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Helios Early Opera's Charpentier; plus, the BSO's Mendelssohn Lobgesang

There's a new group in town doing Baroque opera — not an easy ambition.
Hello, Helios!
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | February 03, 2012

Thorpe nabs Deems Taylor Award

Phoenix columnist David Thorpe has been named one of the winners of this year's ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for writing about music.
Blowing Our Own Horn Dept.
By BOSTON PHOENIX STAFF | October 14, 2011

Guerilla Opera's Loose, Wet, Perforated

Australian born, Harvard-educated Nicholas Vines is a compellingly original composer, and his new Loose, Wet, Perforated (through September 25) is full of fascinating music.
Huh?
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | September 23, 2011

BLO does Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream

After last season's The Turn of the Screw, Boston Lyric Opera has returned to Benjamin Britten with A Midsummer Night's Dream, an adaptation of Shakespeare (at the Shubert Theatre through May 10).
Dream, dream, dream
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | May 06, 2011

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

Dream on

Some lovers of religious music consider Heinrich Schütz even greater than Bach, who was born 13 years after Schütz’s death.
Heinrich Schütz’s swan song; the Pops’ 125th-anniversary commission
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | May 28, 2010

Living the dream

Movie stars aren’t the usual Symphony Hall crowd, but last week, two dark-suited ushers swung open the doors of the Hatch Room and out poured Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris, and Cherry Jones.
De Niro Pops Off Dept.
By LLOYD SCWARTZ | May 28, 2010

Photos: Peter Wolf at the Wilbur Theatre

Peter Wolf, live at the Wilbur Theatre, on May 25, 2010
Peter Wolf at the Wilbur Theatre | May 25, 2010
By JEAN HANGARTER | May 28, 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

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

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

The naked truth

I would like to register my protest against your “Naked Boston” issue’s needlessly titillating cover image of a nude, beheaded woman.
Letters to the Boston editor, April 2, 2010
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael Mazur, 1935 - 2009

"He was so alive ," a friend wrote to me a few days after Michael Mazur died, on August 18.
Painter, printmaker, teacher, art historian, curator, political/social/arts activist, Red Sox and Celtics fan
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | August 28, 2009

Michael Steinberg, 1928-2009

Michael Steinberg, who died of cancer last Sunday morning in Minneapolis, was one of the great voices raised in defense of high culture, and Boston was lucky that he was based here for so many years.
In Memoriam
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | July 31, 2009

Resurrections

Back in pre-history (1964), a brilliant young Brit, a cellist (student of Benjamin Britten) and conductor, came to town and shook up the local classical-music scene.
The BPO celebrates its 30th, and the Cantata Singers continue their Britten year
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | March 19, 2009

Contertizing

Boston Lyric Opera follows up Dvorák’s moonstruck Rusalka, with Christopher Schaldebrand in the title role of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, the BSO and much more.
From Don Giovanni’s hell to Haydn’s Creation
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | March 17, 2009

Schnozzola!

By the time you read this, you've either seen or missed one of Boston's most exciting opera productions, Opera Boston's brilliant version of Shostakovich's The Nose .
Opera Boston doesn't blow The Nose — plus Yannick Nézet-Séguin's BSO debut and the return of Lang Lang
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | March 03, 2009

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