If it’s Chanukah, Christmas, and New Year’s, it can only mean one thing: Time for highlights of the classical-music season thus far. As I always stipulate, I didn’t hear everything, and can only select from what I heard. But I heard plenty.

Let’s begin with pianists. Leon Fleisher gave a recital, and outstanding in it was Debussy’s “Cathédrale engloutie.” Mr. Fleisher has never really been known as an Impressionist; based on this performance, he should be.

His peer Gary Graffman participated in a concert of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In pieces by Korngold and Leon Kirchner, Mr. Graffman showed the musical and technical brilliance that made him famous half a century ago.

A young pianist, Gilles Vonsattel, played with CMS. He won the Geneva Competition this year, and obviously deserved to: He is a pianist of skill, taste, and artistic awareness, reminiscent of the young Murray Perahia. May he prosper.

Last, Lang Lang played Beethoven’s G-major concerto, terribly — but he followed it up with a Chinese encore (I didn’t quite catch the name) that was just marvelous. Spine-tingling, practically. And so it goes, with that crazy kid.

I will note just one violin performance: the account by Leonidas Kavakos of Berg’s concerto, with Christoph Eschenbach and the Philadelphia Orchestra. The music spoke directly to you, with quiet and transcendent power. A triumph.

Have a song recital: that of Angelika Kirchschlager, the Austrian mezzo-soprano. She sang Schubert and Schumann, and her Schumann, in particular, was sublime. And sweet, and fun, and other things it should be.

Orchestras? Most of my highlights come from Lorin Maazel and the New York Philharmonic. A reading of Shostakovich’s Fifth was unconventional, as you can expect from Mr. Maazel, but, ultimately, it was smashing. Also smashing, but in a different way, was a performance of “L’Enfant et les sortilèges,” the short lyric opera of Ravel.

On another occasion, Mr. Maazel conducted a suite from Roussel’s “Bacchus et Ariane,” and it was incredible: incredibly good, incredibly dazzling. But it wasn’t half as good as the performance that immediately followed: of the Final Scene from Strauss’s “Salome.”

Who was the soprano in that scene? I’m afraid it doesn’t matter: Mr. Maazel owned the piece, and he was electrifying.

Also, Pierre Boulez conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Mahler’s Seventh Symphony. The French lion brought his considerable experience to bear, and if the last movement was flat — limp — it did not ruin what was, overall, a memorable account.

It has been a good season for chamber music: A young string quartet called the Daedalus played a Webern piece consummately. Another young string quartet, the Miró, played an entire concert that was impeccable — inspired, too.

And an ensemble of soloists — Maxim Vengerov, violin; Alisa Weilerstein, cello; and Lilya Zilberstein, piano — played Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, stunningly. They made mistakes, but these were nothing, in the face of such music-making.

And now to that snakepit, the opera house. The Met did Mozart’s “Idomeneo,” which had, among others, Ben Heppner and Dorothea Röschmann. Mr. Heppner is a hit-or-miss singer, but the night I heard was an absolute hit. And Ms. Röschmann can be counted on, especially in Mozart.

Diana Damrau was Rosina in the Met’s”Barber of Seville,”and she scintillated. As I said in these pages, her Rosina is about as much fun as you can have in an opera house. The composer, Rossini, would have beamed and chortled.

Also making an impression was Isabel Bayrakdarian, Pamina in Mozart’s “Magic Flute.” This singer seems to be coming into her own.

Early in the season, the Met did “La Gioconda,”by Ponchielli, and it featured three stellar women: Violeta Urmana, Olga Borodina, and Irina Mishura. They did a lot of standing and singing, and we’re all supposed to hate “stand and sing.” But, you know? In opera, what you do is stand and sing, pretty much. If you want the theater, seek out Vanessa Redgrave or something.

Once in a blue moon, you get a Maria Callas — a great singer who can act her pants off. Anna Netrebko is pretty good too, as witness her Violetta. But singing is the operatic coin of the realm, and the “Gioconda” girls delivered it, in spades.

Also delivering was the cast of the Met’s “Don Carlo” (a Verdi masterpiece). It, too, had Ms. Borodina, and Patricia Racette, Johan Botha, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, René Pape, and Samuel Ramey. James Levine was in the pit, the master of all, the night I attended. A longtime critic and opera exec — a constant operagoer — told me, “‘Don Carlo’ is the best thing I’ve heard in decades.” I believed him.

At City Opera, Rinat Shaham was Carmen, portraying Bizet’s heroine to the hilt. And Opera Orchestra of New York presented a rarity: “Dom Sébastien,” Donizetti’s last opera. It is a marathon, written for the Paris Opera, and it is worth every moment.

Every year I seem to say that Chanticleer’s Christmas concert, in front of the big tree at the Metropolitan Museum, was tops: the richest, most fulfilling, and best experience. If I say this every year, it’s only because, every year, it’s true.