Lorraine Hunt Lieberson

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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

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

Almost

BLO's Carmen, the BSO's Beethoven, Emmanuel Music's Haydn and Schoenberg
The Boston Lyric Opera comes maddeningly close to having a good Carmen . (The production continues at the Shubert Theatre through November 17.) Keith Lockhart leads a superb orchestra and chorus and a cast of plausible singers/actors in a compelling if not spine-tingling performance.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | November 12, 2009

Beloved of God

Levine's Mozart with the BSO, plus Gabriela Montero and Benjamin Zander with the Boston Philharmonic
One of my most profound musical experiences took place when I was still a graduate student.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | February 26, 2009

Year in Classical: Celebrate!

Comings and goings
In Handel's Hercules, the demented Dejanira's loss is still so painful, I was afraid to listen; now I don't want to hear anything else.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 22, 2008

Altar and ego

Mark Morris’s Dido and Aeneas
Mark Morris’s Dido and Aeneas
By JEFFREY GANTZ | January 30, 2009

Epic undertaking

Berlioz’s Les Troyens at the BSO; Opera Boston attempts Verdi’s Ernani
The act four sequence of quintet, septet, and love duet is non-stop musical orgasm.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | May 12, 2008

Orpheus in the afterworld

Harbison and Mahler at the BSO, and the return of Dubravka Tomsic
Tomsic’s last Boston recital was four years ago. We can’t afford to be without her this long.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | April 22, 2008

All over again

Brahms from Levine and Kissin, Emmanuel’s Bach B-minor Mass, the Cantata Singers’ Kurt Weill cabaret
The Boston Symphony Orchestra program for last week’s four concerts was a familiar one.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | January 28, 2010

Love and loss

Classical: 2007 in review
Boston’s biggest classical-music story this year was also its saddest.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 18, 2007

Hot and cold

More French music plus Osvaldo Golijov at the BSO; Sarasa’s warm tribute to Craig Smith
James Levine’s second French program this season with the Boston Symphony Orchestra was more compelling than the one with which he began the season.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 11, 2007

Craig Smith (1947–2007)

Boston loses a beloved musician
For more than 30 years, Emmanuel Music has been central to the cultural life of Boston.
By EDITORIAL | November 19, 2007

Double or nothing

Mark Morris revives Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas at Tanglewood; Cosí fan tutte on Beacon Hill
The American premiere of Dido took place here in Boston, at the Majestic Theatre in June 1989.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | July 03, 2007

What’s in a phrase?

The Cantata Singers’ season finale; Leon Fleisher and the Emerson String Quartet
There are lots of references to heaven in Bach’s Passions and cantatas, but one of his most heavenly pieces has no words at all.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | May 22, 2007

City limits

Boston Cyberarts’ ‘The Body’s Limit’ at Green Street, ‘Ten’s the Limit’ at the ICA
There’s nothing like the first weekend of beautiful weather to raise skepticism about digitally mediated experience.
By DEBRA CASH | April 24, 2007

From Berlioz to Bayadère

The BSO and Boston Ballet announce 2007–2008
The czy ambiance at Symphony Hall made the announcement of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s 2007–2008 season seem like a family chat with James Levine.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | April 03, 2007

Stormy weather

BSO cancellations, plus the Camerata, Jonathan Biss, Emmanuel Music, and more
The BSO has been having terrible luck hanging on to its star soloists.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | March 28, 2007

In extremis

Handel's Ariodante and Lang Lang
In Handel’s Ariodante we move from the sunlit first act into a world of moonlight, darkness, deception, and emotional blindness.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | January 30, 2007

The best of times, the worst of times

A year in classical
This year Boston classical music lost some of its most beloved figures — some, like mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, at the very height of their extraordinary powers, others, like opera director Sarah Caldwell and her conductor/collaborator, Osbourne McConathy, after long and gratifying runs.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 20, 2006

Winter harvest

Emmanuel’s memorial to Lorraine Hunt Lieberson; Angelika Kirchschlager at Jordan Hall; Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos and El Niño at the BSO
"I don’t want to be here,” soprano Susan Larson lamented in her moving eulogy to her old friend and colleague Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 12, 2006

Landmarks

The BSO’s Moses und Aron and Emmanuel Music’s Orlando
Seventy-four years after Schoenberg composed (but never finished) Moses und Aron , this towering 20th-century masterwork got its first Boston Symphony Orchestra performance.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | October 31, 2006

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson

1954–2006
We were very lucky, here in Boston, to have had so many chances to hear Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who died in Santa Fe last Monday at the age of 52.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | July 11, 2006

Making it new

Ballet mécanique in Washington, the Callithumpians’ Xenakis, Mark Morris in New York and Boston, Yo-Yo Ma at the BSO, Harbison’s But Mary Stood
The avant-garde ain’t what it used to be.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | March 21, 2006

Variety show

James Levine at the BSO, Ewa Podles, Gunther Schuller’s jazz, Ben Zander’s Elgar, Russell Sherman’s Mozart, Opera Boston’s Chabrier, Boston Baroque’s Purcell
James Levine completed his second season as the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s music director with another riveting though not-quite polished evening of Schoenberg and Beethoven.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | March 08, 2006

We {heart} Schoenberg

The BSO makes even the ‘hard’ parts appealing
Now we can add James Levine’s Gurrelieder to the list of the BSO’s historic triumphs.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | February 28, 2006

Size isn’t everything

Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder
Phase one of the BSO’s two-year Beethoven/Schoenberg project continues next week with three performances of Gurrelieder , Schoenberg’s three-part cantata/song cycle/symphony, led by James Levine.
By DAVID WEININGER | February 14, 2006

Amazing weekend

James Levine with the BSO and BSO Chamber Players, Hoose and the Cantata Singers
James Levine’s opening salvo for his year-long Beethoven/Schoenberg series with the Boston Symphony Orchestra couldn’t have been more ambitious: the work that opened Symphony Hall in 1900.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | January 24, 2006

Boston feasts

Winter concert preview: classical goodies in 2006
The Boston Symphony Orchestra, Celebrity Series, Emmanuel Music, Boston Early Music Festival, and more.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | January 14, 2006