There are few great works upon which fame has shone more unwillingly than Edward Elgar’s Violin Concerto in B minor—at least so far as the Boston Symphony Orchestra is concerned. True, this ...

Tianhui Ng led the New England Philharmonic (NEP) through a complex yet intriguing series of world premieres and symphonic dances Saturday night at Jordan Hall. This program juxtaposed contemporary ...

Character matters—or so we’re often told. It certainly counts in music, and in various ways, as the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons demonstrated in their traversal of works by Mozart and ...

If the two immediate standing ovations on Thursday evening were any indication, sometimes the only response to a performance is “Again!” Such was the case at the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s ...

Concerts of the New England Philharmonic have always featured a mix of new and rarely performed works, and a conductor with a flair for both. But this season has witnessed a transition. Each concert ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Andris Nelsons’ annual opera-in-concert weekends with the Boston Symphony Orchestra usually showcase the conductor at his best. This year’s surely did, with the culminating installment of the ...

There was something fitting about the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra offering Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 on Sunday at Symphony Hall. It wasn’t just because the sleigh bells at the start of its ...

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 ...