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 ...

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 ...

1. Music by Korngold, Mozart and Andrew Norman. Kirill Petrenko/Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra The Berlin Philharmonic’s visits to Boston haven’t once, in this century at least, disappointed.

The New England Philharmonic offered a typically bracing program on the theme of New England at Boston University’s Tsai Performance Center on Sunday afternoon. In its exploration of local landscapes ...

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 ...

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 ...

Since its founding in the late 90s, the Calder String Quartet has developed a sterling reputation for its wide-ranging programming and championing of contemporary music. Friday night at Jordan Hall, ...

Complete cycles of the Beethoven symphonies aren’t for the faint of heart. Just ask Lorin Maazel, whose 1988 traversal of the set included a respirator in the dressing room—just in case. Then again, ...

Sometimes, despite its imposing grandeur and marvelous acoustic, Symphony Hall can feel like an extension of one’s living room. On Friday, it radiated homey vibes. Part of this owed to the Boston ...

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 ...

In music as in love, passion can be a double-edged sword. Take the Jerusalem Quartet’s performance at Jordan Hall on Friday night. Nobody’s about to argue that the ensemble’s Celebrity ...

“Progress depends above all on the temper of the nation,” Anthony Eden told the House of Commons in 1938. “And that temper must find expression in a firm spirit.” The former foreign secretary and ...