Classical Music

The National Chamber Ensemble Presents ‘Bach, Beethoven and Brahms’ on Saturday, March 14, 2015 at 7:30 pm at Artisphere’s Spectrum Theatre

The National Chamber Ensemble, celebrates the great works of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms on Saturday, March 14, 2015 at 7:30 pm at Artisphere’s Spectrum Theatre. Praised by the Washington Post for...

Fantasy & Fate: Tchaikovsky Masterworks: Lang Lang in Recital at The Kennedy Center

Virtuosity of the highest caliber graced The Kennedy Center Concert Hall this past Saturday afternoon as renowned piano superstar Lang Lang returned to perform at the established Washington venue for...

Russian Chamber Art Society: ‘Ballades, Fantasies, & Satires’

The Russian Chamber Art Society (RCAS) has become the go-to organization for those in the know in the DC area when it comes to rarely heard—and rewardingly performed—works from the Russian classical...

Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma at the Kennedy Center

An icy Sunday evening turned into a lush and warm, and enjoyable evening inside The Kennedy Center with the Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma. Many of DC’s dignitaries attended, including TV journalist...

Mahler’s Fifth Symphony with the University of Maryland Symphony Orchestra at The Clarice

Not just any conservatory or university school of music can mount a concert featuring Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. It may not have familiar tunes, but Mahler’s Fifth is a landmark composition from...

Pianist Jenny Lin at The Strathmore Mansion

The intimacy of the recital room at the Strathmore Mansion creates the perfect atmosphere to listen to a piano virtuoso play a night of sonatas. Jenny Lin chose these particular composers, because she...

‘Parade in Concert’ at Avery Fisher Hall in New York

Jason Robert Brown’s Parade is a gut-punch of a musical about the 1913 murder trial of an Atlanta Jewish man, his unjust conviction, his subsequent semi-exoneration to “only” life in prison, and his...

Valentine’s Day Concert: ‘The Thrill of Tchaikovsky!’ at The National Chamber Ensemble

What a wonderful way to spend Valentine’s Day! The National Chamber Ensemble presented a colorful concert for Valentine’s Day with music by Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky, one of the greatest composers of...

Cellist Amit Peled Recreates 100-Year-Old Concert at the Peabody Institute

Picture this: A leading classical performer finds a program from a century ago played by a legend on his instrument, sets the date to recreate the concert for the exact 100th anniversary of the event,...

The National Philharmonic’s 10th Anniversary Concert at The Music Center at Strathmore

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 may be based on the poem “Ode to Joy,” but that doesn’t mean the epic symphony holds a monopoly on joyous music. If anything, the pieces accompanying Beethoven’s Ninth at...

National Philharmonic: Brian Ganz Plays Chopin at Strathmore

Brian Ganz is continuing to complete his performances, and ultimately, recording of “ever single note Chopin composed.” The Ganz Project is expected to take ten years as Chopin’s ouevra contains at...

The State Symphony Orchestra of Mexico at the George Mason Center for the Arts

World orchestras are at their most interesting when they bring a blend of their native musical language with the European tradition that defines “classical music.” With the help of two soloists, one...

National Symphony Orchestra with Violinist Arabella Steinbacher at The Kennedy Center

It’s almost a cliché to sit smugly in a 21st century theater or concert hall enjoying a work that some original critic destroyed to his everlasting infamy. And audiences at this week’s National...

The Canellakis-Brown Duo at The Barns at Wolf Trap

Chamber Music at The Barns at Wolf Trap is a special treat for those of us who remember what music appreciation used to imply before enormous venues and well-dressed audiences prevailed. An intimate...

Beethoven’s Ninth with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Strathmore

For sheer drama in classical music this year, it will be hard to top the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s knife’s-edge performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 on Saturday night at the...

Watch Out, Washington: Here Comes Beethoven’s Ninth

Everybody knows about Walter Cronkite and his impact on television news. Fewer people remember or know about Cronkite’s great rival on NBC during the 1960s, The Huntley-Brinkley Report. Pairing the...

