Irish policy towards opera has been rightly slated across the water, saysMartin Adams, but there were some thrilling exceptions

What has it been like to attend more than 100 concerts in the past 12 months? The clarinettist from the Bang on a Can All-Stars said it all. When a technical glitch interrupted their concert at Vicar Street, he yelled: "Support live music!" That's it: anticipation, risk, pleasure, disappointment - but mostly pleasure.

It has been a delight to see the rapport between the players of the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and their new principal conductor, Laurent Wagner. Their Tale Of Four Cities concerts, at the Helix, and their playing for Opera Ireland in Bellini's Norma featured the most consistently well-formed and stylish playing I have heard from this orchestra. So, for achievement thus far and for a promising future, Wagner's arrival is my highlight for Irish orchestral music.

RTÉ's appointments to the directorships of its performing groups have not always shown such a sure hand. But over the past couple of years it has chosen well. One such choice was appointing Gerhard Markson as principal conductor of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra. This year I heard four concerts in its series of all Bruckner's symphonies, and those epitomised two of Markson's serious strengths: his ability to instil orchestral discipline and his eagerness to think afresh about music burdened by the weight of tradition.

All my highlights of 20th-century and contemporary music for orchestra featured this same combination of conductor and orchestra. They include the second presentation within two years of some of Boulez's Notations, plus Kevin O'Connell's North and Ian Wilson's Rise. But best of all was May's precisely coloured account of Messiaen's Chronochromie. With one significant exception, in the few concerts featuring such repertoire and a conductor other than Markson, the NSO's playing proved less persuasive.

That exception involved what could prove the most interesting appointment of all: of William Eddins, just over a year ago, as the NSO's principal guest conductor. He has transformed the orchestra's response to classical repertoire and manages everything else with remarkable consistency. One of the most rewarding experiences was hearing Haydn's Oxford Symphony sound like the work of genius it is.

Then there is the National Chamber Choir, where Celso Antunes has transformed a group that had only occasionally touched the quality its name would imply. Its recent winter series of three precisely focused and demanding programmes, delivered with accomplished confidence, was the highlight of the choral year. By contrast, in terms of consistent reliability, the RTÉ Philharmonic Choir seems not to have fulfilled the promise of the improvements wrought seven years ago, when Mark Duley became chorus master. The reasons are complicated and need attention.

The most exhilarating orchestral playing I heard was not at the National Concert Hall but at the Helix. I must have encountered Dvorak's New World Symphony in at least 20 concerts over 35 years. But never did it sound as potent and as fresh as on one Monday evening in early November, under the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra and its charismatic conductor Zoltán Kocsis.

The Crash Ensemble continues to explore the wilder shores and is without doubt the healthiest contemporary ensemble in this country, with commissions, tours (Denmark, Sweden and England this year) and festivals (the latest just before Christmas) that set Irish music in an international context. Even when they sail close to the wind in terms of adequate preparation, everything is done with iconoclastic confidence and vigour.

Which brings me to the Bang on a Can All-Stars and their refreshingly informal concert at Vicar Street (no smoking but plenty of drinking). It was so encouraging to see the world's premier group of this kind commission a work from the Crash's artistic director, Donnacha Dennehy. In significant respects, his Streetwalker equalled or surpassed everything on the programme. If I had to take one concert and leave all the rest, this would be it.

For iconoclastic, creative thinking, the Crash are almost matched by wizard gamba player Sarah Cunningham, who this year founded and directed East Cork Early Music Festival. It epitomised early music's potential at the cutting edge of innovative musical performance. There were good things from Galway Early Music Festival, too, and I was sorry to miss the promising programme of the Sligo festival.

Finally, there's chamber music. The young Irish clarinettist Carol McGonnell gave a wonderfully zesty account of herself in Bray as part of a tour for Music Network, which also organised a gem of performance in historical style: the Purcell Quartet and soprano Clara Sanabras. My chamber-music highlight of the year, however, was the Scharoun Ensemble's account of Schubert's Octet, given as part of what was, sadly, Limerick Music Association's final tour in half a lifetime of top-quality music promotion.

I missed the Wexford Festival Opera but enjoyed Opera Theatre Company's productions of two new works, Hamelin and Thwaite, with music respectively by Ian Wilson and Jürgen Simpson. It is no disrespect to either company that mentioning opera brings up my low point of the year.

Although there were several not-so-good concerts, what lingers in the mind is music's continued status at the bottom of Ireland's artistic pile. At the bottom of the lot comes opera. Dismal comparisons with many other European countries have been analysed in this newspaper by Michael Dervan. So here are four adjectives I have read in British newspapers about Irish policy towards opera: sorry, sad, appalling, incompetent. Quite.