Harmonia Mundi
Conductor Benjamin Zander put the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra to challenging work at Symphony Hall, while, on record, Isabelle Faust delivers a vital, urgent, and engrossing traversal of the Britten Violin Concerto.
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Violist Timothy Ridout’s new double-album “A Lionel Tertis Celebration” is heartily recommended; soprano Asmik Grigorian’s “Laws of Solitude” not so much.
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Spiffy discs of French music featuring the Orchestre National de Lyon led by Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider and François-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles.
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The French chamber orchestra Divertimento’s debut recording, which includes “classical” and “folk” tracks, is enchanting and often thought-provoking.
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Aside from English pronunciation issues, the singers put over this remarkably polished and attractive opera by one of England’s great seventeenth-century composers with great panache, matching the superb instrumentalists.
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Conductor René Jacobs restores missing bits of this beloved opera’s story, and Ukrainian soprano Kateryna Kasper glows as Ännchen.
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Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.
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I am honestly puzzled by the casualness or, at times, ferocity with which some people nowadays reject classical music as inherently narrow or elitist.
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Texturally, François-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles’ serve up diaphanous performances.
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Americans is a winningly-programmed, strongly-realized effort.
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Music Commentary: New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Fest versus French Quarter Fest