2025: concerts of the year

December 16, 2025 · by · in

Here we go! I had forgotten / not worried about it being a quarter of the way through the century until about a week ago … so rest assured that you won’t get any nostalgic business here.

JACK Quartet –  Helmut Lachenmann String Quartets @ Miller Theatre

I thought that this was going to be poorly attended, and boy was I wrong. It ended up being like some sort of arcane athletic event, with everyone taking the (sometimes inane) microsounds so seriously as to be comic.

Three Lachenmann pieces in one night is a bit much — but there are moments in there that you can’t get anywhere else, both of technical glory and of emotional collapse.

NY Phil – Berg Violin Concerto, Saariaho, Messiaen, Debussy

Well, if you wanted emotional collapse, you came to the right place. Berg’s Concerto is often ultra-romanticized away as an elegy and nothing more, which does not really do it justice — there’s technical wizardry to spare, like in the Lachenmann, and an arc with much more than just tragedy.

(This to say nothing of the Debussy and two short things by Saariaho and Messiaen! This was much more sparse than the Lachenmann, alas for the NY Phil.)

Hollas Longton – Landscape With Train Whistle @ piano+, Harlem

I am of course biased here because I know Hollas, but I ain’t wrong when I say that his work, and this one, have a sense of self that we don’t get much in the small ensemble / post-Wandelweiser world.

Sofia Labropoulou w/ Christian Reiner & Kenji Herbert @ Porgy & Bess, Vienna

Also biased as I know Kenji, but this bit of free improv, on guitar, zither, and free sprech has again stuck with me as an example of just how far you can go out before you need to come back in — Christopher Butterfield would be proud, to say nothing of Kurt Schwitters

Honorable mentions for!

  • The NY Phil doing Philip Glass – Symphony No. 11 and Kate Soper – Orpheus Orchestra Opus Onus; Kate performed hers, and Phil was there, bless his heart.
  • The Vienna Symphony doing the Tannhauser Overture, some other Wagner, and Liszt — in which I realized that the “Bugs Bunny” Tannhauser theme is not actually a love song, another thing I’ve been wrong about since I was about 6.
  • Kara-Lis Coverdale at Le Poisson Rouge — Coverdale was great (see Albums for this year), but LPR keeps being an awfully unfriendly venue to listen to music in.