MILAN—Opera companies have been updating Verdi's I vespri siciliani almost since its conception. Set to the backdrop of the French occupation of 13th-century Sicily, the work premiered in French at the Paris Opera in 1885. It was translated … » Read

LONDON—Camille Saint-Saëns has been unfairly pigeon-holed, not least by his contemporaries such as Debussy and Berlioz, as a conservative composer of little depth or originality. (The latter famously slighted the younger composer with … » Read

LOS ANGELES--John Adams calls Girls of the Golden West “my most personal of all stage creations.” But it’s also the one that’s given him the most trouble. Premiered by the San Francisco Opera in 2017, it was revised for … » Read

How does she do it? The 35-year-old pianist Yuja Wang showed strategy, passion, and poise but little strain when playing all five Rachmaninoff piano and orchestra works in a single concert Saturday afternoon at Carnegie Hall. The … » Read

LONDON--The London Philharmonic Orchestra has an enviable track record when it comes to Elgar’s First Symphony. In the 1960s and 70s, LPO recorded it twice under Principal Conductor Sir Adrian Boult, and in 1975 did so again under his … » Read

The current season marks the final one for the Emerson String Quartet . Founded in 1976 by two Juilliard graduates—violinists Philip Setzer and Eugene Drucker—the foursome, which also includes Lawrence Dutton (a member from 1977) and … » Read

Any orchestral concert depends for its success on the equal collaboration among musicians, conductor, and, especially for new works, the composer. Absent such a partnership, writes Joshua Kosman in the San Francisco Chronicle , “sorrowful … » Read

It seems odd to speak of a composer’s “late style” when the composer, Franz Schubert, died at 31. But the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (CMS) made the case convincingly at the opening of its “Winter Festival: The … » Read

A Jan. 19 concert by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, with violinist Pinchas Zukerman as both conductor and soloist, left critic Scott Cantrell feeling that the ensemble “lacked its usual focus and cohesiveness.” Zukerman is well-known … » Read

Alban Berg as Franz Schubert's musical grandson? That idea of a kinship between two Viennese composers who lived a century apart—proposed in a program note by Cleveland Orchestra Music Director Franz Welser-Möst—began to make … » Read