John Harbison

Latest Articles

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

Bach beat

Lions and lambs
Composers John Harbison and Peter Lieberson are big presences this spring.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | March 08, 2010

The BSO, the Cantata Singers, Discovery Ensemble, and BCMS
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.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | January 25, 2010

John Harbison plus 10

Picking from a packed concert schedule
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.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | January 05, 2010

2009: The year in Classical

Beating the quease
This was a queasy year for classical music.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | January 04, 2010

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 18, 2009

Almost

BLO's Carmen, the BSO's Beethoven, Emmanuel Music's Haydn and Schoenberg
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 if not spine-tingling performance.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | November 12, 2009

Blessings: mixed and otherwise

Boston Baroque’s Amadigi; Opera Boston’s Tancredi; the BSO’s Beethoven; the Borromeo’s Bartók; Brahms from BCMS and BSOCP
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!).
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | October 28, 2009

The roar of the crowd

‘Opening Night at Symphony,’ Russell Sherman, the Discovery Ensemble, Boston Musica Viva, and the Bostonians
I wasn’t there, but the opening-night dissatisfaction with the Met’s new Tosca was widely reported.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | October 13, 2009

Baroque and beyond

Betting on the best this fall
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 city for classical music, so it's not easy to keep the list short. But here goes.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | September 14, 2009

A little history

Yehudi Wyner and John Harbison, Susanna Mälkki with the BSO, Natalia Gutman with the BPO, and BLO's Don Giovanni
Two of Boston's most admired and honored composers (both Pulitzer winners) have just celebrated landmark birthdays: Yehudi Wyner his 80th and John Harbison his 70th.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | April 28, 2009

Center of gravity

Shi-Yeon Sung and Nelson Freire at the BSO; plus the Schubertiade Music Players and Emmanuel's St. Matthew Passion
If all those young people at last Thursday's BSO concert didn't leave Symphony Hall feeling excited about classical music and eager to come back, then classical music is in even more trouble than I thought.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | April 14, 2009

Mad love

John Harbison's Winter's Tale, Dvorák's Rusalka, Hans Graf with the BSO, Mark Morris's music
The destructive power of jealousy makes a good subject for opera.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | March 24, 2009

Contertizing

From Don Giovanni’s hell to Haydn’s Creation
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.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | March 20, 2009

Anniversaries and other occasions

Masur's Mendelssohn, Orfeos from Norrington and Levine, the Discovery Ensemble, and the Inauguration 'performance'
Anniversaries, however fabricated, can still be useful. This year commemorates the 200th birthday of Felix Mendelssohn, the 150th birthday of Victor Herbert (both recently celebrated with intensive "orgies" on WHRB), the 200th anniversary of Haydn's death, and the 250th anniversary of Handel's death.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | January 27, 2009

Lift every voice!

Classical goodies for 2009
Opera is the big word for 2009.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 30, 2008

Year in Classical: Celebrate!

Comings and goings
In Handel's Hercules, the demented Dejanira's loss is still so painful, I was afraid to listen; now I don't want to hear anything else.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 22, 2008

It’s about time . . .

The Ditson Festival of Contemporary Music starts in Boston
It’s been 17 years since Boston’s last local festival of contemporary music, the New Music Harvest organized by composer Charles Fussell: 19 programs (several free), a celebration of composer Ned Rorem, an opera production performed by BU students, and the participation of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | September 25, 2008

Epic undertaking

Berlioz’s Les Troyens at the BSO; Opera Boston attempts Verdi’s Ernani
The act four sequence of quintet, septet, and love duet is non-stop musical orgasm.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | May 12, 2008

Orpheus in the afterworld

Harbison and Mahler at the BSO, and the return of Dubravka Tomsic
Tomsic’s last Boston recital was four years ago. We can’t afford to be without her this long.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | April 22, 2008

All over again

Brahms from Levine and Kissin, Emmanuel’s Bach B-minor Mass, the Cantata Singers’ Kurt Weill cabaret
The Boston Symphony Orchestra program for last week’s four concerts was a familiar one.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | January 28, 2010

Great gifts

Julian Kuerti leads the BSO and Leon Fleisher, Stockhausen’s Mantra at Harvard, Emmanuel’s St. John Passion
Knussen’s interludes, barely seven minutes, are a complex but attractive mix of the seductively creepy and the intricately lively.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | March 12, 2008

Singers’ delight

Spring Arts Preview: Opera and vocal works lead the season
The season may be starting to wind down, but there remain some events music lovers have been waiting for all year.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | March 10, 2008

‘A miracle!’

Emmanuel’s memorial for Craig Smith, plus Russell Sherman’s Bach, the Royal Concertgebouw, and Handel’s Semele
“Deep, tough, devout — and in church! It’s a miracle!”
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | February 05, 2008

Country for old men

Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, BMOP, Marc-André Hamelin, and Sasha Cooke
A youthful 80-year-old Sir Colin Davis was back in front of the Boston Symphony Orchestra last weekend with one of the pieces he loves most.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | January 29, 2008

Love and loss

Classical: 2007 in review
Boston’s biggest classical-music story this year was also its saddest.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 18, 2007

Craig Smith (1947–2007)

Boston loses a beloved musician
For more than 30 years, Emmanuel Music has been central to the cultural life of Boston.
By EDITORIAL | November 19, 2007

What’s in a phrase?

The Cantata Singers’ season finale; Leon Fleisher and the Emerson String Quartet
There are lots of references to heaven in Bach’s Passions and cantatas, but one of his most heavenly pieces has no words at all.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | May 22, 2007

Erwartung . . .

Classical goodies for 2007
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA music director James Levine will be back in February to continue his survey of Beethoven and Schoenberg with Metropolitan Opera diva Deborah Voigt in Beethoven’s “Ah! perfido” and Schoenberg’s Erwartung (“Awaiting”), along with Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture and Eighth Symphony (Symphony Hall, February 1-3).
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 28, 2006

The best of times, the worst of times

A year in classical
This year Boston classical music lost some of its most beloved figures — some, like mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, at the very height of their extraordinary powers, others, like opera director Sarah Caldwell and her conductor/collaborator, Osbourne McConathy, after long and gratifying runs.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 20, 2006