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Two mountain-themed operas were performed recently in Dallas, including the much-anticipated world première of Joby Talbot's Everest. 

Margaret Barrett's new work Universal Language explores the linguistic basis of oppression. This Fine Arts Chamber Players concert featured musicians of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and The Obscure Dignitaries.

The Dallas Opera adds a light touch to a Richard Strauss' decidedly unfunny opera Salome, featuring soprano Deborah Voigt in the title role. 

With an artistic director forced to cancel in the middle of a weekend of concerts, duty called on his assistant conductor - and she clearly had done her homework.

The Winspear Opera House in Dallas hosted violinist Itzhak Perlman for the penultimate performance on this season’s recital series, performing sonatas by Beethoven, Franck and Debussy. 

Evan Mitchell reviews Voices of Change in a performance featuring works by Iturbide, Martino, Pärt, Turina, and Fung at City Performance Hall in Dallas.

Extreme dynamics explored in Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé and Boléro presented by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Jaap van Zweden, complemented by Louis Lortie's Mozart. 

Dallas Symphony Orchestra, led by Jaap van Zweden and featuring baritone Matthias Goerne, performed music by Britten, Mahler, and Brahms, in a concert where not enough was ultimately said, despite a strong return from Goerne.

How should pianists present themselves on stage? Evan Mitchell takes a look at the role of stage persona in shaping pianists' careers and reception.

Violinist Pekka Kuusisto and composer Nico Muhly performed at (Le) Poisson Rouge, with music by Bach, Pärt, Glass, and Muhly.

Ensemble ACJW performed works by Berio, Reich, and Bartók with conductor David Robertson and soprano Dawn Upshaw at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall. This attractively programmed concert featured an admirable first half, though the Bartók left something to be desired.

New York Polyphony brought Dallas residents a refreshing interlude to the post-Thanksgiving consumerist madness, with a recital of Christmas music old and new.

Read our review of Robert Lepage's production of Berlioz­'s La Damnation de Faust in its 2008 roadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

Read our review of Giancarlo del Monaco's production of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra in its 2010 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

Silence spoke volumes in this tribute to John F. Kennedy at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, which contained pieces by Messiaen, Steven Mackey and John Cage.

The Dallas Symphony, now in its sixth season under Music Director Jaap van Zweden, welcomed his predecessor Andrew Litton back to conduct a weekend of Stravinsky and Saint-Saëns (music from two ballets and a violin concerto, respectively).

Like most performing arts organizations have already done, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra have realized that classical music is not tremendously popular among young people.

For the first time in recent memory, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra presented a program this weekend without any blockbuster audience-favorite to be found on it.

Now in its fourth and final week, the Mostly Mozart Festival welcomed one of the biggest names on its lineup, Joshua Bell, to Avery Fisher Hall as guest soloist. Music Director Louis Langrée conducted the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra in a program of Mozart and Tchaikovsky.

Vadym Kholodenko won the 14th International Van Cliburn Piano Conpetition. Read Evan Mitchell's report from the finals.

The Tokyo String Quartet played a kind of “meta-goodbye” concert this Saturday evening at 92Y. The performance, their last at this venue before the quartet is disbanded, featured three great composers’ own farewells, the final works written for string chamber ensembles by Schubert, Haydn, and Bartók.

“It’s a contra-alto clarinet,” explained Ben Goldberg to an audience puzzled at the first sight of this long, coiled silver instrument. “But it can be used to clean your sink in an emergency.

Pianist Orli Shaham was in Dallas Thursday night for a recital at Hamon Hall, a small space located within the AT&T Performing Arts Center. Her performance of works by William Bolcom, Brahms and Mussorgsky, though uneven and hampered by a bad instrument, was full of humor and sensitive moments, and her spoken remarks helped add a personal touch to the already intimate setting.

“Please silence all electronic devices and refrain from talking. This evening’s program will be presented without intermission or breaks for applause. It is our hope that this structure will assist in providing a meaningful experience...

Caught completely unawares – hearing a group I wasn’t familiar with, and on a Monday evening at that – I ended up seeing the Artemis Quartet give the best performance of any kind that I’ve experienced in quite a while.

After a series of Pops concerts featuring John Williams’ film scores, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra returned to standard classical fare this weekend with Canadian guest conductor Julian Kuerti. Debussy’s Ibéria never really got off the ground, but Mr Kuerti and the DSO had better luck in music by Joaquín Rodrigo and Prokofiev.

Capping off their two-weekend Mozart Festival, the Dallas Symphony played three minor-key masterworks this weekend, plus one major-key selection. Music in minor keys is the exception to the Mozartian rule – only two each of the 27 piano concerti and 41 symphonies are in minor.

Verdi and Wagner may be turning 200 in 2013, but certainly that doesn’t make their music any more or less worth celebrating than it was last year, or will be in five years’ time.

Mirroring the January ritual of all who indulge in one final dessert-binge before dieting to honor ill-fated New Year’s resolutions, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra got plenty of Romanticism out of their system this weekend before their Mozart Festival, set to last the remainder of this month.

