Ranked lists are intended to lend what sure feels like objective authority to a retrospective appraisal of the year (why else involve numbers?). But, reader, never do I feel more distinctly subjective ...

Naysayers be damned. Classical music on record continues to thrive, or so it seems judging from the plethora of boxed sets that have come our way this year. As ever, milestone birthdays were ...

Performances in N.Y.C. Advertisement Supported by Listen to selections from recordings of a new John Adams opera, Chopin études by Yunchan Lim, Brahms works by Igor Levit and more. Los Angeles ...

It’s time for new rules. The Metropolitan Opera, once fearful of upsetting its base with too much novelty, is now desperate enough to try a novel diet of new operas. The New York Philharmonic begins ...

The fall concert season begins not just with the customary Beethoven and Bruckner but also with a great polychrome explosion of music from Latin America. The Venezuelan Gustavo Dudamel conducting a ...

Music writers spend their days guiltily staring down literally dozens of unheard new recordings that pile up as the year goes on, with more coming in each day. So it has been an arduous and ...

First there was a clarinet trill — like a cat shaking off sleep. Then the cat stret-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-tched itself — from a low F to a high Bb. And the world of concert music changed forever. That shock ...

As usual, my retrospective list of the “best” classical and opera offerings of the year has a lot more to do with lasting impressions than definitive rankings. This was a year of big tours and bold ...