Jonathan Blumhofer
Mother Nature provided singular and poetic assistance during Sunday’s afternoon outing at Tanglewood.
Read More
At its best, Mark Twain emerges in this biography as much a live wire as ever: brash, outspoken, and overflowing with exasperating contradictions.
Read More
Could it be that Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Symphony in F-sharp is the big kahuna of our symphonic music?
Read More
Composer Michael Daugherty’s lovely survey of 20th-century touchstones continues; violinist Philippe Quint plays a lineup made up (mostly) of commissions.
Read More
Pianist Daniil Trifonov’s no stranger to playing Rachmaninoff with Nelsons and the BSO—they delivered a memorable outing of this very piano concerto in 2019—and, while Saturday’s traversal was periodically rusty, it built in spirit and tightness as the evening proceeded.
Read More
On “hommages,” United Strings of Europe is technically secure, rhythmically precise, richly colored, and ever attuned to matters of nuance and spirit. Tchaikovsky’s output could be uneven, and this installment of Alpesh Chauhan’s continuing traversal of the Russian icon’s orchestral music with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra is proof.
Read More
Neeme Järvi, true to his usual form, favors brisk tempos, which tend to keep things from getting bogged down in Wilhelm Furtwängler’s bog of a Symphony No.2; Nicholas Collon leads a stupendous recording of Sibelius’s Symphony No. 5.
Read More
Violinist Lea Birringer does dazzlingly right by Sibelius and Szymanowski concertos and cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason finds life and defiance in Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 2.
Read More
Pianist Bertrand Chamayou demonstrates just how mercurial and influential Ravel could be; composer-pianist Stephen Hough’s Piano Concerto casts a Ravel-like spell.
Read More
Cultural Commentary: Time for Arts Groups, Large and Small, to Display Some Bona Fide Irreverence
The question before arts organizations and companies is the same one that looms over the rest of us: will they—can they—act before it’s too late?
Read More