Classical Music
Throughout these Études, Driver’s playing marries tonal warmth with textural precision.
Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.
Attention is being paid today to talented composers who have been sidelined or disdained because of their race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation. Reynaldo Hahn qualifies on several counts.
One might risk hyperbole by saying so, but in this instance such recklessness is worth it: this album sounds like Brahms as he ought to be played and sung.
For Alex Ross, Wagnerism is as profound and far-reaching an aesthetic ideology – for good, ill, and all degrees in between – as any.
Fiddler Daniel Hope’s new all-Schnittke disc with pianist Alexey Botvinov brings with it a level of authority that demands respect.
New podcast host Elizabeth Howard talks to Neal Goren about contemporary opera: the trends, attracting new audiences, and how opera can be adapted for the internet.
Just in time for Passover: another fine world-premiere Rossini recording, the 1827 French version of his Moses-in-Egypt opera.
Violinist Hilary Hahn’s blend of musical curiosity, expressive savvy, and technical excellence doesn’t often appear in one person.
Arts Commentary: In Memoriam, James Levine (1943-2021)
Do any of his accomplishments – including James Levine’s raising the level of an orchestra’s playing to new heights – really excuse sexual predation?I’d argue in the negative.
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