“Dmitri in the Dark” put the spotlight on Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 6 in G Major, performing it once in the dark, and then again after intermission with two actors and a trio of circus performers.
Danish Quartet Shows Mastery
The Danish String Quartet brought Haydn and Beethoven classics to Rockport Music’s Shalin Liu Performance Center on Sunday, along with an early work by their fellow Dane Hans Abrahamsen.
Why St. Louis Symphony’s California Tour Isn’t Your Typical Concert on the Road
This month, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra embarks on a tour of California, following up on visits in 2010, 2013, and 2016. Four stops will bring them up the coast, from Palm Desert in the Coachella Valley, to sunny Santa Barbara, to the University of California, Davis, and finally to Stanford University. In addition to more than 90 musicians and tons of instruments and equipment, the orchestra...
After a Conductor Fell Ill, David Robertson Stepped In—and Stayed
On a Friday night in February 2002, David Robertson stepped in to conduct the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra on tour at Carnegie Hall, replacing Hans Vonk who had suddenly fallen ill. Robertson was already music director of France’s Orchestre National de Lyon and had conducted many of America’s leading orchestras, but had led the SLSO only once before as a guest in 1999. He had a single three-hour...
Emmanuel Music Debuts Late Night of Music and Poetry
Emmanuel Music launched a new late-night initiative Saturday, adding to its evening concert series and weekly Bach cantata services. The program included several settings of Allen Ginsberg’s poetry alongside two premieres by John Harbison.
Dutchman Takes Flight
Opera is a hybrid art form: music, poetry, and theater. But in many cases the mu- sic and story are strong enough to carry an evening on their own, so orchestras perform some of the most popular operas in concert with a full cast of singers, but only the barest suggestion of costumes and staging. Listeners can enjoy the words and music in the abstract, or may close their eyes and imagine a...
Composer and Cast Carry Boston Lyric Opera Figaro
Boston Lyric Opera’s new Marriage of Figaro arrives disguised as a high-concept production, with the curtain lifting halfway through the overture to reveal a group of stagehands playing cards, ostensibly caught off-guard by the start of the performance.
Ligeti: Life and Legacy
Upon his death in 2006, György Ligeti was eulogized in the international press as a pioneering, innovative composer of indisputable importance. And deservedly so: he was one of few late 20th-century composers who pushed the boundaries of classical music while still writing compositions of genuine interest to the general public.
Gabetta Debut: Vivid and in Control
On Wednesday night, Sol Gabetta played a weighty, sometimes chilling recital for the Celebrity Series Debut Series in Longy’s Pickman Hall.
Now Playing: The Birth of Opera
Opera didn't exist in 1567, the year of Claudio Monteverdi’s birth. It was the age of the madrigal, and while vocal composition had grown more florid and Renaissance composers had experimented with theatrical contexts for music, no one had combined text, music, and theater into a consummate whole.