Like most of his oeuvre, Richard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde is not for the faint of heart, be they singers, orchestra musicians, or audience members. At more than 650 pages, the full score can take anywhere from three and three-quarter to … » Read

The Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation awarded the 2025 Ensemble Prizes to Collective lovemusic and Tacet(i) on Oct. 17. The prize, established in 2020, carries a €75,000 cash award. Founded in 2018 by clarinetist Adam Starkie and flutist … » Read

After 36 years, Jay Fishman plans to retire this month as artistic director and conductor of the Minnesota Sinfonia. His departure will also mark the end of the ensemble itself. The annual budget ranges between $400,000 and $700,000, an amount … » Read

Who would have thought that the opening of a concert space in a subterranean crypt would be a significant development on the New York music scene? Death of Classical, the organization that presents often-challenging programs in what it describes … » Read

LONDON—Leonard Bernstein’s A Quiet Place has a reputation as a problem work. The sequel to his 1952 two-hander Trouble in Tahiti , it explores the repercussions of the turbulent marriage depicted in the earlier work. Badly received at … » Read

Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, who turns 80 in December, continues to confound medical experts who told him he had 12 to 18 months to live when he was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, three years ago. Within the … » Read

Pulitzer Prize-winning librettist Royce Vavrek is the new artistic director for the Toronto-based Against the Grain Theater (AtG). He succeeds Joel Ivany, the founder of the Toronto-based opera company who left in the summer of 2023 to head up … » Read

Monteverdi Choir and Orchestras (MCO), which performs regularly in Central London at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, has announced a new partnership with the Trinity Laban Conservatory of Music and Dance. The collaboration will enable the school, … » Read

LONDON—Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw may be a masterpiece, but it’s a delicate one, especially with child abuse such a hot button issue today. The composer went about as far as anyone could in 1954 to foreground an … » Read

A visit by the London Philharmonic and its principal conductor Edward Gardner on Oct. 11 kicked off the 71 st season of the Philharmonic Society of Orange County with a program that featured Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky. [The orchestra comes to … » Read