After three decades, the Goldner String Quartet will play its final concert at the end of next season, on Aug. 5, 2024. The venue for the group’s swan song—the Australian Festival of Chamber Music—is thoroughly appropriate: the … » Read

South Korean conductor Hankyeol Yoon, 29, has won the Herbert von Karajan Young Conductors Award, a biannual competition whose latest iteration took place last weekend at the Salzburg Festival. He was among the 323 candidates from 54 countries … » Read

The opening of the three-week Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) on Aug. 5 marked two significant “firsts” for the 76-year-old event. The appointment of violinist Nicola Benedetti as director this past March meant that this season … » Read

HarrisonParrott has signed two new artists, one of them new to management, the other having had several, even though he’s only 22 years old. That would be Swedish-Belarusian violinist Daniel Lozakovich, a recent member of a piano trio at … » Read

SALZBURG, Austria — Cecilia Bartoli has a favorite role she wished she could sing. “There is one character which I was always in love with since I started my Mozart career, and it’s Don Giovanni,” she said. “With me, … » Read

On Aug. 12-13, the Asian Youth Orchestra (AYO) will perform for the first time in Hong Kong since the death in 2020 of its co-founder and longtime director Richard Pontzious. An American who was conductor-in-residence at the prestigious Shanghai … » Read

LONDON—A puzzled silence fell over the Royal Albert Hall after the premiere of Kafka’s Earplugs , a BBC commission by Irish composer Gerald Barry. But not for long: “That was rubbish!” shouted one man from the center … » Read

LENOX, Mass.—This year’s five-day Festival of Contemporary Music (FCM) at Tanglewood proved dramatically that plenty of women are not only composing music but performing and conducting it with skill and panache. In addition, the … » Read

The musicians of the Boston Symphony Orchestra have ratified a three-year labor agreement that will take effect on Aug. 28. In a joint statement, all parties to the agreement praised “a deeply collaborative process that strengthened our … » Read

In 1854, when he was only five years old, Thomas “Blind Tom” Wiggins reputedly composed The Rainstorm , the first of hundreds of works for piano. His age alone made the feat noteworthy; the fact that he was blind and enslaved made it … » Read