Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Latest Articles

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

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

All you need is love

Marylou Speaker Churchill memorial, Emmanuel Music’s Haydn/Schoenberg, and more
Outpourings of love have been flooding the Boston musical scene.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | April 21, 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

Reeling in the years

John Pizzarelli keeps jazz moving on
Call John Pizzarelli a mensch — he's smart, chatty, and a hot ticket. Hell of a guitarist, too.
By JIM MACNIE | February 25, 2010

Plugging in

Festival Ballet move to Metallica and Radiohead
For the past six years, Festival Ballet Providence has presented an evening of short works, Up Close on Hope , in their Black Box Theater on Hope Street.
By JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ | November 18, 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

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

String vacation

Soundtrack for summer in Maine
With the Portland Symphony's elimination of its popular, but debt-inducing, Independence Pops concert series, Portlanders will have to travel a little farther to satisfy their classical-music appetites this summer. But it will be well worth the mileage.
By EMILY PARKHURST | July 08, 2009

Trail of tunes

Music al fresco at summer fests
The best summer music festivals take something from the season: the smell of the surf, the sight of the mountains, fireworks, lawn seating — or, at least, fried dough.
By CLEA SIMON | June 09, 2009

Dark night of the soul

Boris Eifman's Eugene Onegin
St. Petersburg's Eifman Ballet presents Eugene Onegin at the Cutler Majestic Theatre this weekend.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 08, 2009

The real deal

Boston Ballet's Sleeping Beauty
Nineteenth-century ballets are not all alike. But Boston Ballet's Sleeping Beauty is the real McCoy.
By BY MARCIA B. SIEGEL | April 29, 2009

Brava Larissa!

Boston Ballet opens The Sleeping Beauty
The end of an era loomed last night as Boston Ballet opened The Sleeping Beauty — what's likely to be the last story ballet ever to be staged at the Wang Theatre.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | April 29, 2009

Home cooking

The National Philharmonic of Russia at Symphony Hall
If the name "National Philharmonic of Russia" puts you in mind of some provincial Slavic ensemble making the American rounds, you're not alone.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | April 23, 2009

More Jewels

Get your Jewels bearings
By JEFFREY GANTZ | March 04, 2009

Crowning glory

Boston Ballet's Jewels at the Wang Theatre.
In 1967, George Balanchine created Jewels for New York City Ballet, and in short order this evening-length triptych — Emeralds , Rubies , and Diamonds — became the crown jewel of 20th-century dance.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | March 04, 2009

Quiz-bowl kids

Harvard rebuilds its team and answers some hard questions
Andrew Watkins is having faulty-buzzer issues.
By CAITLIN E. CURRAN | January 08, 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

Mixed nuts

Ballet Rox's Urban Nutcracker
Ballet Rox's Urban Nutcracker , the ultimate multicultural Christmas celebration, has become so inclusive, it's almost a blur.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | December 19, 2008

Not so great

San Francisco's Nutcracker on PBS
Way back in 1977, PBS gave us a Nutcracker with a difference: Mikhail Baryshnikov as an electrifying Nutcracker/Cavalier and willowy Gelsey Kirkland as an older-than-usual Clara, as the Sugar Plum Fairy.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | December 02, 2008

Over (and under) the top

Musical chairs at the BSO, the Pacifica at Longy, the Boston Philharmonic's three B's, and the Cecilia's Bach B-minor Mass
With only one rehearsal, 31-year-old BSO Assistant Conductor Julian Kuerti confronted a challenging two-and-a-half-hour program of not-quite-standard 19th- and 20th-century repertoire.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | November 24, 2008

Vertical energy

Irina Muresanu gave an emotionally compelling performance, even if her view of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto didn’t always jibe with conductor Jonathan McPhee’s.
The word “concerto” comes from the Italian for “to bring into agreement,” and it’s not always as easy as soloists and symphony orchestras make it seem.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | November 14, 2008

Can classical be underground?

Portsmouth's Navona Records releases an indie aesthetic for orchestra
At least one of the reasons many of us contemporary-music fans don't get into classical music is because it seems like no one wants us to listen to it.
By SAM PFEIFLE | November 14, 2008

Intimate moves

Festival Ballet’s “Up CLOSE, on HOPE”
What began as a way to give audiences a closer look at its dancers and choreographers an opportunity to showcase new work has become an integral part of Festival Ballet Providence’s season: the “Up CLOSE, on HOPE” series.
By JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ | November 05, 2008

Magic bullets

Maurizio Pollini returns to the BSO; Opera Boston’s Der Freischütz
Last week’s Boston Symphony Orchestra program looked odd on paper, but the concert was a knockout.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | October 24, 2008

Suburban Mozart that swings

Lexington Symphony at Cary Hall, Lexington, MA, September 13, 2008
It’s a tribute to the quality of Boston’s classical-music scene that a suburban orchestra like the Lexington Symphony is capable of a performance to attract the attention of those who live closer to Symphony Hall.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | October 09, 2008

Opening pitch

James Levine’s gala and Brahms, Russell Sherman’s Liszt, the Bostonians’ Kurt Weill
The most moving moment of this year’s Boston Symphony Orchestra opening gala came before the concert started — the standing ovation for James Levine, who looked rested and recuperated after his kidney surgery this summer, an operation that forced him to cancel most of his Tanglewood season.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | October 01, 2008