a virtual journal and essential blog of the classical music scene in greater Boston

“It’s probably not a huge surprise that two musicians dreamed of a situation where both of them can choose the repertoire that they want to play and invite really exciting people to join them.” And so began my conversation with celebrated cellist Guy Fishman and his wife, the multi-string instrumentalist and fellow New England Conservatory (NEC) faculty member Renée Hemsing.

The two have founded an exciting and innovative entity: L’Armonia Boston. As their website touts, this will offer the city’s newest premium, early music chamber concert series at the historic and intimate 45-acre Gore Place Mansion. Their first concert, “Births & Triumphs: Arriaga & Beethoven,” will take place on October 17^th at 2:00 pm and 5:30 pm. Violinists Edson Scheid and Laura Lutzke will join Fishman and Hemsing (on viola). [continued]

This past January at the Church of the Covenant, Tianyi Timothy Ren led the Helix Ensemble in its debut with two pieces for string orchestra, Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht and Strauss’s Metamorphosen. Its second concert will be offering less familiar fare. You wouldn’t think that in 2026 a symphony by a major 19^th-century composer could be getting its Boston premiere, but that figures to be the case this Sunday evening at the Church of the Covenant when Ren directs Helix in Anton Bruckner’s First Symphony. The BSO has given us Nos. 2 through 9 on multiple occasions, but never No. 1, and Benjamin Zander has never performed it with the Boston Philharmonic. Bruckner called his First “das kecke Beserl” (“the saucy housemaid” or perhaps “The cheeky devil”) and was quite fond of the piece; it’s a youthful work but hardly inferior. So credit Ren—who is the assistant conductor at Boston Ballet as well as Helix’s artistic director—for going where Boston has never gone before.  
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Seventy-five years ago, on October 6, 1951, the first transmission from a new-fangled FM transmitter began emanating from the crest of Great Blue Hill in Milton, Massachusetts, hence WGBH. October 6^th marks the 75^th anniversary of the station.

The new entity first located its studios in Symphony Hall, and first signed on with a complete Boston Symphony broadcast, live from Symphony Hall. The previous decade the Boston Symphony was typically only broadcast on network radio during the first half of their concert, and then beginning in the fall of 1948, only in a half hour program of the orchestra in rehearsal, taped the previous week. Thus, the Boston Symphony returned to the airwaves in a complete concert in stunning FM sound, arguably bettering the AM radio and  discs of the era. [continued]

“Free America! Early Songs of Resistance and Rebellion,” patiently put together by Artistic Director Anne Azéma and the late Music Director emeritus Joel Cohen, “unfolded organically through five “chapters” that led us to revisit our American roots but also brought us face-to-face with our urgent present predicament. As bold as Sam Adams ever was, Azéma proclaimed that the concert aimed at kindling our resolve against despair “about the present” and speaking truth to power? Our review from Tanglewood is HERE.

The show reprises October 25^th, 4:30 pm at Harvard Memorial Church, with the Harvard Ferris Fellows, Ed Jones Director. Tickets HERE.

Music, say our American ancestors, may soothe the heart, but it also sustains the search for values. This program explores, in a present moment when American ideals are undergoing such deep challenges, the vital and life-affirming sounds of the young Republic, as its citizens sang and played forth their love of freedom and their rejection of tyranny.

The rough-hewn sounds of New England citizen-composers still ring true and strong to our contemporary ears. And so do Liberty’s attendants — feminists, abolitionists, freed slaves, religious minorities and the insolent scallywags of “Yankee Doodle” — all remind us that in our musical roots lies our true strength. [continued]

In 1900 all of America was crazy for pianos, and no place did more to fuel the madness than Boston. Any resident with enough curiosity and stamina could examine the wares of 40 different makers without leaving the city limits. New York had Steinway, Baltimore had Knabe, but only Boston could claim three top names of the day: Mason & Hamlin, Chickering, and the Franz Liszt-approved Hallet & Davis.

By 1930 it was all over but the bankruptcy filings. The Depression shrank household budgets, while the gramophone and then the radio provided all varieties of music, no lessons or cast-iron frames needed. Large firms eagerly simplified the options for consumers by buying out smaller competitors, only to fail themselves soon afterwards. A few outlasted the Depression, but in greatly changed and diminished form. Today, just one of those 40 companies, Mason & Hamlin, with their factory in Haverhill, MA, exists as a going concern, and only after surviving several near-death experiences in the 1980s. It’s one of only two piano makers in all of North America to remain active today.

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Boston Lyric Opera is about to revive Rossini’s William Tell, an irresistible French-language rarity (libretto by Victor-Joseph Étienne de Jouy and L. F. Bis, based on Friedrich Schiller’s play Wilhelm Tell) at the Colonial Theater for four performances between September 25^th and October 4^th. Tickets HERE

Conductor David Angus will lead the BLO Orchestra and Chorus through Rossini’s sumptuous score, with vocal fireworks from George Gagnidze (William Tell), Anya Matanovič (Mathilde), Konu Kim (Arnold), Nina Yoshida Nelsen (Hedwige), Brianna J. Robinson (Jemmy), and more at the Colonial Theater. [continued]

Steven Karidoyanes kicks off his 33^rd season with the Plymouth Philharmonic tonight at 7:30pm with a program entitled “Fiddler of the Opera” featuring virtuoso Irina Muresanu [artist website HERE]. A few tickets are still available, although the concerts usually sell out [info HERE]. The conductor will present a free pre-concert talk at 6:30pm at the Plymouth High School Performing Arts Center.

A composer, cover conductor for the Boston Pops, and director of the New England Conservatory Youth Symphony, Karidoyanes is a well-respected artist and consummate technician, popular with local orchestras and choirs alike (he led Cambridge’s Masterworks Chorale for a decade in concerts at Harvard’s Sanders Theater). Tonight’s program includes works by Rossini, Borodin, Sarasate, contemporary Boston-based composer Elena Roussanova, and longtime Boston Pops arranger Alexander Courage’s Fantasy on Porgy & Bess. [continued]

After a two-year search, the Boston Symphony has just announced the hiring of a new permanent Director of Choruses. Jean-Sébastien Vallée [website HERE] will occupy the Alan J. and Suzanne W. Dworsky Chair and also serve as the BSO’s official Conductor of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. [continued]

By George Whiting & Quinn MacKenzie, Co-founders, BSO Patron Action Network and Red Flower Campaign

Which Boston Symphony Orchestra does Chad Smith actually lead?

Is it the troubled institution he described earlier this year, an orchestra that had supposedly lost its spark, struggled to fill its hall, faced declining revenues, and needed fundamental changes to reestablish itself among the nation’s leading orchestras? Or is it the confident, historically grounded institution he celebrates in his September 15^th Boston Globe Op-Ed, buoyed by record fundraising, generations of innovation, and a proud tradition of artistic excellence? Both descriptions came from the same CEO. Both cannot be true. Flowery prose and a call to begin the “next chapter” is not enough to reconcile these wildly different characterizations of the state of the orchestra. [continued]

BMInt seldom reviews recordings, but the excuses for this one include follow-up to an earlier concert review, and local and historical interest. On August 28^th Delos released an album (DE3619) of chamber and orchestral music for cello by Boston eminence Arthur Foote (1853-1937), featuring cellist Julian Schwarz, including the premiere commercial release of the Cello Concerto in G Minor, Op. 33 (1893), with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the eminent Gerard Schwarz (Julian’s father). The chamber music includes various shorter pieces and the formidable sonata in E Minor, op. 78 (1913), with pianist Marika Bournaki.  [continued]