“[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 ...

One Response to “Nelsons closes BSO’s Beethoven symphony cycle with glimpse of Promised Land” Posted Feb 07, 2025 at 2:43 pm by John L. Hodge This is a letter that I sent to the Boston Globe, which ...

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 ...

The Handel and Haydn Society might be the country’s oldest performing arts institution, but it certainly is projecting—and performing with–the vigor of youth this week. On Monday, the ensemble ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

“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 ...

That the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra has made a habit of performing the symphonies of Gustav Mahler shouldn’t blind one to the fact that doing so is completely out of the ordinary: this music ...

Channing Yu conducted the Mercury Orchestra Wednesday night at Jordan Hall. File photo: Mercury Orchestra Works based upon Irish themes once graced the symphonic repertoire. Following in the footsteps ...

There’s madness in love and, as Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Die tote Stadt reminds, there’s madness in death, too. On Thursday night, the Boston Symphony Orchestra brought the composer’s operatic study ...

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 ...