Igor Fyodorovitch Stravinsky

Latest Articles

Review: Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky

Passion among the titans
"I want to breathe ," says Coco Chanel as she cuts off her corset.
By BETSY SHERMAN | June 24, 2010

Theme and variations

Boston Ballet’s ‘Ultimate Balanchine’
George Balanchine was famous for “non-story” ballets, but when you put three of his works — the usual number to fill up an evening — together, you always get some kind of narrative.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 13, 2010

Sparring with the Ultimate

Boston Ballet in The Four Temperaments, Apollo, and Theme and Variations
There’s never been a more brilliant exemplar of the ballet art than George Balanchine.
By MARICA B. SIEGEL | May 11, 2010

Ye gods!

BLO’s Idomeneo, BU’s Susannah, Garfein’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Zander’s Stravinsky, and Pollini’s Chopin
Much beautiful music turns up in the 18th-century operatic form that’s probably most alien to a modern audience.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | April 28, 2010

Conductor karaoke

Xavier Le Roy at the ICA
Surrealists who work with movement have to manage a demanding slight-of-hand.
By DEBRA CASH | April 06, 2010

Here’s looking at you

Boston Ballet sees into the heart of Coppélia
Set in the usual small village — this one in the Carpathian Mountains of Eastern Europe — Coppélia might look like just another pleasant 19th-century ballet about a boy, a girl, and another girl. But appearances can be deceiving — and that’s theme of this work, whose title character is a life-size mechanical doll.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | April 30, 2010

Stuff at night

The BSO without Levine, Yo-Yo Ma, the Cantata Singers, American Classics, the Zerounian Ensemble
This week’s health headlines also included the announcement from the Boston Symphony Orchestra that music director James Levine has been sidelined again, from the “excruciating pain” he’s been suffering since his surgery for a herniated disc.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | April 29, 2010

Bach beat

Lions and lambs
Composers John Harbison and Peter Lieberson are big presences this spring.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | March 08, 2010

Double trouble

BLO's The Turn of the S crew, Levine's Carter and Simon Boccanegra, Teatro Lirico, the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet, and more
Boston Lyric Opera's debut Opera Annex production was so good in so many ways, it's painful that one bad idea just about sank it.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | February 09, 2010

Stopping time

The BSO, Peter Maxwell Davies, BCMS, BMOP, Mark Morris, and Christian Tetzlaff
BSO music director James Levine has returned to Symphony Hall for the first time since October, when back surgery put him out of commission.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | February 02, 2010

Let's rock

The BSO, the Cantata Singers, Discovery Ensemble, and BCMS
WGBH radio has ended its 58-year tradition of live Friday-afternoon BSO broadcasts, and it doesn't seem that public outcry is going to change that.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | January 25, 2010

John Harbison plus 10

Picking from a packed concert schedule
Classical music in Boston is so rich, having to pick 10 special events for this winter preview is more like one-tenth of the performances I'm actually looking forward to.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | January 05, 2010

2009: The year in Classical

Beating the quease
This was a queasy year for classical music.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | January 04, 2010

2009: The year in dance

Milestones and memories
You could say there were two tremendous forces that propelled dance into the world of modern culture: the Ballets Russes of Serge Diaghilev and the choreography of Merce Cunningham.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | December 22, 2009

Open spaces

The BSO's Brahms, Ben Zander's Wagner, Collage New Music, and the BEMF's Handel
In my review of the memorable Brahms performances Sir Simon Rattle led with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra for the Celebrity Series of Boston last month, I should have mentioned that one decision responsible for the beauty and spaciousness of the orchestral sound was the placement of the first and second violin sections on opposite sides of the stage.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 02, 2009

Creationists

Simon Rattle and the BPO, Fabio Luisi and the BSO, John Harbison and Emmanuel Music
Simon Rattle and the BPO, Fabio Luisi and the BSO, John Harbison and Emmanuel Music
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | November 18, 2009