The Vienna Philharmonic, whose annual New Year’s Day performances of Johann Strauss are broadcast to some 50 million viewers worldwide, apparently aren’t the only ones giving themselves a pass on creative programming around the holidays. The New York Philharmonic and guest conductor Manfred Honeck eased gently into 2013 this weekend with an evening of audience favorites.

What influence does a place exert on art? Surely there is an agreed-upon “French” sound in music, a distinctive look to Flemish portraiture, but how different might the work of a Muscovite sculptor be from one based in St Petersburg? And in a global age, does place still matter? The first concert of this season’s CONTACT! New Music Series presented works by four New York composers, none natives, b

The Dallas-area series Chamber Music International presented its second program of the season this Friday and Saturday evening. (This review is of the second concert, at St Barnabas Presbyterian Church in Richardson, Texas.

Two Viennese masters, Beethoven and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, shared the stage in the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s concerts this weekend. Maestro Jaap van Zweden conducted Beethoven’s Leonore Overture no. 3 and Symphony no. 5 in C minor, and in between these was joined by violinist Hilary Hahn for Korngold’s Violin Concerto in D major.

The Soundings concert series opened its season Tuesday evening at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, with violinist Midori and pianist Özgür Aydin. Although the series typically focuses more on contemporary music, Midori offered the program she’s been touring with in celebration of the 30th anniversary of her debut, and it did not disappoint.

Chamber Music International kicked off its 27th concert season on Saturday evening at Southern Methodist University. The centerpiece of the program was John Williams’ Quartet La Jolla, and the other works all used various combinations of these instruments.

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra have had a couple of high-profile guest performers in town for their most recent series of concerts. They presented works by Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky, a piano concerto and a symphony respectively, in a program that, although disastrously designed, was redeemed by some stellar playing.

Why establish a new orchestra, to perform in a new hall, across the street from an eminent opera company as well as one of the country’s premier symphony orchestras? It’s a good question with many possible valid responses, and I wish I had more of an answer after attending the grand opening concert of the Dallas Chamber Symphony this Tuesday evening.

The fifth year of the Jaap van Zweden era at the Dallas Symphony Orchestra began this weekend with a program comprising audience favorites both flashy and serene. According to the printed program notes Mr. van Zweden, Music Director since 2008, selected “a program that demonstrates the superb technical and musical heights our orchestra has reached under his baton.

New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival continued Friday evening with three works, all marvelous and presented in reverse-chronological order. After Witold Lutosławski’s Muzyka żałobna, the orchestra and conductor Louis Langrée were joined by French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet for Bartók’s Piano Concerto no. 3, and the concert concluded with Mozart’s Symphony no. 39 in E flat major.

In their latest set of concerts, the Mostly Mozart Festival on Tuesday presented two works: one largely unknown, the other among the most beloved in the standard repertoire. The first, Luciano Berio’s 1989 Rendering, is fragmented and open-ended. The second, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 5, “Emperor”, about as solid and decisive as they come.

This year’s Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center opened on Tuesday evening and, to put it encouragingly, there will certainly be room for improvement as the festival continues. (The present review relates to Wednesday’s performance of the same works.

The Fort Worth Opera closed their 2012 Festival on Sunday afternoon with the second of two performances of Mark Adamo’s Lysistrata, or the Nude Goddess. After hearing a strong Marriage of Figaro at the festival Friday evening, I had fairly high expectations, some of which were met, others not.

The 2012 Fort Worth Opera Festival, now nearing its conclusion, presented the last of its three performances of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro on Friday evening. A traditional approach governed everything from the modest yet handsome sets to the conservative musical interpretation.

After an impressive Sunday afternoon of Webern, Schubert, and Brahms, the Bamberg Symphony outdid themselves Monday evening in repertoire by Beethoven and Ives, and another Schubert symphony. Christian Zacharias again joined Maestro Jonathan Nott, this time for Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 4.

The Bamberg Symphony played the first of their two concerts at Lincoln Center on Sunday. The program had something of a Viennese bent, with works by Anton Webern (of the Second Viennese School), Schubert (the first of the great Romantics to call the city home), and Brahms (who lived there most of his life).

The Philadelphia Orchestra was at Carnegie Hall this weekend, led by Chief Conductor Charles Dutoit and joined by pianist Maria João Pires, to perform works by Glinka, Chopin, and Ravel. After this season, American audiences will presumably be seeing less of Mr.

For its season finale, Soundings: New Music at the Nasher presented violinist Anthony Marwood and pianist Aleksandar Madzar in a program advertised as “a dialogue of caprice and masterpiece.

Christmas may have inspired much of the greatest holiday-related popular music, but in the Classical tradition, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (to say nothing of his St. John Passion and Easter Oratorio) points toward the influence of Easter.

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra opened their latest series on Thursday with works by John Luther Adams, Schubert, Richard Strauss, and Shostakovich. The German baritone Matthias Goerne joined the DSO and Artistic Director Jaap van Zweden for a performance that was moving and powerful enough to far outshine a couple of puzzling managerial decisions.

The Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra welcomed guest conductor Mei-Ann Chen and pianist Markus Groh to Bass Hall this weekend, and welcome guests they were indeed. Ms. Chen led the orchestra in Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture and the Symphony in D minor of César Franck, with Mr. Groh joining them for the Schumann Piano Concerto in A minor in between.