The Cleveland Orchestra, in the second of two concerts as part of Carnegie Hall’s festival Fall of the Weimar Republic: Dancing on the Precipice, revived this avant garde masterpiece, contrasted ingeniously with Anton Webern’s 1928 Symphonie, Op. 21. Composed under threatening political scrutiny under Stalin’s regime, yet during a period when he cleverly evolved a language that defied obvious interpretation, the Fifth Symphony is one of Prokofiev’s most gratifying creations. Welser-Möst’s generous and thoughtful rendering brought New York’s audience to its feet.

Kaufman Music Center’s Merkin Hall fell under the charm of Elia Cecino, an Italian pianist of prodigious virtuosity, at Tuesday’s matinee, witnessing his auspicious New York debut. In a rich program, at once searching and revealing, Cecino carved a distinctive niche on the concert stage. At the precocious age of twenty-two, Cecino embodies the archetype of young hero — teeming with desire and ambition — but also an old soul, wise beyond his years.

Jakub Hrůša conducted the New York Philharmonic this week in a program that featured violin soloist Hilary Hahn being awarded the Avery Fisher Prize. The hall (and lobby, where the NY Phil concerts can now be seen and heard) was impressively full on Saturday night — the last of three concerts featuring this busy superstar of the violin world as she joins the Philharmonic as Artist-in-Residence for the 2023-24 season.

Chornobyldorf — receiving its US Premiere as part of the tenth season of the Prototype Festival — is described by its creators as an Archeological Opera. Permeating the cavernous blackbox Ellen Stewart Theater at La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, this ambitious multimedia work indeed expands the definition of opera.

New York’s American Modern Opera Company, under the leadership of Julia Bullock, has devised a version — greatly abridged and reduced in forces — they call El Niño: Nativity Reconsidered. The orchestra, under Reid’s graceful baton, performed with electric precision, sending Adams’ rich tonal harmonies and nervous rhythmic patterns spinning around the cathedral, as if channeling the elements in the air and stone. The Choir of Trinity of Wall Street sounded glorious, and with projected supertitles providing translation, the text was always clear

Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf might be the greatest musical work of the twentieth century, for one important reason — its lasting impact introducing countless children to classical music. Guggenheim’s Works & Process series has kept the tradition alive for more than a decade, presenting Peter and the Wolf every December, in a delightful production conceived, directed, narrated, and designed by Isaac Mizrahi.

CadenzaNYC’s Picks of the best classical music happening in New York City December 2023.

The Brahms work that concluded the evening remains the most transcendent — among the great composer’s best. Paul Huang, on the violin, and Juho Pohjonen, assuming duties at their keyboard, were completed by Watkins on the cello. The group began the first movement, Allegro moderato, at a bright tempo, setting an urgent pace for this large-scale work’s breadth of sensations. It’s symphonic in scope, yet structurally dense and rhythmically complex, with varied demands for each musician. Pohjonen transcended the piano part’s octave-heavy thickness, so that the first movement had soaring arcs, and in the sentimental coda, when the opening theme returns in the cello, everything seemed different. We emerge changed.

Stéphane Denève, alongside violin soioist Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, joins the NY Phil for a weighty concert that requires, and rewards, an old-fashioned attention span. The digital organ may merely suffice, acoustically, but when the Philharmonic’s inimitable low brass section are finally allowed to join the festivities, in bombastic, gloriously well-tuned fanfares, the audience is roused to their feet.