Sustainability

Merce Cunningham in the Park Avenue Armory; Christopher Wheeldon at City Center
If you wanted to know what happened at the Merce Cunningham memorial a week ago Wednesday in the Park Avenue Armory, you could get a thousand answers.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | November 04, 2009

Review: Bad Boy Made Good

The revival of George Anthiel's 1924 Ballet méchanique
If Igor Stravinsky’s Sacre du printemps paved the way for modern rock, then George Antheil’s Ballet mécanique made possible every genre of contemporary music with “noise” or “metal” in its name.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | November 03, 2009

Blessings: mixed and otherwise

Boston Baroque’s Amadigi; Opera Boston’s Tancredi; the BSO’s Beethoven; the Borromeo’s Bartók; Brahms from BCMS and BSOCP
By odd coincidence, in recent weeks we’ve had performances of two important operatic rarities, landmark early works a century apart: 30-year-old Handel’s Amadigi (1715) and 20-year-old Rossini’s Tancredi (1813, his 10th opera!).
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | October 28, 2009

In the swim

Guerilla Opera, von Stade’s farewell, the BSO, Handel and Haydn, the BPO, and that Tosca
My head’s swimming.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | October 14, 2009

He is a real composer

And don't you try to tell Joshua Newton otherwise
Joshua Newton wants you to know he doesn't write classical music.
By EMILY PARKHURST | October 07, 2009

The roar of the crowd

‘Opening Night at Symphony,’ Russell Sherman, the Discovery Ensemble, Boston Musica Viva, and the Bostonians
I wasn’t there, but the opening-night dissatisfaction with the Met’s new Tosca was widely reported.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | October 13, 2009

Leon Kirchner, 1919–2009

In Memoriam
Craggy, tender, passionate, witty, rough-edged, lyrical, uncompromising, Leon Kirchner's music, so like the man himself, made an indelible impression. Even in his recent appearance at a 90th-birthday tribute concert at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the old fire and wit, the frankness and the refusal to sentimentalize, were there.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | September 23, 2009

Providence Fall Preview Listings 2009

Music, theater, art, festivals and more in the coming months
A page of listings for local music, theater, art, festivals and more this fall.
By PHOENIX STAFF | September 17, 2009

Midsummer madness

Mark Morris, Yo-Yo Ma, and the Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood, Mozart in Boston, Meyerbeer at Bard
After a relatively quiet summer, I saw Boston Midsummer Opera's Cosí fan tutte at BU's Tsai Center. Then I raced out to Tanglewood for a Mark Morris program accompanied by Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax, a BSO matinee with Ma, and all six concerts in the annual Festival of Contemporary Music.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | September 29, 2009

The old is new

Birdsongs of the Mesozoic bring back Roger Miller
Birdsongs of the Mesozoic bring back Roger
By MATT PARISH | July 22, 2009

Technical difficulties

The trouble with Tristan da Cunha
Last week, Tristan da Cunha and I brainstormed some strategies by which they might finally hit the big time. Like, getting a charismatic frontman.
By MATT PARISH | June 23, 2009

Springer vs. Nero!

Monteverdi's Poppea opens the Boston Early Music Festival, plus the Cantata Singers, the Discovery Ensemble, and Barbara Cook at the Pops
Two opera productions overlapping at the Calderwood Pavilion exploit exploitation.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | June 10, 2009

Cannes goods

Tarantino, Antichrist , and a well-lit genitalia show; why the French film festival is like no other
Quick — name a world-class film-festival administrator willing to reveal that at age 12 he was titillated by the sight of clodhopper-shod Minnie Mouse stomping on Mickey's tail in a French comic book.
By LISA NESSELSON | May 27, 2009

Dancing in a new direction

Notes from 'Ballets Russes 2009'
The 100th birthday of Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes prompted the expected centennial tributes in Boston: a "Diaghilev's Ballets Russes 1909–1929: Twenty Years That Changed the World of Art" symposium and exhibition at Harvard University in April, and a "Ballets Russes 2009" festival this month.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | January 14, 2010