In 2014, the Canadian/Israeli Azrieli Foundation launched the Azrieli Music Prize, a biannual competition to foster music composition. This year, the focus was on choral music and, at its tenth-anniversary gala on Oct. 28 in Montreal’s … » Read

Washington National Opera’s new Fidelio offers few surprises to anyone acquainted with director Francesca Zambello’s penchant for mild revisionism, or with recent stagings of the work elsewhere. As in the Met’s Jürgen Flimm … » Read

Good news for classical music lovers in the Bay Area, and elsewhere. Joshua Kosman, for 36 years the San Francisco Chronicle’s music critic until he retired this past April, is back. He can now be found at On a Pacific Aisle on Substack, … » Read

Il trovatore ’s dramaturgy has long drawn condescension. The Marx Brothers famously used Verdi’s opera to mock the entire genre; a recent article on the website Parterre Box decried its weakness of “dramatic continuity and … » Read

Appearances by Lisette Oropesa since the pandemic have been all too rare in New York, the city that once could have been considered her artistic home. By contrast, in Europe she recently has gone from success to success, with Alcina at Covent … » Read

Vladimir Horowitz once said some Chopin miniatures have more content than a Mahler symphony. At her Zankel Hall recital October 22, Berlin-based Russian pianist Yulianna Avdeeva, 39, proved his point. Durable, romantic-era touchstones on the … » Read

CHICAGO— Taking over from any longtime music director can be a daunting task. Their identities can fuse with the organization, marking any successor as an interloper. That hasn’t been so much as a passing worry for Newberry Consort … » Read

First impressions matter. For 30-year-old Kedrick Armstrong , the new music director for the Oakland Symphony, the opening of the new season on Oct. 18, as described in the San Francisco Chronicle , “offered very promising signs.” … » Read

Ainadamar , Osvaldo Golijov’s elegy for the venerated Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca to a libretto by David Henry Huang, has had a healthy life following an artistically premature world premiere at Tanglewood in … » Read

Who would have thought that the opening of a concert space in a subterranean crypt would be a significant development on the New York music scene? Death of Classical, the organization that presents often-challenging programs in what it describes … » Read