LONDON—Antonio Pappano has focused his opening season as chief conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra on British music, but this February 6 concert at the Barbican Centre paid equal homage to works from across the Atlantic, an apt … » Read

SAN FRANISCO—In January of 2024, San Francisco Symphony management announced a cost-cutting pullback from its popular SoundBox series. One previously scheduled concert was scrapped. Going forward, these late-night curated cabaret-style … » Read

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The reputation of Vanessa has gone through some rocky times. The Samuel Barber/Gian Carlo Menotti opera, the first new work of Rudolf Bing’s Metropolitan Opera intendancy, was generally lauded at its 1958 world … » Read

BOSTON—Imagine an opera with a gorgeous score by Wagner, Mahler, Puccini, Zemlinsky, Richard and Johann Strauss, and Erich Korngold, whose sweeping romantic soundtracks for The Adventures of Robin Hood and Anthony Adverse (among many … » Read

CHICAGO—As recently as a decade ago, Michelle Cann, like many classical music lovers, didn’t know who Florence Price was. A friend set her straight in 2016, sending along Price’s Fantasies nègres . As Cann told a rapt … » Read

NEW YORK—When Pierre Boulez died in 2016, the world lost one of its most important authorities on modern music. A fierce polemicist who famously advocated blowing up the grandest opera houses, he mellowed in middle age, becoming recognized … » Read

BOSTON—Those of us who have a special place in our hearts for Verdi’s Don Carlo must count ourselves lucky. For his annual semi-staged opera with the Boston Youth Orchestra, Federico Cortese conducted what may be Verdi’s most … » Read

The “processional opera” Primero Sueño had its January 23 world premiere at the Cloisters, the Met Museum’s famed repository of European medieval art and architecture in upper Manhattan. True to its description, the … » Read

Piano and winds were the order of the evening at the New York Philharmonic on Jan. 23: three works qualifying as concertos in substance, if not in name, including two relative rarities and one warhorse, all benefiting from the appearance of the … » Read

Throughout his six-decade career, Riccardo Muti has worked to confer dignity on Italian opera, banishing spurious traditions and approaching the music with absolute seriousness of purpose. The first half of the January 21 Chicago Symphony … » Read