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.

Imani Winds has been making a case for the enduring relevance of the woodwind quintet for 27 years. But the twice Grammy-nominated group hadn’t performed at 92NY until now, joined on this occasion by pianist Terrence Wilson, buttressing two French classical works with Latin American music rooted in dance. It was a nicely balanced evening.