Classical Music

Latest Articles

The delights of Three Pianos at the A.R.T.

Three guys who love Schubert
Three guys. Not singers, but they sing. Not pianists, but they play the piano.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 13, 2011

Jordi Savall and the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra

Living traditions
"The Celtic Viol" — the title of the Boston Early Music Festival concert Catalan gambist Jordi Savall gave yesterday evening at Jordan Hall — looks like an oxymoron, since Irish and Scottish music is almost by definition traditional and popular and the viol is associated with "serious" early classical music.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | June 17, 2011

Moving out

88 keys, 2 songwriters, 1 grand plan
At the heart of the cover-band craze that's recently swept Portland is a very simple concept: musicians getting paid.
By SAM PFEIFLE | May 04, 2011

Following Levine's departure, the BSO picks up the pieces

After Jimmy
This past week, James Levine ended his BSO tenure after seven seasons, citing challenges regarding his health and the "ensuing absences they have forced." Since leaving Symphony Hall almost five years ago, I've been watching the Levine saga unfold, gritting my teeth with every notice of malady and ensuing cancellation.
By SEAN KERRIGAN | March 09, 2011

Following Levine's departure, the BSO picks up the pieces

Il Giardino Armonico

Venice Rising
In their dark suits, they could have been Milanese bankers, except for the brightly colored ties (each different), puddling trousers, and full spectrum of hairstyles.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | February 25, 2011

Review: Actors are concert pianists too, in PSC's 2 Pianos 4 Hands

Two roles
A good bout of slapstick goes on between tuxedoed pianists Ted (Tom Frey) and Richard (Jeffrey Rockwell) before they finally flip back their tails and get into Bach's Concerto in D Minor :
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | February 09, 2011

Oboe? Oh boy!

Symphonie des Dragons, live at First Congregationalist Church Cambridge, January 14, 2011
File this one under "Stuff White People Like": an unheralded early-music ensemble made up of oboes and recorders and bassoons (with theorbo/guitar and percussion) comes to town for its world debut and sells out the house.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | January 21, 2011

The Top 10 Classical Music Stories of 2010

The good, the not-so-good, and the departed
The good, the not-so-good, and the departed
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 21, 2010

Birthday boys: Pierre Boulez at Boston Conservatory

Plus the Mimesis Ensemble, the BU Symphony Orchestra, Collage, Garrick Ohlsson, the BSO, BMOP, and the BPO
I think the concert I'll remember most vividly from the past few weeks was the closing night of Boston Conservatory's weekend-long tribute to modern-music icon Pierre Boulez on his 85th birthday.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 01, 2010

Giving thanks: The Cantata Singers' Wyner and Vaughan Williams

Plus Boston Lyric Opera's Tosca
One of the pleasures aroused by the anticipation of a new work by Yehudi Wyner is the certainty that the outcome will arouse even greater pleasure.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | November 09, 2010

Review: James Levine with the Met and the BSO

Plus Mark Morris and Boston Baroque
Sighs of relief at Symphony Hall, from patrons and management alike: James Levine, music director of both the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Metropolitan Opera, had completed a doubleheader.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | October 20, 2010

James Levine: He's back!

The conductor returns to the Boston Symphony Orchestra (and the Met)
Boston and New York have at least one thing in common. Both have missed James Levine, music director of two of the world's most renowned classical-music institutions.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | October 06, 2010

Levine on disc

40 years at the Met, Mozart at the BSO
40 years at the Met, Mozart at the BSO
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | October 06, 2010

Review: Longwood Symphony Orchestra's opening night

Jordan Hall, October 2, 2010
Jordan Hall, October 2, 2010
By JEFFREY GANTZ | October 07, 2010

The Big Hurt: Vince Neil acts his age

Plus The Situation singled, Drake unsurpassed, Pete Doherty denied, Lou Reed exonerated
By the time you read this, the Situation will have his first single out on iTunes. Yeah, that the Situation.
By DAVID THORPE | June 22, 2010

Summer treats

Whether classical, jazz, pop, or folk, 'tis the season to get out and enjoy the music
From Andean to zydeco, pick your flavor and there's a summer music festival ready to serve it up.
By CLEA SIMON | June 18, 2010

Rockport rules

A new beginning for the music festival
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 rehearsal he'd heard that afternoon of the original chamber version of Wagner's Siegfried Idyll , had moved him to tears.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | June 15, 2010

Gravity and grace

Mono’s tender post-rock gets even bigger
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.
By REYAN ALI | May 25, 2010

Dream on

Heinrich Schütz’s swan song; the Pops’ 125th-anniversary commission
Some lovers of religious music consider Heinrich Schütz even greater than Bach, who was born 13 years after Schütz’s death.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | May 27, 2010

Living the dream

De Niro Pops Off Dept.
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.
By LLOYD SCWARTZ | May 26, 2010

A modest epic tale

Steven Jobe’s haunting Joan of Arc
What beautiful voices and music in this event. Steven Jobe’s Joan of Arc: An Opera In Three Acts is at once ambitious and quite modest, but vocally and musically it remains a pleasure throughout its three brief acts at the Blackstone River Theater in Cumberland (through May 23).
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | May 19, 2010

Second sight

Boston Ballet reprises Jiří Kylián’s Black & White
May in Boston has always been Storybook Ballet Month, as Boston Ballet finished off its season with Swan Lake or Sleeping Beauty or Don Quixote , something classical and highbrow and reassuring. That, after all, is what Boston audiences want, right?
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 28, 2010

Blythe spirit

Opera Boston’s Offenbach, Thomas Quasthoff, the BSO, Boston Baroque, and BU’s Sondheim
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.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | May 17, 2010

Person and persona

For John Shade, it’s all in the text
Folksie newcomer John Shade says that his songs are focused on identity and anonymity, but there’s also what sounds like an unraveling personal economy lurking beneath: characters steal purses, check classifieds, go it alone with “no safety net,” and generally feel like bums.
By MATT PARISH | May 04, 2010

Opera singer teaches Sox fans how to scream

You Scream, I Scream Dept.
If Elena Zoubareva had the nerve to admonish boisterous fans outside Fenway Park, she’d offer, calmly, “Don’t scream like that — you’ll strain your vocal cords!”
By MARIANNA FAYNSHTEYN | May 05, 2010

Jonathan McPhee and The Longwood Symphony Orchestra

Northern Lights
Jonathan McPhee and The Longwood Symphony Orchestra at Jordan Hall on May 1, 2010
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 06, 2010

Ye gods!

BLO’s Idomeneo, BU’s Susannah, Garfein’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Zander’s Stravinsky, and Pollini’s Chopin
Much beautiful music turns up in the 18th-century operatic form that’s probably most alien to a modern audience.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | April 28, 2010

All you need is love

Marylou Speaker Churchill memorial, Emmanuel Music’s Haydn/Schoenberg, and more
Outpourings of love have been flooding the Boston musical scene.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | April 21, 2010

Codeine Velvet Club | Codeine Velvet Club

Dangerbird (2010)
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 usually go.
By MIKAEL WOOD | April 14, 2010