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LLOYD SCHWARTZ

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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

Stuff at night

The BSO without Levine, Yo-Yo Ma, the Cantata Singers, American Classics, the Zerounian Ensemble
This week’s health headlines also included the announcement from the Boston Symphony Orchestra that music director James Levine has been sidelined again, from the “excruciating pain” he’s been suffering since his surgery for a herniated disc.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | April 29, 2010

What's new

BMOP, and the Christian Wolff festival
The timely highlight of Gil Rose’s latest BMOP (Boston Modern Orchestra Project) concert, “Strings Attached,” was a new/old piece (2004, revised 2009) for two string orchestras by Scott Wheeler now called Crazy Weather — the new title taken from a John Ashbery poem that begins, “It’s this crazy weather we’ve been having.”

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | March 23, 2010

Welsh rarebit

Boston Lyric Opera's imported Ariadne
Boston Lyric Opera hasn't had much success lately with either its home-grown or its second-hand products, but its latest import — the Welsh National Opera's 2004 production of Ariadne auf Naxos, Richard Strauss's third collaboration with Hugo von Hofmannsthal, his favorite librettist — is a charmer.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | March 16, 2010

Bach beat

Lions and lambs
Composers John Harbison and Peter Lieberson are big presences this spring.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | March 08, 2010

Snakebite

Opera Boston presents the world premiere of Madame White Snake; plus the Leipzig Gewandhaus and Boston Philharmonic
"I can no longer stand to let this travesty continue," sings a character in Madame White Snake , the new opera based on an ancient Chinese legend co-commissioned by Opera Boston, which has just presented its world premiere. I'm afraid I shared the sentiment at last Friday's performance.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | March 03, 2010

Heaven!

The BSO and Boston Baroque at their best
Martin Pearlman's edition of Monteverdi's Vespro della Beate Vergine, with inserted antiphons to suggest an actual service, remains a masterpiece of historical research and inspired guesswork.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | February 25, 2010

Double trouble

BLO's The Turn of the S crew, Levine's Carter and Simon Boccanegra, Teatro Lirico, the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet, and more
Boston Lyric Opera's debut Opera Annex production was so good in so many ways, it's painful that one bad idea just about sank it.

By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ | February 09, 2010

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