Ludwig van Beethoven

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Sparring with the Ultimate

There’s never been a more brilliant exemplar of the ballet art than George Balanchine.
Boston Ballet in The Four Temperaments, Apollo, and Theme and Variations
By MARICA B. SIEGEL | May 14, 2010

Leaving the Cutler Majestic after the opening night of Opera Boston’s latest Offenbach, La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein , you could see the smiling faces of an audience that had had a good time.
Opera Boston’s Offenbach, Thomas Quasthoff, the BSO, Boston Baroque, and BU’s Sondheim
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | May 14, 2010

Play by play: April 16, 2010

Theater listings for the week of April 16, 2010
Theater listings for the week of April 16, 2010
By JEFFREY GANTZ | April 16, 2010

Portraits of artists

Yikes! Is this really what it’s like behind the scenes with, say, the Emerson String Quartet?
Opus at New Rep; From Orchids to Octopi at Central Square
By CAROLYN CLAY | April 09, 2010

Midnight ramblers

In rock ’n’ roll, it was possible to live in Harvard Square, be a musician — a local musician — and be able to pay your rent and find restaurants where you could eat and buy food and survive, and feel that there was a sense of . . . future, with hope and
Rock legend Peter Wolf serves dinner and verse to the Phoenix ’s poet .
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | April 09, 2010

What's new

The timely highlight of Gil Rose’s latest BMOP (Boston Modern Orchestra Project) concert, “Strings Attached,” was a new/old piece (2004, revised 2009) for two string orchestras by Scott Wheeler now called Crazy Weather — the new title taken from a John
BMOP, and the Christian Wolff festival
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | March 26, 2010

Bach beat

Composers John Harbison and Peter Lieberson are big presences this spring.
Lions and lambs
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | March 12, 2010

Snakebite

"I can no longer stand to let this travesty continue," sings a character in Madame White Snake , the new opera based on an ancient Chinese legend co-commissioned by Opera Boston, which has just presented its world premiere. I'm afraid I shared the senti
Opera Boston presents the world premiere of Madame White Snake; plus the Leipzig Gewandhaus and Boston Philharmonic
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | March 05, 2010

Heaven!

Martin Pearlman's edition of Monteverdi's Vespro della Beate Vergine, with inserted antiphons to suggest an actual service, remains a masterpiece of historical research and inspired guesswork.
The BSO and Boston Baroque at their best
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | February 26, 2010

Double trouble

Boston Lyric Opera's debut Opera Annex production was so good in so many ways, it's painful that one bad idea just about sank it.
BLO's The Turn of the S crew, Levine's Carter and Simon Boccanegra, Teatro Lirico, the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet, and more
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | February 12, 2010

Stopping time

BSO music director James Levine has returned to Symphony Hall for the first time since October, when back surgery put him out of commission.
The BSO, Peter Maxwell Davies, BCMS, BMOP, Mark Morris, and Christian Tetzlaff
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | February 05, 2010

Let's rock

WGBH radio has ended its 58-year tradition of live Friday-afternoon BSO broadcasts, and it doesn't seem that public outcry is going to change that.
The BSO, the Cantata Singers, Discovery Ensemble, and BCMS
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | January 22, 2010

Review: Emanuel Ax at Jordan Hall

I don't want to imply that everybody who's anybody was at Jordan Hall Friday night to hear pianist Emanuel Ax's Celebrity Series recital — but that was Yo-Yo Ma sitting two rows in front of me.
Emanuel Ax, live at Jordan Hall on January 8, 2010
By JEFFREY GANTZ | January 15, 2010

Review: In Search of Beethoven

Phil Grabsky's exhaustive documentary doesn't exactly dispel any stereotypes about Beethoven's being a shaggy genius prone to rages.
Deaf jam
By SHAULA CLARK | January 08, 2010

John Harbison plus 10

Classical music in Boston is so rich, having to pick 10 special events for this winter preview is more like one-tenth of the performances I'm actually looking forward to.
Picking from a packed concert schedule
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | January 01, 2010

2009: The year in Classical

This was a queasy year for classical music.
Beating the quease
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 25, 2009

Crossword: ''Initial reaction''

Letters, not words
Letters, not words
By MATT JONES | November 27, 2009

Creationists

Simon Rattle and the BPO, Fabio Luisi and the BSO, John Harbison and Emmanuel Music
Simon Rattle and the BPO, Fabio Luisi and the BSO, John Harbison and Emmanuel Music
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | November 20, 2009

Almost

The Boston Lyric Opera comes maddeningly close to having a good Carmen . (The production continues at the Shubert Theatre through November 17.) Keith Lockhart leads a superb orchestra and chorus and a cast of plausible singers/actors in a compelling i
BLO's Carmen, the BSO's Beethoven, Emmanuel Music's Haydn and Schoenberg
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | November 13, 2009

Crossword: ''Uh-oh, it's magic''

Your standard cheap trick
Your standard cheap trick
By MATT JONES | November 06, 2009

Deal with It

When I was seven, I had a winter coat with flashes of neon so bright they glowed in the dark.
Revisiting the nightmares of a four-hour, made-for-TV Stephen King miniseries
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY | October 30, 2009

Blessings: mixed and otherwise

By odd coincidence, in recent weeks we’ve had performances of two important operatic rarities, landmark early works a century apart: 30-year-old Handel’s Amadigi (1715) and 20-year-old Rossini’s Tancredi (1813, his 10th opera!).
Boston Baroque’s Amadigi; Opera Boston’s Tancredi; the BSO’s Beethoven; the Borromeo’s Bartók; Brahms from BCMS and BSOCP
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | October 30, 2009

He is a real composer

Joshua Newton wants you to know he doesn't write classical music.
And don't you try to tell Joshua Newton otherwise
By EMILY PARKHURST | October 09, 2009

The roar of the crowd

I wasn’t there, but the opening-night dissatisfaction with the Met’s new Tosca was widely reported.
‘Opening Night at Symphony,’ Russell Sherman, the Discovery Ensemble, Boston Musica Viva, and the Bostonians
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | October 02, 2009

Classical inheritance

A teacher told me years ago that someday "you young people will inherit classical music. Then you can do with it what you want." And so I've been waiting.
Two fixtures hand over the reins to a younger generation
By EMILY PARKHURST | October 02, 2009

Baroque and beyond

Ten-best lists usually come at the end of the season, but this year the Phoenix has asked its critics to provide a calendar of 10 events that, at least on paper, might wind up on an end-of-season Top 10. Boston, in case you didn't know it, is a great
Betting on the best this fall
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | September 18, 2009

Providence Fall Preview Listings 2009

A page of listings for local music, theater, art, festivals and more this fall.
Music, theater, art, festivals and more in the coming months
By PHOENIX STAFF | September 18, 2009

Midsummer madness

After a relatively quiet summer, I saw Boston Midsummer Opera's Cosí fan tutte at BU's Tsai Center. Then I raced out to Tanglewood for a Mark Morris program accompanied by Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax, a BSO matinee with Ma, and all six concerts in the annua
Mark Morris, Yo-Yo Ma, and the Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood, Mozart in Boston, Meyerbeer at Bard
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | August 21, 2009

Review: Lorna's Silence

Are there many better young actors currently working in film than Jérémie Renier?
A work of near-greatness
By BRETT MICHEL | August 14, 2009

Trail of tunes

The best summer music festivals take something from the season: the smell of the surf, the sight of the mountains, fireworks, lawn seating — or, at least, fried dough.
Music al fresco at summer fests
By CLEA SIMON | June 12, 2009

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