hile you are listening to it, Haydn's ''Creation'' can seem the most all-comprehending, all-loving work in the literature of music - and the most far-reaching. After the opening orchestral depiction of ''Chaos,' nothing in Wagner can come as a surprise. James Levine's glorious performances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, and soloists Renee Fleming, Rene Pape, and Gregory Turay set a level for everyone else to aspire to, in the same way the work does.
Elliott Carter, in his 90th-birthday year, continues to compose with boundless energy and invention; his Clarinet Concerto and Fifth Quartet were among the highlights of this year's Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music. Other new and recent works that left strong impressions during the year included Osvaldo Golijov's ''Ormarmor'' for solo cello (Norman Fischer at the Tanglewood Music Center Opening Exercises); Michael Gandolfi's ''Gepetto's Workshop'' (Elisabeth Ostling and Hugh Hinton) and ''Points of Departure'' (at the BSO); George Tsontakis's ''Ghost Variations'' (Stephen Hough, piano, at Tanglewood); John Harbison's ''The Rewaking'' (Dominique Labelle and the Lydian Quartet); the new string quartet by Andy Vores (Borromeo Quartet); Graeme Koehne's ''Elevator Music'' (Sydney Symphony); and two works by well-loved Boston composers who died this year, Joyce Mekeel's ''Soliloquy'' (Ronald Lowry at a Boston Musica Viva concert) and Earl Kim's ''The White Hour'' (Metamorphosen). Other events that won admiration included the revival of John Harbison's First Symphony by Benjamin Zander and the Boston Philharmonic, Dinosaur Annex's tribute to Arthur Levering, the 75th-birthday celebration for Daniel Pinkham at King's Chapel, Chen Yi's participation in the Wellesley Composers' Conference, and several interesting pieces by Edward Cohen. The ongoing work of such enterprising ensembles as Alea III, ExtensionWorks, Phantom Arts, Auros, and Collage, necessary and high-class, was supplemented this season by an outstanding new ensemble curated by composer Eric Sawyer at the Longy School of Music, Longitude.
Dubravka Tomsic's performance of the Saint-Saens Second Concerto with the BSO was enchanting - amusing, touching, and on a transcendental level of virtuosity. Tomsic's incendiary performance of Liszt's ''Mephisto Waltz'' stole the show at a prestigious gala honoring the retirement of one of Boston's great musical citizens, Walter Pierce, longtime managing director of BankBoston Celebrity Series. There were other superb concerto performances during the season - violinist Christian Tetzlaff in the Beethoven Concerto at Tanglewood and in the Sibelius in Symphony Hall; Pamela Frank in the Dvorak Concerto at Tanglewood; Yefim Bonfman in the Prokofiev Second at Tanglewood; Maxim Vengerov in the Shostakovich First, also at Tanglewood. Irvine Arditti played a magnificent performance of Henri Dutilleux's violin concerto, ''L'arbre des songes,'' during the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music.
Garrick Ohlsson's piano recital was a highlight of a year remarkable for outstanding recitals by Seymour Lipkin (who finished his Beethoven Sonata cycle at the Gardner Museum), Anthony di Bonaventura (Stravinsky's ''Petrouchka'' at Boston University), Grant Johanessen and Noel Lee (both at Longy), Edward Aldwell (Bach's ''Goldberg'' Variations at the Rockport Chamber Music Festival), Kemal Gekic (Dorothy Taubman Institute), Gabriel Chodos, Sergio Fiorentino (who died not long after his golden-age recital at Regis College), Randall Hodgkinson and Leslie Amper (Schubert's ''Grand Duo'' in Emmanuel Music's Schubert Series), Stephen Drury, Sergey Schepkin (Bach's ''Well-Tempered Clavier'' by heart), and Andrew Rangell, making a welcome return after a long absence from the concert platform. There were two inspiring returns at Tanglewood as well, by Van Cliburn in Rachmaninoff's Second Concerto and Byron Janis in recital.
At the Boston Symphony Orchestra, major events included Seiji Ozawa's return to Berlioz's ''La Damnation de Faust'' at Tanglewood (confirming his growth over 25 seasons), his Mahler Third Symphony, and especially ''Das Lied von der Erde,'' in a performance nobly sung by Ben Heppner and the season's most remarkable debut artist, Thomas Quastaff. Robert Shaw nobly deputized for Ozawa in a last-minute substitution in this season's opening-night performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony; Jose van Dam gave authoritative performances of songs from Berlioz's ''Nuits d'ete'' that week also. Bernard Haitink's Bruckner Eighth crowned a great series of appearances; among the other notable guest conductors of the year were Hans Graf, Andre Previn, Stanislaw Skrowaczweski (a last-minute substitution), and Robert Spano. A non-BSO orchestral event that won plaudits was the Boston Philharmonic's performance of Berlioz's ''Symphonie fantastique'' conducted by Benjamin Zander; also much praised was Spano's performance of Stravinsky's ''Rite of Spring'' with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra. Craig Smith led a wonderful performance of Schumann's ''Spring'' Symphony at Boston University. Four outstanding conductors - Pierre Boulez, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Kurt Masur, and Ozawa - joined an outstanding composite orchestra to raise funds for the continuing medical care of former BSO manager Kenneth Haas.
