The most familiar of those was Ravel’s lush Shéhérazade, a collection of three songs that seem tailor-made for Bridges and her excellent accompanist, pianist Mark Markham.

In the outer movements, Nelsons and the BSO offered playing that elevated tone color to the level of tempo, harmony, texture, and rhythm. “Nuages” was a study in atmosphere and nuance, its shifting ...

What is an encore supposed to do? Delight, entrance, entertain? Send an audience out into the night with smiles on their faces? Or should it be more substantial and offer a serious musical statement?

Beware of ideas, Joseph Stalin once warned: they are more powerful than guns. “We would not let our enemies have guns,” he went on. “Why should we let them have ideas?” That statement might make a ...

The Handel and Haydn Society might be the country’s oldest performing arts institution, but it certainly is projecting—and performing with–the vigor of youth this week. On Monday, the ensemble ...

Who says old dogs can’t learn new tricks? The Boston Symphony Orchestra—now in its 144 th season—trotted out a fresh one with conductor Dima Slobodeniouk on Thursday night: eschewing the usual ...

Neither snow nor ice nor frigid temperatures stayed the Handel & Haydn Society from their appointment Sunday afternoon. One day after a Nor’easter dropped nearly two feet of snow on Boston and as the ...

Just like that, Boston’s heavyweight classical musical ensembles are both back in action: one day after the Boston Symphony Orchestra kicked off its 143 rd season, the Handel & Haydn Society followed ...

Whoever planned the first month of concerts at Symphony Hall this year deserves a pat on the back: rarely, if ever, do four consecutive weeks of programs, and from different artists, hold together so ...

Music by Mahler, Loeffler, Koechlin, Saint-Saëns and Beach. Boston Symphony Chamber Players/Earl Lee. October 5. The upcoming 250 th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence promises plenty of ...

As a rule, Germans don’t do American-style hyperbole. So perhaps the billboards recently up in Berlin declaring conductor Joana Mallwitz “the next big thing” were meant more as statements of settled ...

There’s nothing like an anniversary to encourage an orchestra’s programming. Take Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Intent on marking the occasion of Dmitri Shostakovich’s death fifty ...