Given the state of the world, it’s a miracle that Houston’s classical-music organizations could muster the wherewithal and willpower to perform so many great concerts this past year, whether for live audiences or on digital platforms. What they did is simply miraculous. Culled from a happy surplus of examples, these moments best illustrated why music remains so crucial in troubled times.

Esa-Pekka Salonen, Houston Symphony (March): In his Houston debut, the longtime L.A. Philharmonic maestro — now with the San Francisco Symphony — turned the music of Johann S. Bach into a series of 20th-century funhouse mirrors via works by Klemperer, Webern and Berio, plus his own “Fog.” The evening concluded with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1, a relatively slept-on piece of repertoire that under Salonen’s baton became joyful and vital.

Houston Grand Opera, “My Favorite Things” (May): It may never be repeated, but HGO’s staging of “The Sound of Music” as an outdoor sing-along in UH’s football stadium was so inspired it should be. Starring luminous Trinidadian soprano Jeanine De Bique as Maria, and marking the HGO orchestra and chorus’ first performance in more than a year, the production hit all the high notes with nary a cobweb in sight.

Apollo Chamber Players, “With Malice Toward None” (September): On the 20th anniversary of the attacks, Apollo and guest Tracy Silverman — playing a very guitar-like electric six-string violin — honored 9/11’s victims with a program that included Samuel Barber’s devastating “Adagio For Strings” and the title piece by Vietnam-vet composer Kemo Williams: a raw, haunting 13-minute rhapsody with strong overtones of Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles.

Andres Orozco-Estrada Returns (September): COVID and red tape had kept the Houston Symphony’s music director away from the orchestra since February 2020. When he dropped his baton on Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, surging tempos and thrilling passages dovetailed perfectly with the maestro’s natural exuberance.

ROCO, “The Juliet Letters” at Post HTX (October): The ROCO String Quartet and tenor Eduardo Alberto Tercero dug into Elvis Costello’s angsty, whimsical 1993 suite as the bodies of Houston Contemporary Dance Company swayed and contorted on an enormous X-shaped staircase.

Houston Symphony, “Symphonie fantastique” (October): Hector Berlioz’s scandalously macabre masterpiece, written in 1830, remains a surefire Halloween treat. Led by Detroit Symphony music director Jader Bignamini, the orchestra stirred up a seething cauldron of morose poets and marauding witches, then brought everything to a boil with the “Dies Irae” — one of the most demonic delights in the entire repertoire.

Houston Chamber Choir, “Hymn for Strength” (November): Written by J. Todd Frazier, director of Methodist Hospital’s Center for Performing Arts Medicine, with lyrics by Houston poet laureate Outspoken Bean, this soothing six-minute tribute to caregivers found added weight when a group of singing health-care professionals joined Houston Chamber Choir onstage — reminding us all that music is one of the healing arts.

Houston Grand Opera, “The Snowy Day” (December): The Wortham Center already has one treasured holiday tradition in Houston Ballet’s “The Nutcracker,” but Joel Thompson and Andrea Davis Pinkney’s mini-opera based on Ezra Jack Keats’ ’60s children’s book argued, sweetly but strongly, for another. Comforting, playful, and color-blind, it found grace — and the seeds of maturity — in a young boy’s wintry revelry.

Houston Symphony, “Messiah” (December): The best conductors unlock hidden secrets in even the most familiar pieces of music, and Julian Wachner of NYC’s Trinity Church Wall Street turned Handel’s seasonal staple into a revelation. Further credit goes to a superb quartet of soloists (especially eerie countertenor Lawrence Zazzo) and an exultant Houston Symphony Chorus.

Chris Gray is a Galveston-based writer.