SAN FRANCISCO—On a night that began with baby pictures and ended with a balloon drop, San Francisco Symphony’s cherished former Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas got a farewell send-off on April 26 at a packed Davies Symphony Hall. … » Read

LONDON—If the opening concert of Multitudes , a ten-day multidisciplinary arts festival running at London’s Southbank Centre, was a seamless fusion of classical music and circus, the April 24 second night was a rather different kettle … » Read

Musicalizing difficult subject matter can pose tough challenges. These two recordings are good examples of when composers get it right. Songs in Flight Shawn E. Okpebholo’s Songs in Flight was inspired by Freedom on the Move, a database … » Read

LOS ANGELES—Carlos Simon’s Good News Mass , a de facto 50-minute symphonic gospel service combining aspects of the Catholic Mass and Pentecostal fervor, had its world premiere at Walt Disney Concert Hall on April 17. A co-commission … » Read

Classical and contemporary music can make for awkward bedfellows, but these two recent recordings show how one genre can really illuminate the another. Schubert/Beatles draws unpredicted parallels between the father of the German Lied and the … » Read

CHICAGO— In the 1990s, no less an eminence than Alfred Brendel urged Twyla Tharp to choreograph Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations. Why? “It’s so funny,” he reportedly told the contemporary ballet dancemaker. Funny? … » Read

The Danish String Quartet has forged a specialty of assembling programs that bring composers from separate eras into conversation with each other. The five-part Prism series (2019-2023) grouped one each of Beethoven’s late quartets with … » Read

LONDON—The program was billed “Oramo conducts Vaughan Williams,” and so he did, but the real reason this April 11 concert at London’s Barbican Centre created a buzz was the chance to hear a rediscovery by 20th-century … » Read

SAN FRANCISCO—The concert began with a bang, visual as well as aural. An enormous sculpted bronze head bristling with raised bronze tabs [pictured], by Japanese artist Jun Kaneko, descended from above to a narrow runway stage, where it was … » Read

Czech conductor Jakub Hruša, rising star and music director-designate of London’s Royal Opera, teamed up with violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja for her New York Philharmonic debut on April 9. On the bill were a warhorse, a world … » Read