The Highs and Lows of 2014 in Classical Music

A scene from John Adams's opera The Death of Klinghoffer (credit: Richard Hubert Smith, English National Opera)
A scene from John Adams’s opera The Death of Klinghoffer (credit: Richard Hubert Smith, English National Opera)


In this edition of WQXR’s Conducting Business podcast, three top music critics looked back at the year 2014 in classical music. Joining host Naomi Lewin were Anne Midgette, the classical music critic of the Washington Post; David Patrick Stearns, classical music critic of the Philadelphia Inquirer and for WQXR’s Operavore blog; and Zachary Woolfe, now classical music editor of the New York Times.

Among the topics discussed were the Metropolitan Opera’s labor troubles and its contentious premiere of John Adams’s opera The Death of Klinghoffer; inventive programming at the orchestras of Philadelphia and Seattle; and the continued emergence of China on the orchestra landscape.