The Washington Post
By Anne Midgette
In the classical music world, 2018 was a year of new appointments, overhyped anniversaries and #MeToo revelations. But through all the ups and downs, it was the performances that keep us coming back for more. Here’s my 10-best list; what’s yours?
1. The Verdi Requiem
This passionate, uneven, desert-island raging against death deserves to be at the top of a list in any case. But this year, not one, but two D.C. performances made it onto my lifelong best-ever list. Gianandrea Noseda’s reading with the National Symphony Orchestra and the combined forces of the Choral Arts Society and the Washington Chorus was like nothing I had expected from him: gracious and lithe and buoyant and quietly eloquent. And the diminutive In Series opened its first season under a new artistic director, Tim Nelson, with his daring dramatization, which juxtaposed an eight-singer Requiem with excerpts from “King Lear.” Called “Viva V.E.R.D.I.,” the production revealed anew not only how inherently dramatic this music is, but also how powerful it can be to strip away the masses of large ensembles that usually perform it and expose its vulnerability — and humanity.
2. "Hamilton"
Call it a musical, call it opera — I call it great. I was happy to join the bandwagon of fans who got to know the album more or less by heart and then squeezed into the Kennedy Center for the show’s much-anticipated summer run, and who happily hailed its winning a Kennedy Center Honor in December.