Some composers—like John Adams, the author of The Dharma at Big Sur, Gnarly Buttons, and Slonimsky’s Earbox—can’t resist a catchy title. Edgar Meyer, on the other hand, seems to prefer keeping things ...

Nothing lasts forever, as Taylor Swift reminds us, be they relationships, careers, or music festivals. So it happened that the clock ran out Saturday on both the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s “Decoding ...

Composers can’t always be trusted to objectively assess their own works. However, William Walton’s appraisal of his Cello Concerto holds up: “It is to my mind the best of my three concertos,” he wrote ...

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’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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Sometimes good things come in threes. Other times, they happen in fours. Take the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s concert at Symphony Hall on Thursday night. There were, on the one hand, a trio of debuts: ...

Lang Lang remains a classical music superstar—especially among the younger listeners—and the pianist’s sold-out appearance Friday night in Symphony Hall provided a showcase for his dazzling virtuosity ...

On paper, the lineup for pianists Víkingur Ólafsson and Yuja Wang’s duo recital on Friday at Symphony Hall didn’t make much sense. John Cage and Conlon Nancarrow, for instance, don’t normally share ...

Tis the season for musical marathons, at least in New England. A little more than a week after the Boston Symphony Orchestra wrapped its survey of the complete Beethoven symphonies, the Celebrity ...

The end of a matter, the writer of Ecclesiastes tells us, is better than its beginning. Though that reality isn’t borne out in every situation, the sentiment largely applies to Beethoven’s nine ...