Matthew Aucoin

The More Fraught the Better

Throughout The Rake’s Progress, the steady friction between Stravinsky’s music and Auden’s poetry creates a musico-poetic compound that brims with energy and life.

October 21, 2021 issue

A Dance to the Music of Death

Thomas Adès turns fleetingly recognizable musical elements into unstable, volatile substances tending toward evanescence and escape.

The Exterminating Angel

an opera by Thomas Adès, with a libretto by Tom Cairns in collaboration with the composer; performed by Amanda Echalaz, Audrey Luna, Alice Coote, Joseph Kaiser, Rod Gilfry, Christine Rice, Iestyn Davies, and others; the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Thomas Adès

Adès Conducts Adès: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra and Totentanz

performed by Kirill Gerstein, Mark Stone, Christianne Stotijn, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra

May 13, 2021 issue

A Crucial Reset

October 27, 2020

Pierre Boulez; illustration by Tom Bachtell

The Fury of Pierre Boulez

A collection of his lectures on music reveals the composer’s narrow-mindedness and disdain.

Music Lessons: The Collège de France Lectures

by Pierre Boulez, edited and translated from the French by Jonathan Dunsby, Jonathan Goldman, and Arnold Whittall

November 5, 2020 issue

Letter

William Bolcom

Remembering Boulez

In Paris the composer’s word was law even if you didn’t subscribe to it.

December 17, 2020 issue

Opera at the Edge

Perhaps, in our newfound state of isolation, we can learn new ways to listen across borders, with open ears

Lear

an opera by Aribert Reimann, at the Paris Opera, November 21–December 7, 2019

Orest

an opera by Manfred Trojahn, at the Vienna State Opera, November 14–20, 2019

Heart Chamber

an opera by Chaya Czernowin, at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, November 15–December 6, 2019

May 14, 2020 issue

Scenography by Osbert Lancaster for a production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff at the Edinburgh Festival, 1955

Making Shakespeare Sing

On Verdi’s last two operas, Otello and Falstaff

Verdi: Creating “Otello” and “Falstaff”—Highlights from the Ricordi Archive

an exhibition at the Morgan Library and Museum, New York City, September 6, 2019–January 5, 2020

December 19, 2019 issue

Music Without a Destination

‘Debussy: A Painter in Sound’ by Stephen Walsh

Debussy: A Painter in Sound

by Stephen Walsh

December 6, 2018 issue