We hoped this would be the year everything would come right: that concert venues would buzz with capacity crowds; that musicians would be back in full-time work; that soloists might again travel without fear of quarantine and testing (quite aside from the unresolved difficulties caused by Brexit) – above all, that Covid-19 would vanish. Instead, Omicron gallops ahead and even optimists must accept we’re not there yet. For all the cancellations and underlying mood of chaos, countless musical events touched lives. The BBC Proms, cautiously but definitively, were back, with premieres from Charlotte Bray, Shiva Feshareki, Britta Byström, Grace-Evangeline Mason, George Benjamin and more. Highlights included John Wilson and his lithe Sinfonia of London; the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, revelatory in Mozart’s last symphonies; the Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson wowing the crowds in his Proms debut. Another pianist, Janeba Kanneh-Mason, introduced Florence Price’s one-movement concerto to the Proms. Podium exits and arrivals shaped the season: Domingo Hindoyan took over from Vasily Petrenko at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Petrenko himself injected vitality into his own “new” orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic. After a triumphant five years, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla announced her forthcoming departure from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra; Kazuki Yamada, from 2023, is her successor. Esa-Pekka Salonen said goodbye to the Philharmonia; Santtu-Matias Rouvali has already made a thrilling splash as his replacement. Succeeding Vladimir Jurowski, Edward Gardner launched his innings with the LPO, electrifying in Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage. As some regretfully anticipated, Simon Rattle will shorten his stay with the London Symphony Orchestra to work more in Germany, now his home. Antonio Pappano will take over (from 2024); his successor at Covent Garden has yet to be announced. Opera struggled back to the main stages, with Janáček at the Royal Opera and Glyndebourne, Wagner at English National Opera, Puccini at Welsh National Opera, Bizet at Opera North, Gilbert and Sullivan at Scottish Opera, and at ENO too. The ever adaptable smaller “country house” venues fared well. Longborough built a big top for Monteverdi. Grange Park was strict with social distancing, with Bryn Terfel as Verdi’s Falstaff a star attraction. Garsington’s airy pavilion, with striking Richard Strauss and Handel, might have been designed with a pandemic factored into its risk assessment. Opera Holland Park cleverly reconfigured its entire auditorium for the benefit of audiences. Covid and its ring road of consequence kept me closer to home than usual, often at events in non-traditional venues: a reminder that quality of performance takes precedence over a perfect acoustic. Grimeborn enthralled in Arcola’s new urban “barn”. Bold Tendencies, winner of this year’s Royal Philharmonic Society Gamechanger award, lured the Philharmonia into its car park space for Brahms’s two piano concertos in one evening (herculean soloist Samson Tsoy, conductor Maxim Emelyanychev). Waterperry Opera charmed in a rustic glade. West Wycombe chamber music festival was a discovery. There were losses. The softly gracious Dutch conductor Bernard Haitink, mighty and fiery the moment he lifted his baton, died aged 92. The death from coronavirus of opera director extraordinaire Graham Vick left us reeling. Composer Anthony Payne and singer Jane Manning, the husband-wife partnership who illuminated musical life for over half a century, died within weeks of each other, gone like the abrupt felling of great oaks. The composers Louis Andriessen, Simon Bainbridge and Frederic Rzewski, as well as the genre-bending Stephen Sondheim, all left us, as did the librettist Amanda Holden and the mezzo-soprano Pamela Helen Stephen. A performance that lives on: in January, the pianist András Schiff, in between playing incomparable Bach in a live online Wigmore Hall recital, gave a commentary of such obscure humour that I listened back four times to be sure I had understood. I can’t recall the jokes, but Schiff’s Bach has blazed in the mind throughout this troubled year. The top 10 classical music performances of 2021 1. Monolith: I Extend My Arms Snape Maltings, Suffolk Unforgettable Tansy Davies premiere, performed by the Britten Sinfonia. 2. Mahler Chamber Orchestra/Benjamin Royal Albert Hall, London The Proms’s only foreign orchestra on star form. 3. West Wycombe chamber music festival St Lawrence’s church, West Wycombe Viola player Lawrence Power and friends, in a church on top of a hill. 4. Alcina Arcola Outside, London Handel stripped down and brilliant, from Ensemble OrQuesta/Grimeborn. 5. Tosca South Facing festival, Crystal Palace, London Natalya Romaniw on glorious form in ENO’s Puccini with pizza. 6. Ragged Music festival Ragged School Museum, London Where the soloists (Pavel Kolesnikov, Samson Tsoy) put the chairs out themselves. 7. L’heure espagnole Online Ravel on film: tick-tock wit in a clock shop in Grange Park Opera’s pandemic-defying season. 8. Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Sol Gabetta Queen Elizabeth Hall, London A violinist, a cellist and a world of imagination. 9. LSO/Rattle and East London Academy Trafalgar Square, London Novices alongside professionals under Nelson’s gaze. 10. Der Rosenkavalier Garsington Opera; available online until 29 April Sumptuous Strauss for eyes and ears. Turkey English Touring Opera’s Amadigi: excellent cast and band but a theatrical dud.