Classical Music

Concert Review: Boston Landmarks Orchestra — Dancing Freely at the Hatch Shell

August 21, 2024
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Performing with the Boston Landmarks Orchestra, dynamic Canadian violinist Adrian Anantawan made music by Piazzolla and Florence Price burn blue hot.

Classical Album Review: Baroque Music — But Guitar, No Harpsichord — Beautiful!

August 19, 2024
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In Handel’s day, excerpts from his operas were often played at home, without singers. They sound great on this new recording by the group humorously (and quite inaccurately) called False Consonance.

Opera Album Review: One of Saint-Saëns’s Best Operas — Finally on Disc!

August 15, 2024
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We have a recording of “Déjanire,” its first ever. And it’s splendid, with a superb cast, an insightful conductor, and the orchestra and chorus of the very city in which it was first performed a century earlier!

Concert Review: Boston Landmarks Orchestra — Weighty Fun

August 10, 2024
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Conductor Christopher Wilkins and Boston Landmarks Orchestra routinely present serious, challenging programs: but there is always room left for some partying.

Opera Album Review: The Met’s Biggest New-Opera Hit — Kevin Puts’s “The Hours”

August 8, 2024
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When the front page of the newspaper is getting me down, I can feel at least somewhat buoyed by remembering that we live in a world that can produce such profoundly touching and empathetic works of art as Kevin Puts’s “The Hours”.

Classical Album Reviews: Two Pianists — George Li’s “Movements” and Bruce Liu’s “Waves”

August 7, 2024
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George Li’s latest release showcases a budding artist with a growing command of musical structure, technique, and character; Bruce Liu’s got the measure of Erik Satie’s music — next time, perhaps, he can take on more of it.

Classical Album Reviews: Manfred Honeck Conducts Bruckner and Janine Jansen Plays Prokofiev & Sibelius

August 6, 2024
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Conductor Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony deliver a conspicuously satisfying and fluent Bruckner Seventh. Dutch violinist Janine Jansen also possesses an uncommon ability to enliven the familiar.

Classical Album Reviews: Eric Coates Orchestral Works, Vol. 4, and Prokofiev Orchestral Works

August 5, 2024
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John Wilson and his players clearly have the measure of Eric Coates’ tuneful, often clever, style and deliver it to the hilt; Aziz Shokhakimov and the Strasbourgers, though still on a learning curve, have a bright future ahead of them.

Jazz Album Review: Jeff Scott’s “Passion for Bach and Coltrane”

July 29, 2024
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A belated appreciation of one of 2023’s most interesting releases – this Grammy-winning “compendium” may not be a strongly unified work, but its individual parts are eloquent residents of the Place Between classical and jazz.

Jazz Commentary: String Quartet Omnibus, 2024

July 25, 2024
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Here is music of depth, music to hear and to think about in a Time of Troubles. But who will play it again? Who will listen? And who will buy?

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