On March 15, the Boston Symphony Orchestra began their concert as any other: The oboe tuned the orchestra with a concert A, then guest conductor Teddy Abrams and soloist Ray Chen came to the stage to ...

Like the Modern Jazz Quartet, the foursome on this new release folds visions of great classical music into a mainstream jazz setting. Tchaikovsky's 1892 ballet has always provided special holiday ...

Tchaikovsky never wrote a cello concerto, but the “Variations on a Rococo theme” is a close second. The main theme is a Tchaikovsky original, but it's deeply steeped in his love for Mozart and the ...

I miss nationalism in classical music. Nationalism is looked upon by certain contemporary elements as bad because the nations in question were colonial powers, and colonialism was bad. I take a ...

Russia's contribution to the arts over the past couple of centuries has been extraordinary and unparalleled. Russian authors are among the greatest writers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Russia is ...

An embarrassment of riches here - it’s hard to know where to start. The opening of Bartók’s Violin Concerto No 2, soft harp arpeggios underneath a pungent, folk-tinged melody, is gorgeous. With luck ...

It is, for so many of us, the permanent soundtrack of the holiday season. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet “The Nutcracker,” like no other music, conjures up images for me of warm fireplaces, ...

The Piano Trio - piano, violin and cello - had been a popular form in Western Europe since at least the time of Haydn's Trios in the 1760s. But even by the late 19th century the form never caught hold ...

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