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As well as a notable surge of non-white and female composers and performers (female conductors
especially seemed ubiquitous, though the statistics show that actually they weren’t), there was a
small rush of initiatives inspired by threats to the environment, such as the new Orchestra for the
Earth. The results haven’t always been inspired, but they certainly prove that classical music isn’t
the rarified and otherworldly thing for which it is sometimes mistaken.

At the same time, classical music can offer a haven from the world, in the form of pure aesthetic
delight. Among the achievements that have entranced me this year were Peter Donohoe’s masterly
recordings of the piano music of Ferruccio Busoni, and Nicola Benedetti’s triumphant entry into
the world of “early music”, with her joyous Italian baroque recordings with the Venice Baroque
Orchestra.

Among contemporary premieres, Mark Simpson’s tumultuous Violin Concerto premiered by the
same indefatigable Benedetti and the London Symphony Orchestra left me cold, but many thought
it was a masterpiece. As for Thomas Adès’s new Clarinet Quintet, premiered by the same, equally
indefatigable Simpson in his other guise as clarinetist, it showed the 50-year-old wunderkind still
hiding behind other styles (this time the mournful and sprightly world of Elizabethan music) but
doing so with truly fabulous imagination and skill.

All these musicians and countless others made the huge effort needed to rise above their own
troubles, so they could help us rise above ours. For that we should be grateful.