Classical

but also full-throated. The auditorium rocked.

In February, the Capital Region was part of a national wave of attention to the late African-american composer Florence Price. The Musicians of Ma’alwyck teamed up with the Capital Trio for a Feb. 8 concert at Ualbany that featured Price’s charming and inventive string quartet titled “Five Folksongs in Counterpoint.” The event coincided with a New Yorker column about Price and a new disc of her music on Albany Records.

The Troy Chromatics’ faithful audience members were tapping their feet to the Latin rhythms served up by the National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba on March 19. A Mozart violin concerto and Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony were also on the bill, but the percussion-heavy guaguanco (a cousin of the rumba) pretty much stole the show.

Matthew Aucoin’s “Soft Power,” an introspective six minutes, was the first commissioned work in the 46-year history of the Union College Concert Series. The always superlative Brentano String Quartet debuted it on April 22. The 28-year-old Aucoin, who won a Macarthur “genius” fellowship in October and has also recently been commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera, will be back with another premiere next fall.

On June 8 at a Glenville warehouse, Ann-marie Barker Schwartz and her violin were a humble part of the orchestra.

But everybody knew that she was the impresario who conceived and produced the Musicians of Ma’alwyck’s fully staged debut of “Aleda: Or the Flight of the Suff Bird Women.” The fine new oneact opera by 24-year-old composer Max Kaplan told the true story of some spirited suffragists who attempted an aerial protest during a New York City appearance by President Woodrow Wilson.

It was a Bernstein summer as everywhere you looked there was music by late maestro in celebration of his centennial. Tanglewood was the venue to hear deep cuts from LB’S catalogue and it was also the site of a celebrity-studded birthday blowout on Aug. 25. But it was at Glimmerglass where I experienced a pitch-perfect “West Side Story,” staged by Francesca Zambello and conducted by David Charles Abell.

The gods have been smiling on the Saratoga Performing Arts Center ever since conductor Yannick Nezet-seguin started devoting a substantial chunk of his summers to return visits. He was in residence for a full two weeks and will be back for the same duration in 2019. Now the music director of the Metropolitan Opera, Nezet-seguin can make every night something special. A standout this year was his Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 with the Philadelphia Orchestra on Aug. 8. The piece is generally considered the happiest of the composer’s nine symphonies, but this was a dark, harrowing and thoroughly engrossing performance.

There was more Bernstein and more “West Side Story” on Oct. 29 at Proctors when the Schenectady Symphony offered a grand salute to conductor Charles Schneider, who retired after 33 seasons as music director. Bernstein fans seem to have come out of the woodwork this year, but Schneider is a Bernstein expert, having been the composer’s chosen conductor on numerous occasions, including for a Lincoln Center run of “West Side Story” and two national tours. So the rambunctious orchestra suite from the show was the perfect sendoff for Schneider and his orchestra rose to the occasion with a stirring and assured rendition.

The spotlight went back to the ASO on Nov. 10 for a landmark performance of Britten’s War Requiem to commemorate the centennial of the World War I armistice. Among the vast performing forces, a standout was soprano Emalie Savoy, a Capital Region native now active on the international scene. The War Requiem is a tough work on many levels and it challenged audiences to find and savor beauty amid the brutality.