When critics agree (encore)

Sedgwick Clark, the editor of the Musical America International Directory of the Performing Arts, is among the most experienced and knowledgeable concertgoers I know. If you ask him about, say, great performances of Mahler's Fifth he's heard over the years, he will cite Solti with the Chicago and Bernstein with Vienna, and then trump you by mentioning a Sergiu Comissiona / Baltimore Symphony account he heard in 1975. So I'm proud to say that for the second year in a row Sedge and I have been in perfect agreement about what was the most remarkable concert of the regular season. Last season, it was the Minnesota Orchestra playing Sibelius's Kullervo (Sedge's blog post here, my review here); this season, it was the Oregon Symphony's stunning war program at Spring for Music.