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 ...

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 ...

As far as Gustav Mahler was concerned, a symphony should be just like the world, embracing everything. On Friday, Sir András Schiff applied that principle to the piano recital, marking his return to ...

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 ...

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 ...

The Mass in B minor was the culmination of Bach’s religious and artistic life. A marvel of rhetorical flourish, the score weaves together lyrical beauty and operatic intensity to relay an overall ...

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 ...

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.

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...