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The program also featured the debut of conductor Anna Rakitina, who led a stirring reading of Elgar's Enigma Variations.

Virtuoso violin fireworks were on brilliant display in Noah Bendix-Balgley's own Klezmer Concerto, while the Baltimore Symphony and conductor Fabien Gabel presented an impassioned, memorably probing Mahler Five.

Bernstein's Slava! and Age of Anxiety aren't the best examples of his concert music, but Marin Alsop and the BSO made the best possible case for them. 

In an all-Bernstein programme, Nicola Benedetti enthralls in Symposium, the Baltimore Symphony’s percussionists strut their stuff in the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, and Marin Alsop introduces us to rarities. A true birthday treat.

Marin Alsop led the musicians of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on Saturday evening in the New York première of Kevin Puts and James Bartolomeo’s The City and a valiantly led execution of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony.

An all-Beethoven concert by Markus Stenz and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra provided an opportunity to hear familiar, not-so-familiar and downright rare repertoire from the master's pen.

The concertmasters of America's top orchestras rival the talents of the world's greatest violinists.  This was proven again in BSO leader Jonathan Carney's thrilling performance of Glazunov's Violin Concerto.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra under guest conductor Mario Venzago presented a concert of familiar fare that were treated to exemplary performances. 

In the opera world, where loyalty to the libretto is oftentimes taken for poor taste and the use of period sets and costumes is attributed to the lack of a directorial concept, seeing a traditional production becomes a rare (and very comforting) treat.

It’s Richard Wagner’s bicentennial year, and everyone is getting in on the act. 22 different productions, by one count, of the complete Ring cycle will be seen worldwide, not to mention countless other celebratory evenings put on by sundry ensembles.

“Poetry and again poetry – tenderness mixed with pain; sensuality, a drama surprising and burning, and a rocketing finale.” This is composer Giacomo Puccini describing one of the world’s most famous operas, La bohème.

Five years on from her historic appointment as the first woman to head a major American orchestra, Marin Alsop took to the stage of Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley Friday night with a swagger, leading the impressive Baltimore Symphony, the orchestra with whom she has made her mark as one of the world’s leading conductors.

In the opera world, where being true to a libretto is considered unforgivably boring, and using traditional scenery and costumes very dull, sometimes nothing is more pleasing than seeing a conservative production.

He thought he had seen Heaven before him. He knew not whether he was in or out of his body when he wrote it. Twenty-four sleepless nights, many untouched dinners and endless tears later, his Messiah was ready to see the world. Or maybe not just yet.True, there had been times when he was ambitious and proud. There had been times when it was all about him. Now he had learned the truth.

The short life and terrifying death of Joan of Arc are the subject of Arthur Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher ("Joan of Arc at the Stake"), a curious masterpiece of an oratorio dating from 1938. The nearly-forgotten work received a well-deserved resurrection by Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on Saturday night.

Several years ago I attended a glorious Baltimore Symphony Orchestra concert under the baton of a celebrity conductor. A less experienced listener at the time, I was shocked to watch him leading the orchestra in a Rossini overture with his arms folded behind his back.

When death takes away everyone you ever loved, acting cool and staying amiable might not be the easiest things to do. You start having thoughts you never dared think before. You start questioning the unquestionable. Chances are you will turn into an agnostic. Giuseppe Verdi did.