There was a lot of operatic effort this season, but little was truly first-class. The Boston Academy of Music succeeded best with a piece one would have thought well beyond its resources, Richard Strauss's ''Arabella''; the effort was characterized by intelligence and taste, and introduced a delightful new soprano as Zdenka, Andrea Matthews, who sustained the captivating impression of her debut in a Poulenc concert with the Masterworks Chorale. Boston Baroque's premiere of a collaborative opera Mozart had a hand in, ''The Philosopher's Stone,'' was more interesting to think about than to listen to, but the performance was energetic and expert, and Martin Pearlman's enterprise in snagging the rights to the modern premiere commanded respect. The Boston Lyric Opera moved into a new home, the Shubert Theatre, with a production of ''La Traviata'' in which promising ingredients failed to jell. The most moving performance at the Lyric this season was by a conductor, Susan Davenny Wyner, rebuilding her life in music after an accident ended her career as a leading suprano; she led ''The Ballad of Baby Doe'' with respect and affection.
The harrowing performance of ''Winterreise'' by Mitsuko Shirai and Hartmut Hoell at Harvard's Houghton Library would have been the outstanding vocal event of any season; the closest runner-up was their enterprising program of unusual Lieder at Tanglewood. There were notable vocal recitals also by Bryn Terfel (at Tanglewood), Lorraine Hunt, Denyce Graves, Anthony Dean Griffey, Lucy Shelton, Stephen Salters, and William Stone and Benita Valente. Janet Brown was outstanding in a concert paying tribute to the composer Ernest Bacon, and Vincent Dion Stringer contributed a noble performance of Brahms's ''Four Serious Songs.''
There were many claimants for the year's outstanding chamber-music performance - the Boston Chamber Music Society in Schubert's String Quintet and the Tchaikovsky Trio (in the Society's new summer series); the Mendelssohn Quartet in Schubert; concerts by Lydian, Keller, Borromeo and Orion string quartets; the farewell concert by the New England Ragtime Ensemble; and three first-class new ensembles on the block, two piano trios (the Boston Trio and Triple Helix) and the Chameleon Ensemble. Pianist Lily Dumont, whose career began in Berlin before World War II, played a marvelous Mozart program with young Nicholas Kitchen and other members of the Borromeo Quartet at Longy. The work of cabaret singer Wesla Whitfield and her arranger-pianist-husband, Mike Greensill, belongs to a very elevated level of chamber-music performance.
In a city of first-class choruses it is hard to pick a single winner, but the Boston Cecilia's performance of Handel's ''Deborah'' under Donald Teeters was one of the proudest moments in its ongoing Handel survey; the Cantata Singers' ''Jephtha'' was also a memorable Handelian event. In the early-music area Andrew Manze and Romanesca made an exciting debut and Phoebe Carri's International Baroque Institute, a welcome return.
The city is very lucky to hear so much unusual repertory - where else could you hear a piece like Coleridge-Taylor's ''Hiawatha's Wedding Feast,'' brought to us by the Cambridge Community Chorus? The gospel chorus created by the Boston Pops and Charles Floyd is one of the city's special ensembles and assets.
BSO assistant conductor Federico Cortese became one of the heroes of the year with two back-to-back last-minute substitutions, including a Boston Common performance of two movements of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony intended to celebrate Seiji Ozawa's 25th anniversary as BSO music director. Controversies raged about the quality of FM radio's classical-music programming (Richard Buell feels WGBH has gotten a bad rap and admires the fearlessness of Harvard's WHRB). The Tanglewood Music Center readjusted its focus onto what makes it unique, the sponsorship of a major orchestra, with artistic results that were less controversial than the preceding administrative upheavals. Entirely uncontroversial was the arrival of new chairs at the Gardner Museum, ushering in a new area of comfort.
Our musicians of the year are always people who appear repeatedly during the season, always improving performances simply because they are there - and always improving upon themselves. This year it proved impossible to choose between two performers who fit the criteria exactly. One anticipates every phrase by the BSO's principal flute Jacques Zoon because one knows it will be memorable in color and shape - and there's no way to tell in advance how it will be so; that's musical genius. Soprano Sharon Baker has been a leading singer in Boston for nearly two decades; her voice is still fresh, her musicianship assured and spontaneous, her focus unwavering. She may be singing Handel or she may be singing Webern or she may be singing a small role to such purpose that she steals the show; wherever she is, she's special.
Globe correspondents Richard Buell, Susan Larson, and Michael Manning contributed to this summary.
