Mastery

Respighi: Beyond Rome

Respighi’s set of variations is cast away for his more
‘Roman’ repertoire.
By David Hurwitz

Funeral for a Kindred Spirit

The beautiful stoicism of Brahms’s Nänie defies absolute categories.
By Thomas May

When the Shoe Fits

Prokofiev’s Cinderella is much more than a charming retelling of the beloved fairy tale.
By Thomas May

A Simple Love Story

It’s no accident that Puccini’s La bohème remains the most performed opera.
By Robert Levine

L’amico Fritz

Mascagni delivers beautiful music, libretto be damned.
By Robert Levine

Things that Go Bump in the Night

Dvořák goes Grimm with his four symphonic poems on Czech folk ballads.
By David Hurwitz

Approachable Schoenberg

The composer’s Chamber Symphony No. 2 weds harmony and dissonance.
By Menon Dwarka

Music's Greatest Innovator

Celebrating Haydn
By David Hurwitz

Gluck's Bold Move

The composer’s Don Juan bridged the Baroque and Classical periods in explosive fashion.
By David Hurwitz

Celebrating Messiah

After 250 years, we still sing ‘Hallelujah’ for Handel.
By Ben Finane

Piano Became My Confessor — Jean-Michel Blais

Jean-Michel Blais on his music, his Tourette’s, and finding his Steinway Sound.
By Justin D. Joffe

Seeking Carlos

Maestro Carlos Kleiber holds the record for the greatest Beethoven Fifth.
By Daniel Felsenfeld

Searching for Samuel Barber

The American master has temporarily disappeared.
By Daniel Felsenfeld

What Were All Those Sorrowful Songs About?

Henryk Górecki’s Third Symphony is a chart-topping anomaly. 
By Daniel Felsenfeld

Games Beyond Frontiers

Stravinsky’s Jeu de cartes offers a vision of a fading and faded world.
By Daniel Felsenfeld

The Rise and Fall of Cécile Chaminade

A hopeless Romantic in a time of progress
By Robert Hillinck

Raw Emotion, Coagulated Blood, Vodka and Gunpowder

The Substance of Shostakovich’s Fourth
By Jens F. Laurson

Music in the Afternoon

What Hemingway can teach us about performing-arts criticism
By Ben Finane

What Makes a Best Seller

Our man looks to land bylines better than this one — with the
help of James Patterson.
By Damian Fowler

Genius and Revision

The sound world and temperament of Henri Dutilleux
By Jason Victor Serinus 

Freezing a Moment of Infinite Possibility

Pianist Jeremy Denk on the stakes of recording Bach’s Goldberg Variations
By Thomas May

Portrait of a Portraitist

The Life and Times of Virgil Thomson
By Jed Distler

Practice, Practice

Practice makes perfect, but not always.
By Arnold Steinhardt

Built to Last

Chopin turns two hundred, with authority.
By Jed Distler

The Copland You Know - and the Copland You Don't Know

How the son of a Lithuanian immigrant discovered the American sound.
By Colin Eatock

Up the Hill, Down the Hill

Alpine Symphony seeks out the narrative that underlies all of Western classical music. 

By Menon Dwarka

Lunatics, Lovers & Poets

Britten’s masterful treatment of A Midsummer Night’s Dream has a magic all its own.
By Thomas May

Embracing the Planets

Holst’s suite of tone poems is much more than a pristine
entrée into classical music.
By Ben Finane

Verdi & Wagner Together at Last

The polar opposites share  a bicentennial — and perhaps more than we think. 
By Colin Eatock

Madness, Thievery, and a Train Full of Dynamite

The story of Hans Rott, the greatest symphonist who never was.
By Jens F. Laurson

Eternal Joy

The persistence of Beethoven’s Ninth
By Rebecca Schmid

Franz Liszt: Disparate Genius

His bicentennial encourages a fuller understanding of the much-maligned Franz Liszt
By Thomas May

The Swan

A simple tune proves anything but easy.
By Arnold Steinhardt

Alfred Brendel: The Thinking Pianist’s Man

Retired at Eighty-Five, and Still a Mire of Complexities
By Daniel Felsenfeld