Schnittke’s String Quartet No. 2, on the other hand, hails from an entirely different world, historically, stylistically, and expressively. Written in 1980 as a memorial to the composer’s friend, ...

Celebrating its 150th season in “A Feast of Remembrance,” Boston Cecilia, led by music director Michael Barrett, offered a program of Bach, Handel, and Purcell Sunday afternoon at Jordan Hall that ...

While such a complex score requires more than one hearing to grasp its full measure, Salonen seems to have crafted a work that, despite its challenges and headiness, is vivid and—in the best ...

“I hate quotation,” Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote. “Tell me what you know.” Well, there’s no question that Carlos Simon knows the charismatic black church. The son of a preacher, the Boston Symphony ...

Artistic inspiration can come from the most unexpected places. Take Gabriella Smith’s Bioluminescence Chaconne, which owes its genesis to a snorkeling excursion the composer took as part of a marine ...

No one ever accused Gustav Mahler of taking the easy route. Even so, the Austrian composer’s Symphony No. 3 develops a programmatic concept that stretches the genre almost to its breaking point.