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Review: Viktor Ullmann's The Emperor of Atlantis

Boston Lyric Opera pulls out the stops
The Boston Lyric Opera, with Boston Classical Orchestra music director Steven Lipsitt and a company of singers and designers largely new to Boston, has given us a memorable production of the opera that composer Viktor Ullmann and poet Petr Kien created in 1943 at the Terezín concentration camp, The Emperor of Atlantis, or Death Quits .

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | February 03, 2011

Review: Lorin Maazel with the BSO

Plus, music and images at BCMS, Jeremy Denk, and BSCP's Stravinsky
Lorin Maazel made his Boston Symphony Orchestra debut in 1960, but this busy conductor has returned rarely, once in 1973 and again in 2009 as a substitute for the ailing James Levine in Beethoven's last four symphonies.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | January 26, 2011

Oedipus schmoedipus

Operas at the BSO, plus the Cantata Singers, the BYSO's Macbeth, and Christine Brewer
One of the Boston Symphony Orchestra's most famous concerts was one that didn't take place. Nearly 30 years ago, the BSO announced Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex , to be staged by Peter Sellars, with Vanessa Redgrave narrating.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | January 21, 2011

Sing, sing, sing!: The 2011 winter opera forecast

Opera is this winter's warmer
For opera lovers, the offerings last fall were at best a little thin. But this winter, it seems, everyone's doin' it.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 30, 2010

The Top 10 Classical Music Stories of 2010

The good, the not-so-good, and the departed
The good, the not-so-good, and the departed

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 21, 2010

Review: BEMF's Dido and Aeneas

Plus the BSO's Schumann and Harbison, Haochen Zhang, and a Concert for the Cure
Henry Purcell was lucky.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 07, 2010

Birthday boys: Pierre Boulez at Boston Conservatory

Plus the Mimesis Ensemble, the BU Symphony Orchestra, Collage, Garrick Ohlsson, the BSO, BMOP, and the BPO
I think the concert I'll remember most vividly from the past few weeks was the closing night of Boston Conservatory's weekend-long tribute to modern-music icon Pierre Boulez on his 85th birthday.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 01, 2010

Giving thanks: The Cantata Singers' Wyner and Vaughan Williams

Plus Boston Lyric Opera's Tosca
One of the pleasures aroused by the anticipation of a new work by Yehudi Wyner is the certainty that the outcome will arouse even greater pleasure.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | November 09, 2010

Review: Beethoven with the Discovery Ensemble, the BSO, and Opera Boston

Heroes and villains
We've had a good deal of Beethoven recently, with the high bar being set by young Courtney Lewis — a former Zander Fellow and the current assistant conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra — and his extraordinary young chamber orchestra, Discovery Ensemble .

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | October 27, 2010

Review: James Levine with the Met and the BSO

Plus Mark Morris and Boston Baroque
Sighs of relief at Symphony Hall, from patrons and management alike: James Levine, music director of both the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Metropolitan Opera, had completed a doubleheader.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | October 20, 2010

James Levine: He's back!

The conductor returns to the Boston Symphony Orchestra (and the Met)
Boston and New York have at least one thing in common. Both have missed James Levine, music director of two of the world's most renowned classical-music institutions.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | October 06, 2010

Fall Classical Preview: The power of music

And, we hope, the good health of James Levine
Here’s my Top 10 list, in chronological order, of some of the season’s most appealing and important classical music events: symphonies, chamber music, operas.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | September 14, 2010

Feeding frenzy

The media rain on James Levine's parade, plus Boston Midsummer Opera
The media rain on James Levine's parade, plus Boston Midsummer Opera

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | September 03, 2010

Mighty Mahler

Michael Tilson Thomas leads Tanglewood's opening night
Michael Tilson Thomas — music director of the San Francisco Symphony and former assistant, associate, and principal guest conductor of the BSO — was once considered a likely BSO music director.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | July 13, 2010

Fenway Park goes classical

A new landmark for the Landmarks Orchestra
"Free, friends, and Fenway Franks — all F's!" the young woman answered when I asked why she was at the very first symphonic concert at Fenway Park. "I've got one more F for you," she told me during the intermission.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | July 09, 2010

Rockport rules

A new beginning for the music festival
Pianist David Deveau, celebrating his 15th year as director of the Rockport Chamber Music Festival (now Rockport Music) and the opening of the elegant, $20 million Shalin Liu Performance Center on Main Street, said that the sound in the new hall, at the rehearsal he'd heard that afternoon of the original chamber version of Wagner's Siegfried Idyll , had moved him to tears.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | June 15, 2010

Dream on

Heinrich Schütz’s swan song; the Pops’ 125th-anniversary commission
Some lovers of religious music consider Heinrich Schütz even greater than Bach, who was born 13 years after Schütz’s death.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | May 27, 2010

Blythe spirit

Opera Boston’s Offenbach, Thomas Quasthoff, the BSO, Boston Baroque, and BU’s Sondheim
Leaving the Cutler Majestic after the opening night of Opera Boston’s latest Offenbach, La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein , you could see the smiling faces of an audience that had had a good time.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | May 17, 2010

Ye gods!

BLO’s Idomeneo, BU’s Susannah, Garfein’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Zander’s Stravinsky, and Pollini’s Chopin
Much beautiful music turns up in the 18th-century operatic form that’s probably most alien to a modern audience.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | April 28, 2010

All you need is love

Marylou Speaker Churchill memorial, Emmanuel Music’s Haydn/Schoenberg, and more
Outpourings of love have been flooding the Boston musical scene.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | April 21, 2010

Midnight ramblers

Rock legend Peter Wolf serves dinner and verse to the Phoenix ’s poet .
In rock ’n’ roll, it was possible to live in Harvard Square, be a musician — a local musician — and be able to pay your rent and find restaurants where you could eat and buy food and survive, and feel that there was a sense of . . . future, with hope and opportunity.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | April 08, 2010

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