Orchestral Music

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Rockport rules

Pianist David Deveau, celebrating his 15th year as director of the Rockport Chamber Music Festival (now Rockport Music) and the opening of the elegant, $20 million Shalin Liu Performance Center on Main Street, said that the sound in the new hall, at the
A new beginning for the music festival
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | June 18, 2010

Gravity and grace

Like most post-rock bands worth their “post-rock” tag, Mono — who come to the Middle East this Friday — just can’t help sounding immense.
Mono’s tender post-rock gets even bigger
By REYAN ALI | May 28, 2010

Blythe spirit

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

Jonathan McPhee and The Longwood Symphony Orchestra

Jonathan McPhee and The Longwood Symphony Orchestra at Jordan Hall on May 1, 2010
Northern Lights
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 07, 2010

Ye gods!

Much beautiful music turns up in the 18th-century operatic form that’s probably most alien to a modern audience.
BLO’s Idomeneo, BU’s Susannah, Garfein’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Zander’s Stravinsky, and Pollini’s Chopin
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | April 30, 2010

All you need is love

Outpourings of love have been flooding the Boston musical scene.
Marylou Speaker Churchill memorial, Emmanuel Music’s Haydn/Schoenberg, and more
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | April 23, 2010

Codeine Velvet Club | Codeine Velvet Club

Like a Glaswegian version of Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner’s Last Shadow Puppets , the Codeine Velvet Club project finds Jon Lawler of the Fratellis making retro-’60s supper-club pop with sweeping orchestral arrangements where the fuzzy guitars us
Dangerbird (2010)
By MIKAEL WOOD | April 16, 2010

Stuff at night

This week’s health headlines also included the announcement from the Boston Symphony Orchestra that music director James Levine has been sidelined again, from the “excruciating pain” he’s been suffering since his surgery for a herniated disc.
The BSO without Levine, Yo-Yo Ma, the Cantata Singers, American Classics, the Zarounian Ensemble
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | April 02, 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

Interview: Hilary Hahn

"Just because I play classical music doesn't mean I am classical music."
No strings
By JON GARELICK | March 12, 2010

Cooking with steam

While most of us find the clang and bang of old radiators an annoying aspect of living in an old building, composer Travis Ramsey thought they sounded like music.
Radiator music warms up local orchestra
By EMILY PARKHURST | February 26, 2010

Tuba song

Dan Hunter wants you to know that a tuba is more than an oom-pah-pah machine or the big, shiny bell in the back of the orchestra. To Hunter, the tuba is a storyteller, an opera singer, and a melodic instrument.
Hunter moves from the back of the hall to the spotlight
By EMILY PARKHURST | February 19, 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

Portland Symphony Orchestra

At January 24, Merrill Auditorium
Music Seen
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY | January 29, 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

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

Wanting more

After its triumphant traversal of the complete Béla Bartók string quartets at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Borromeo Quartet was back for a free 20th- and 21st-century program at Jordan Hall, leading off with an accomplished recent piece by t
The Borromeo and Emerson String Quartets, Dohnányi with the BSO, and Yiddish operetta at Harvard
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 11, 2009

Open spaces

In my review of the memorable Brahms performances Sir Simon Rattle led with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra for the Celebrity Series of Boston last month, I should have mentioned that one decision responsible for the beauty and spaciousness of the or
The BSO's Brahms, Ben Zander's Wagner, Collage New Music, and the BEMF's Handel
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 04, 2009

Photos: Ballet Mecanique

BMOP performs Ballet Mecanique, live at Jordan Hall on November 13, 2009
Boston Modern Orchestra Project performs Ballet Mecanique live at Jordan Hall
By DEREK KOUYOUMJIAN | November 20, 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

Blind ambition

The only thing less common than Brother Ali–caliber MCs are profiles that don’t credit dude as “blind” and “albino” in the first graf.
Brother Ali is more than just albino
By CHRIS FARAONE | November 06, 2009

In the swim

My head’s swimming.
Guerilla Opera, von Stade’s farewell, the BSO, Handel and Haydn, the BPO, and that Tosca
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | October 16, 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

Smaller, bigger, better

Is Boston in the midst of a ballet boom? You could certainly believe that if you attended Boston Ballet’s fourth annual season-opening gala last Saturday.
Boston Ballet’s fourth ‘Night of Stars’
By JEFFREY GANTZ | September 25, 2009

Leon Kirchner, 1919–2009

Craggy, tender, passionate, witty, rough-edged, lyrical, uncompromising, Leon Kirchner's music, so like the man himself, made an indelible impression. Even in his recent appearance at a 90th-birthday tribute concert at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
In Memoriam
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | September 23, 2009

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