http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/14/arts/music/the-funniest-classical-music-performances-of-2014.html 2014-12-14 06:35:39 The Funniest Classical Music Performances of 2014 Classical music is serious business, yet some of this year’s performances were playful and wickedly funny. === Here’s a funny thing about classical music. However much you love it, it’s hard to argue that it is just that: funny. So when I announced to my colleagues that my end-of-year list would highlight the performances of 2014 that made me laugh, one of them deadpanned, “You mean as in: laugh at them?” I get it. Great music is a serious business. And yet it sometimes manages to be delightfully entertaining. Early this year, the percussion wizard Steven Schick performed Subverting expectations is, of course, a standard ploy in humor of any kind and one that the conductor Ivan Fischer routinely draws on in performances with his magnificent Budapest Festival Orchestra. At Avery Fisher Hall in June, during one of Back-row players of the New York Philharmonic also took the spotlight in April when the trombonist Joseph Alessi, the saxophonist Allen Won and the bassist David J. Grossman joined the Japanese jazz pianist Makoto Ozone for an encore after his joyous Playfulness, curiosity and a knack for theatrical touches continue to make the International Contemporary Ensemble one of the most essential and engaging new-music groups in New York. During its residence, as part of the Mostly Mozart Festival, at the Park Avenue Armory, a plastic lobster became one of several unlikely musical instruments in a performance of Alvin Lucier’s “Chambers” that managed to be both silly and subtly thought provoking. And then there’s the supremely artful silliness of comic opera, which this year provided side-splittingly funny performances by Dominique Labelle as the catty sorceress in Philharmonia Baroque’s concert performance of Handel’s “Teseo” at Alice Tully Hall, Isabel Leonard as a goofy Cherubino in the Metropolitan Opera’s “Le Nozze di Figaro,” and two memorable productions, at the Met and at LoftOpera in Brooklyn, of Rossini’s “Il Barbiere di Siviglia.” MORE FROM THE YEAR IN CLASSICAL MUSIC: Anthony Tommasini on the Top 10 Events of 2014 Michael Cooper on the Biggest Stories Zachary Woolfe on the Best Vocal Performances Vivien Schweitzer on Angelique Kidjo James R. Oestreich on