The best of L.A.'s classical music scene in 2025

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No one needs reminding that 2025 began in an L.A.aflame.

Musicians didn’t escape the fires, especially in Altadena.Concerts were canceled but then became events of communal healing, a process that continues.There were further troubling signs.

Institutions continued to struggle to bring audiences back to pre-COVID numbers.Major orchestras and opera companies — San Francisco Symphony, Metropolitan Opera, New York Philharmonic, Baltimore Symphony, among them — feared fraught contract negotiations.

Government funding for the arts dried up.Censorship, new to modern America, appeared a threat.

And a military presence on downtown L.A.streets made trips to the Music Center and elsewhere in DTLA less inviting.Our picks for this year’s best in arts and entertainment.Still, classical music’s survival instincts proved reliable.

New leaders of L.A.’s arts institutions are bringing vitality to the region, empowering musicians and giving fans hope and optimism.Here are my Los Angeles classical music highlights of 2025.

It has been a year of transition for Gustavo Dudamel.The long “Gracias Gustavo” goodbye to the Los Angeles Philharmonic music and artistic director has begun.

For its part, the New York Philharmonic, where Dudamel is headed next season, wonders how it can ever top the L.A.Phil visit to Coachella in April.

Pop music crowds, 100,000 strong, shouted, “L.A.Phil! L.A.

Phil!” and “Gustavo! Gustavo!” Big cheers rang as well at Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Hollywood Bowl and on an Asia tour, particularly for Dudamel’s increasingly rich Mahler performances.In late winter he led an impressive Mahler Grooves festival; the summer brought an exhilarating performance of Mahler’s First Symphony and the fall an extraordinary Second Symphony.In his own transitional year, Esa-Pekka Salonen finished an unhappy five-year tenure as music director of a Sa...