Standout CDs of Three Rising Classical Artists: Einav Yarden, Yevgeny Kutik, and Danielle Talamantes

Debut recordings by emerging classical performers face enormous challenges. There’s the issue of finding unique material or a unique voice after so much music has been recorded so many times. And just...

‘A Candlelight Christmas’ at The Washington Chorus at The Kennedy Center

The Kennedy Center Hall is decked in evergreen, but The Washington Chorus brings the candles as they file into to the solemn song of “Once in Royal David’s City” to begin A Candlelight Christmas. They...

Pianist Einav Yarden at The Phillips Collection

A packed house at the Phillips Collection could have been forgiven if they thought that pianist Einav Yarden had magically switched out Steinway grand pianos between numbers. The Israeli pianist,...

‘Tchaikovsky is Forever: Operatic Arias and Romances’ at The Embassy of Austria

Say “Tchaikovsky,” and as Christmas creeps ever closer, be it excitingly or inexorably, visions of sugar plums, graceful ballerinas in sparkles and white tulle, and softly falling faux snow begin,...

‘Bernstein and Beethoven’ with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Strathmore

Which pieces to put with which on an orchestra program is a subject of endless debate. Does it really matter if concerts have an overall theme? It does if they have as meaningful a connection as the...

DC Area Soprano Danielle Talamantes On Her CD Signing on Sunday in Vienna, VA, the Met, Concert Music, and the Opera Singer’s Life

Rising local soprano Danielle Talamantes talks about the Met, concert music, and the opera singer’s life Politicians and lobbyists running to catch the Acela at Union Station in D.C. or Penn Station...

Violinist Yevgeny Kutik at Peoples’ Symphony Concerts in NYC

Challenging or dissonant music can be a slog for both the classical music performer and the listener. If you’re at all fearful to see live concerts because of the reputation of 20th-century “serious”...

‘Missa Solemnis’ at The Washington Chorus

Wow, talk about a moving experience! Sunday night, the Grammy Award-winning The Washington Chorus performed Missa Solemnis by Ludwig van Beethoven to a sold-out and appreciative crowd at The Kennedy...

Pianist Thomas Pandolfi’s ‘One Singular Night’ at the Todd Performing Arts Center

Standing alone on the stage of the Eastern Shore home of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, pianist Thomas Pandolfi joked that no orchestra was magically going to materialize before the audience’s...

The Ying Quartet at the Kreeger Museum

No type of ensemble works harder these days than string quartets to make classical music “cool” and relevant. From hip, funky websites to innovative performances in unusual spaces, string quartets –...

The Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig at Washington Performing Arts

You have a right to be skeptical when a symphony orchestra claims to have a unique sound. Down through the centuries most composers of symphonic music have given specific directions about what...

The Choral Arts Society of Washington Performs ‘Bach’s Mass in B Minor’ at The Kennedy Center

The Choral Arts Society of Washington brought forth a momentous occasion to The Kennedy Center Concert Hall on yesterday afternoon with their undertaking of Johann Sebastian Bach’s legacy masterpiece,...

National Philharmonic: ‘Mozart’s Requiem’ at The Music Center at Strathmore

Why do people willingly get dressed up and head out in the dark to hear funeral music when no one has died? Three words: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. There have been dozens or hundreds of other musical...

An Interview With Washington, DC Piano Sensation Thomas Pandolfi About Classical and Popular Music and the Artist’s Life

If Thomas Pandolfi hasn’t done all that a pianist can do to present an exceptionally broad range of music to an engaged public, he certainly seems determined to. The D.C. native, one of the area’s...

Dramatic Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto Opens the McLean Orchestra Concert Season

A number of orchestras and ensembles in the Washington suburbs are looking to graduate from pure local or community status to regional recognition. There’s nothing like using one of the biggest pieces...