What is an encore supposed to do? Delight, entrance, entertain? Send an audience out into the night with smiles on their faces? Or should it be more substantial and offer a serious musical statement?

Who says old dogs can’t learn new tricks? The Boston Symphony Orchestra—now in its 144 th season—trotted out a fresh one with conductor Dima Slobodeniouk on Thursday night: eschewing the usual ...

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 ...

Tis the season for musical marathons, at least in New England. A little more than a week after the Boston Symphony Orchestra wrapped its survey of the complete Beethoven symphonies, the Celebrity ...

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 ...

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 ...

In the 1860s, death must have seemed a constant companion for Johannes Brahms. Dealing with personal tragedy and loss, he etched his ideas about the hereafter into A German Requiem, a work that offers ...

The end of a matter, the writer of Ecclesiastes tells us, is better than its beginning. Though that reality isn’t borne out in every situation, the sentiment largely applies to Beethoven’s nine ...

Christmas came to Jordan Hall Thursday night, courtesy of the Handel and Haydn Society’s Yuletide program. Though just two of the concert’s six offerings were explicitly seasonal, the larger spirit of ...

“[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 ...

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 & Haydn Society wasted no time getting into the spirit of this year’s extra-long Christmas season, returning to Symphony Hall on Friday night for their annual traversal of George Frederic ...