CARDIFF—The Metropolitan Opera is set to present Argentinean composer Osvaldo Golijov’s first opera, Ainadamar , during the 2024-25 season, and to judge by the local premiere that opened at the Welsh Millennium Center on September 9, … » Read

CHICAGO — Classical music might be ever more undefinable, but one constant is usually assured: works are written by, and reverently credited to, a single composer. For Third Coast Percussion, all bets are off. For the better part of a … » Read

The Florence Price renaissance marches on, the latest instalment being The Philadelphia Orchestra’s follow-up to their outstanding recording of the composer’s First and Third Symphonies. Price made history as the first Black woman to … » Read

SAN FRANCISCO — John Zorn is a unique, proudly unclassifiable musician. His music spans classical, jazz, film, and klezmer, using notated and improvised scores mostly collaborative or orchestral but occasionally solo. He has been influenced … » Read

Goodwill was in the air at this August 28 concert before even a single note had sounded. First of all, there was the inclusion of the no-longer to be axed BBC Singers. Their late-in-the-day appearance at the 2023 Proms followed a … » Read

The International Contemporary Ensemble, an invaluable new-music collective founded in 2001, used to cut a higher profile than it has lately, or at least it seems that way. In a 2007 New York Times article , founder Claire Chase spelled out the … » Read

LONDON—Last year, the BBC Proms offered a f ine account of Handel’s Solomon , though its grandeur was slightly scuppered by overly modest forces. The Royal Albert Hall is big, and the otherwise excellent BBC Singers rattled around in … » Read

The Salzburg Festival’s choice of operas this summer scarcely ventured beyond the tried and true with one notable exception, Behuslav Martinu’s Greek Passion , a work ardently admired by many but here making its festival debut (viewed … » Read

LONDON—Back in the 19th century, Das Paradies und die Peri (Paradise and the Peri) was Robert Schumann’s most popular work. A mishmash of decorative Orientalism and Christian morality, its slushy sentiment appealed to pious Victorian … » Read

This has been a summer of epic thunderstorms and steamy heat in Bayreuth, paralleling the controversy surrounding the storied festival’s future. Through four generations of Wagners, and legendary internal and external squabbles, the … » Read