AIX-EN-PROVENCE—While summer here has long been synonymous with great opera, for the past ten years a second festival has joined its elder brother and become an indelible fixture on the springtime calendar. The Aix Easter Festival has fast … » Read

Success was all but assured at the Metropolitan Opera debut of the opera Champion before the curtain went up. The story of middle-weight boxer Emile Griffith (1938 – 2013) has triumph, tragedy, and extra texture that comes with repressed … » Read

Pianist, composer, painter, and author Stephen Hough has added a third title to a list of publications that already includes Rough Ideas: Reflections on Music and More   and the novel The Final Retreat . His late st, Enough: Scenes From … » Read

LOS ANGELES—After long, ultimately transformative tenures with Finland’s Lahti Symphony and then the Minnesota Orchestra, and shorter ones in Seoul, Scotland, and Iceland, Osmo Vänskä has hit the road as a guest conductor, … » Read

One of the most felicitous results of the classical music world’s push to expand the repertoire has been the rediscovery of long-forgotten composers such as Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint George. Born the son of a French planter and an … » Read

LONDON—Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13, Babi Yar, make odd bedfellows. One is all positivity and light, the other abounds in irony and gloom. But if the two works sat a little awkwardly on this … » Read

LOS ANGELES--Now 86-years-young, Steve Reich has spent his ninth decade breaking out of some long-established comfort zones, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic as a crucial partner. He wrote his first orchestral work in 30 years, Music for … » Read

CHICAGO—Even in this lively arts town, for two principal opera companies to unveil world premieres over the same weekend is unprecedented. On March 24, Lyric Opera of Chicago premiered Proximit y , a megawatt, mixed-up triptych of new … » Read

The legacy of the late composer/conductor Pierre Boulez lives on, most notably through the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the esteemed new-music chamber group he founded in 1976. It arrived at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall on March 25 with a concert … » Read

Like pre-draft NFL quarterbacks jumping from team to team, conductors on the music directorship carousel elicit much speculation. Take Susanna Mälkki, for instance. She’s much admired, especially as a deeply experienced middle-aged … » Read