LONDON—For a program steeped in executions and funeral marches, the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s April 26 concert at Southbank Centre was surprisingly colorful. It was also full of drama, opening with a 30-minute tryout of a new … » Read

At home, this group performs as the National Symphony Orchestra. Abroad, it tours as the Taiwan Philharmonic—mostly because the words “Taiwan” and “National” appearing in the same sentence is guaranteed to drive … » Read

SAN FRANCISCO—Ambling onstage in jeans and work shirts, the four members of So Percussion resembled a pick-up crew headed to a construction site. Indeed some of the equipment pressed into endlessly resourceful service by the group on April … » Read

AIX-EN-PROVENCE—Like Easter itself, the Festival de Pâques is a moveable feast. Every year its two-and-a-half week program of events is timed to straddle Holy Week, with one of Bach’s Passions given during Easter weekend as the … » Read

Italian pianist Beatrice Rana turned 30 in January and is honoring the occasion with a string of concerts in Europe and the U.S. that have included Beethoven’s Sonata in B flat, Op. 106, Hammerklavier, a coming-of-age piece if there ever … » Read

PARIS—Valentina Carrasco’s production of Nixon in China for the Opéra National de Paris, the most star-studded of six unrelated stagings in Europe* this season commemorating the 50 th anniversary of the Nixon-Mao talks, faced a … » Read

Say what you will about the archetypal program of curtain-raiser, concerto, and big symphonic work, the format can still yield rewarding results. So it was on Tuesday evening (April 18) when the National Symphony Orchestra led by Music Director … » Read

CHICAGO—Pops concerts: Most devoted symphony-goers can’t abide them, while symphonies can’t live without them. Anything that flirts with popular music tends to be viewed as a necessary penance to keep institutions afloat, or, … » Read

LONDON—Watch out world, there’s a new choir in town. Vox Urbane, whose inaugural concert took place amid the dilapidated grandeur of the Asylum Chapel in Peckham, a south London suburb with a proud working-class Victorian legacy, is … » Read

For seven years Harriet Jacobs, an enslaved woman in North Carolina, hid from her abusive enslaver in an attic space that measured 9-feet long by 7- feet wide and 3- feet high. With only a small peephole to let in light, she sweltered in the … » Read