A.Z. Madonna

3 weeks ago | bostonglobe.com | Don Aucoin |A.Z. Madonna |Murray Whyte |Jeffrey Gantz |Jon Garelick |Maura Johnston | +1 more

Christiani Pitts (Robin) and Sam Tutty (Dougal) in rehearsal for "Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)."Nile Scott StudiosTWO STRANGERS (CARRY A CAKE ACROSS NEW YORK CITY) The two strangers in question in this musical two-hander are Dougal, a cheery Britisher in his mid-20s traveling to attend the wedding of his father — whom he has never met — and Robin, also in her 20s, a hard-bitten native New Yorker who is the sister of the young woman Dougal’s father is about to marry.

1 month ago | bostonglobe.com | A.Z. Madonna

As the Boston Symphony Orchestra and music director Andris Nelsons prepared to co-host the Shostakovich Festival Leipzig in Germany with the Gewandhaus Orchestra , the final programs of the season at Symphony Hall started to feel like a rapid-fire, sometimes disjointed, Shostakovich survey. Here Symphonies Nos. 6 and 11, there No. 11 again and Cello Concerto No. 1, thither 15 and a Beethoven piano concerto, with a trip to Carnegie Hall for the orchestra in the middle of it all.

1 month ago | bostonglobe.com | A.Z. Madonna

Opera has occupied a central place in Boston Baroque’s repertoire for most of its 52-year history, but for much of that timespan, those operas were performed in concert, or with minimal stagecraft. Handel’s “Ariodante” might have been done up much the same way, had COVID not canceled the company’s planned run in April 2020 at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall.

1 month ago | bostonglobe.com | A.Z. Madonna

Joseph Wagner hadn’t yet celebrated his 25th birthday when he was appointed assistant director of music in the Boston public schools in 1923 and 1924, but he wasted no time making his mark on the city. Scarcely a year after he took the job, he recruited an orchestra of high school students from across the district. Those young musicians became the core of a new community orchestra: the Boston Civic Symphony.

1 month ago | bostonglobe.com | A.Z. Madonna

In the program notes for the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s performances of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 15, Russian music scholar Harlow Robinson cites a 1973 interview with the composer, who was in failing health at the time. The Symphony No. 15, Shostakovich told his interviewer, “seemed completely clear to me from the first note to the last.