“[Bleeping] family,” Jeff Goldblum’s Zeus mutters in an early episode of Netflix’s Kaos. He could easily have been referring to the dysfunctional brood at the heart of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart’s ...

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 ...

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 ...

The Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra under founding conductor Benjamin Zander opened their season Sunday at Symphony Hall with an intense program devoted to the relationship between old and new.

“A classical music concert isn’t a political event,” Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra conductor Benjamin Zander said before Sunday’s performance at Symphony Hall. Even so, he conceded, the ...

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 ...

“Thunder is good,” Mark Twain wrote. “Thunder is impressive. But it is lightning that does the work.” A couple lightning bolts struck at Symphony Hall Friday night in the form of the Handel & Haydn ...

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, ...

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 ...

Not every night does the music of Beethoven conjure the words and sentiments of Mahatma Gandhi, E. M. Forster, and Louis Spohr. Then again, not every evening at Symphony Hall proves so stimulating as ...

One Response to “Nelsons opens BSO’s Shostakovich festival with a riveting Eleventh Symphony” Posted Apr 13, 2025 at 4:51 pm by Gerry Katz Thanks for identifying the encore. However, I thought it ...

Some ballets, like The Rite of Spring, turn up on concert programs so frequently that it can be hard to imagine experiencing them in a theater. Gabriela Ortiz seems to have taken that reality to heart ...