Jonathan Blumhofer
Bravo to Courtney Lewis and the Discovery Ensemble for programming Esa-Pekka Salonen’s “Five Images” and pulling off such an engrossing performance.
Read MoreChamber music fans will know that the current season will be the last for the extraordinary Tokyo String Quartet (TSQ), which opted to disband rather than replace retiring violinist Kikuei Ikada and violist Kazuhide Isomura.
Read MoreA festive month of music, with The Emerson Quartet, A Far Cry, Tallis Scholars, and the Borromeo Quartet among the standout performers.
Read MoreIf the BSO wanted to make a statement about where it might be headed based on the strong artistic results of the current season, it certainly could have. That it didn’t is a missed opportunity and hopefully not a sign of things to come.
Read MoreWith “In Seven Days,” Thomas Adés seems to have developed a musical language that’s complex yet not forbidding: there’s no sense that his music is weighed down by expectations of the past, even as he freely refers to archaic compositional forms.
Read MoreHandel & Haydn Society captured all of this and then some with a vigorous, focused performance that was a marvel of controlled fury.
Read MoreSaariaho’s music is often lush and vibrant, to be sure, but it also can lose track of its musical purpose and meander excessively from time to time. Not so in “Circle Map.”
Read MoreNovember features a number of visits from celebrated performers, from Kelly O’Connor and Thomas Adés to the Takács Quartet. Music for Food also presents its second concert/benefit of the season.
Read MoreThat Symphony Hall was probably a third empty is inexplicable, but, if you missed any of these concerts, it’s truly your loss. These were among the BSO’s benchmark performances of the last decade.
Read MoreIf you think contemporary music is the domain of fusty academics and has no bearing on (or relationship to) the outside world, you really need to check out “Canzonas Americanas.”
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