing version, and he executed it superbly.

Major revivals. The late Donald Sur’s ambitious, eccentric, eclectic (from Bach to Stephen Foster), hour-long oratorio, Slavery Documents, was commissioned by conductor David Hoose and the Cantata Singers, who gave the premiere in 1990. This year, the same forces, including the magnificent African-American baritone David Arnold, gave the second performance, on a program with Sur’s friend T.J. Anderson’s more contained and musically unified sequel, Slavery Documents 2, another Cantata Singers commission.

In 1981, the Cantata Singers invited Craig Smith to conduct Handel’s oratorio Saul, which was to be staged by a promising young director named Peter Sellars. That was the first of their memorable collaborations and one of the best. This year, Smith brought Saul to Emmanuel Church, with one member of the original cast, Jeffrey Gall, repeating his memorable David, and baritone Sanford Sylvan transcendent in the heroic/poignant title role.

Smith himself has conducted all of Bach’s cantatas at least twice. At Christmas time, he has led the six cantatas of Bach’s monumental Christmas Oratorio (the ones depicting the Nativity events up to the departure of the Magi), one a week over a six-week period. But this Christmas, he performed all six at a single sitting. It was a demanding but exalting experience, beautifully shaped, with tenor Frank Kelley as the Evangelist especially outstanding among a baker’s dozen of impressive vocal soloists, and concertmaster Danielle Maddon, trumpeter Jeffrey Work, tireless oboist Barbara LaFitte, flutist Fernando Brandao, and Peggy Pearson on English horn shining in Emmanuel’s superlative orchestra.

Concerted efforts. There was more than one astonishing concerto performance this year. My favorites included Ida Haendel’s intimate, intense, seductive, masterful Bruch Concerto, with the BSO; Marcus Thompson’s dignified yet heartbreaking Penderecki Viola Concerto, under Dante Anzolini and the impressive MIT Symphony Orchestra; Russell Sherman’s profound playing of Mozart’s two minor-key concertos (D minor and C minor), under Craig Smith and the Emmanuel Orchestra, in a Mozart-birthday celebration for the Celebrity Series/Boston Marquee series; and the exciting, almost improvisatory Dvo<t-75>ˇ<t$>rák Cello Concerto from Alexander Baillie, with Benjamin Zander leading the Boston Philharmonic.

Singing the praises/Praising the singers. Audiences who heard bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff sing glowing Schubert and Brahms at his first Boston lieder recital, with pianist Justus Zeyen in gemütlich Jordan Hall, and Cecilia Bartoli heat up Symphony Hall with Gluck and Vivaldi, backed by the brilliant Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, will always be grateful to the FleetBoston Celebrity Series for bringing us these beloved artists at the height of their musical and technical powers. And Boston mezzo-soprano Jane Struss was in ravishing, warm-hearted, big-souled voice singing Mahler’s setting of Nietzsche’s "Midnight Song" in Benjamin Zander’s powerful Mahler Third Symphony with the Boston Philharmonic on the 27th anniversary of the first time these two Mahler mavens performed their favorite composer together.

Hail and farewell. Over the summer, Richard Conrad, founder and, for 22 years, director of the Boston Academy of Music, was deposed by his board, even though last spring he was responsible for one of BAM’s best productions, Puccini’s romantic Western, La fanciulla del West — a shining ensemble vehicle for the repertory company Conrad had been assembling over the years, and the best opera production of 2002.

The irreplaceable cellist Rhonda Rider helped found the Lydian String Quartet 22 years ago, but her appearance in Schubert’s sublime C-major Quintet, which ended the sixth season of Emmanuel Music’s seven-year Schubert cycle, was her last as a regular member of the Lyds. She’s now devoting herself to another group she helped start, the stellar piano trio Triple Helix, and to commissioning new works. Her replacement, Joshua Gordon, made his first Boston appearance with the Lydians in Emmanuel’s first Schubert concert this season, in Schubert’s last quartet. Once settled in, he may give the group a trim new sound.

Chamber made. Some of our smaller groups delivered large-size pleasures. Oboist Peggy Pearson is one of Boston’s treasures. Wherever she appears — in the Boston Philharmonic’s Mahler Third, or playing English horn in Emmanuel’s Christmas Oratorio, or with the Boston Chamber Music Society — her warm "speaking" tone becomes the living voice of that occasion. This year, her chamber series, Winsor Music, operating out of Lexington’s historic octagonal Follen Church, presented the Boston area’s first performances of John Harbison’s chamber-orchestra version of his Elizabeth Bishop cycle, North and South, and Elliott Carter’s complex, bewitching Oboe Quartet, as well as performances by Triple Helix and Pearson herself playing her own oboe-and-string transcriptions of Mozart string quartets. The Borromeo String Quartet also performed Mozart quartets, at the Gardner Museum, in illuminating pairings with Bartók quartets. And Susan Davenny Wyner’s New England String Ensemble, now performing at Sanders Theatre, continued with its rich-hued, rhythmically charged programs combining Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and contemporary works, occasionally with the heavenly assistance of soprano Dominique Labelle.

Last-minute rescues. One of the world’s truly great musicians, pianist Maurizio Pollini, was back for his 13th FleetBoston Celebrity Series recital. But until the very end, it was a disappointment. Despite the brilliant playing, most of it lacked emotion; then Debussy’s final prélude, Feux d’artifice, set Pollini’s imagination on fire. And the great bass-baritone José van Dam delivered Schubert’s devastating Winterreise ("Winter’s Journey") cycle with both a vocal and an emotional dryness, a sluggish pace, and an odd sense of anger rather than tragedy. Finally, in the very last song, the heartbreaking "Der Leiermann," in which the bereft hero asks the lonely old organ grinder to accompany his own desolate songs, van Dam’s voice opened up and for the first time seemed to connect with Schubert’s deepest feelings.

Cell-phone hell. An indispensable invention has turned into a concertgoing nightmare. Twice this year, cell phones rang at the worst possible time. Nothing had members of an audience closer to the edge of their seats than when 74-year Barbara Cook ended her Celebrity Series concert with an unaccompanied, unmiked encore, almost a whisper, of Stephen Sondheim’s "Anyone Can Whistle" — and then someone’s phone went off. And a cell phone rang just seconds after Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos began the Verdi Requiem at the BSO’s season-opening gala. It stopped the show. When the maestro began again, the same phone rang again. If looks could kill, it would have been justifiable homicide. Polite requests to turn off electronic devices just aren’t enough. Maybe an announcement should be made that the management is not responsible for acts committed by an enraged audience. Turn off those cell phones . . . or else!