A new $5 million gift from The Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation to the Cleveland Orchestra will support the Kelvin Smith Family Chair currently held by Music Director Franz Welser-Möst. The Austrian maestro, who has announced his plans to … » Read

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch survived Auschwitz because she could play the cello. Born in 1925 to a German-Jewish family living in what is today Wroclaw, Poland, she and her two sisters played chamber music together as children. When she was arrested … » Read

BAYREUTH, Germany (AP) — Thorleifur Örn Arnarsson’s phone rang in his Icelandic highlands cabin back in January 2022. Katharina Wagner, the Bayreuth festival director and great-granddaughter of composer Richard Wagner, wanted to … » Read

Less than a year from now, Esa-Pekka Salonen will become one of the most sought-after free agents in the world of classical music. His decision not to renew his contract with the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) when it expires in 2025 due to his … » Read

SANTA CRUZ, Ca—It took a while for the ever-adventurous Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music to get back in its old groove, what with the 2020 and 2021 seasons relegated to online and the 2022 comeback partially disrupted by an outbreak … » Read

A performance of Silent Night , composer Kevin Puts and librettist Mark Campbell’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2011 opera, might at first seem out of place on a hot August night at Wolf Trap. “[But,]” argues Michael Andor Brodeur in … » Read

The recent news that John Eliot Gardiner would not be returning to the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra (MCO) after almost a year’s absence following his physical assault on a chorister last August would seem to have settled the matter. But … » Read

The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) has cancelled a performance of works by Mozart and Brahms by the Australian-British pianist Jayson Gillham [pictured], scheduled for Aug. 15, due to “a series of introductory remarks” he made at … » Read

SANTA FE, NM— “Love is terrifying,” observes the protagonist of The Righteous , the affecting new work by Gregory Spears and Tracy K. Smith at Santa Fe Opera . A preacher elected to be governor during the 1980s, he’s … » Read

The Colburn School has received a $16.6 million gift from the Chicago-based Negaunee Foundation to endow in perpetuity the Conservatory of Music’s Negaunee Conducting Program, led by composer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. The program was … » Read