Classical Music
A new recording of Ferdinando Paër’s Leonora gives us characters we love (or love to hate) in a fresh light
A major contribution to the recorded repertory, making clear just how effective Saint-Saëns’s The Yellow Princess could be on stage, its nowadays objectionable title repudiated by its varied and nuanced approach to the evocation of the exotic.
I am beginning to suspect that Franz Schreker was the most effective of the many semi-forgotten opera composers who were active in the German lands during the first decades of the twentieth century (that is, ones less well known today than Strauss, Berg, and Kurt Weill).
Marvelously accomplished albums from American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan.
Two first-rate albums: pianist Lara Downes successfully reconsiders Scott Joplin and the New York Youth Symphony plays Florence Price and others with panache.
A varied buffet of fresh musical experiences from recent decades and from the mid-1700s.
There are times – and we’ve been living in these for several years now – when boldness is required, especially from artists.
This first-rate performance highlights the special attractions of the “half-serious” operatic genre.
Boston’s 15-year-old Guerilla Opera releases a recording of a fresh take on the old Grimm Brothers tale, to haunting, ritualistic music for four singers and four players.
Music Commentary: Jean Sibelius’s Violin Concerto — The Universal Concerto?
Sibelius’s Violin Concerto is almost something of a phenomenon now: in just eight months, I’ve heard it played by three different fiddlers — Baiba Skride, Lisa Batiashvili, and Inmo Yang.
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