Saturday night (March 23) at David Geffen Hall, continued over the road at 10:30pm in the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse, was a case of smart programming. For starters, pairing John Adams’s searing, introspective The Wound Dresser with Charles … » Read

Opera and surrealism make strange bedfellows, yet they have been known to cohabit, sometimes productively. Take Shostakovich’s The Nose , Prokofiev’s The Fiery Angel and Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre , for instance. They may not be … » Read

There was a definite buzz in the air for the second of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Carnegie Hall concerts on March 20. Reviews suggested Kirill Gerstein had scored a major hit a fortnight earlier on the BSO’s home turf with the … » Read

Some 60 years ago, when I was in college, I passed out programs for the Boston Symphony’s Friday matinees. I chose program passing over ushering since ushers had to spend a third of the concert out in the halls, in case of emergencies, … » Read

BERKELEY, CA--Anticipation couldn’t have been running much higher when Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia Orchestra of London, arrived in Berkeley last weekend. With three programs on the schedule, Friday evening through Sunday … » Read

Nothing changes. The bigotry, racism, nativism, and anti-Semitism that provide a basis for composer Jack Perla and librettist Jessica Murphy Moo’s An American Dream remain as real in America today as they were when the nation was at war … » Read

For the second time in as many days, a Manhattan recital turned into a memorial. Following Anne-Sophie Mutter’s Carnegie Hall concert that concluded as a moving tribute to her late husband André Previn, so the March 13 traversal … » Read

Hearts must have gone out to Anne-Sophie Mutter at her Carnegie Hall recital on March 12. The first half of her program had a distinctly spectral theme, designed to culminate in the world premiere of Rhode Island-born composer Sebastian … » Read

Esa-Pekka Salonen’s recently announced move to helm the San Francisco Symphony has been one of the more talked about U.S. music director moves of late. And while New Yorkers have hardly been deprived of seeing him as a guest with this … » Read

LONDON—In recent years John Nelson has forged a clear, broad pathway through the mighty musical forests of Hector Berlioz. Where Thomas Beecham and Colin Davis had blazed an early trail in repertoire that was seldom performed, the American … » Read