The “Edo factor” was in full gear at the All-Beethoven Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra concert last Saturday evening. With music director Edo de Waart as conductor, the MSO is a disciplined, efficient entity. There were no guest artists in this meat-and-potatoes orchestral program

Presenting a selection that spans more than two centuries of string quartet literature, Milwaukee’s Philomusica Quartet will take its audience on a tour full of musical humor, incandescence and elegance. Haydn’s charming and

When graduate student Sarah Weston lands a summer job in Prague, she knows she’ll have an adventure, but she is in no way prepared for the fantastical experience that unfolds. Magnus Flyte’s novel, City of Dark Magic, follows

 For its latest concert, the Racine Symphony Orchestra presents an all-Beethoven program. Artistic Director Pasquale Laurino welcomes violinist Sharan Leventhal for a performance of the brilliant Violin Concerto...

Hans Richter, who conducted the premiere of Johannes Brahms' Symphony No. 3 (1883), suggested to the great composer that he consider the subtitle of “Eroica” for the work. Never eager to draw comparisons with his predecessor, Beethoven, Brahms...

Classical music falls silent in concert halls during the summer, yet CD releases by classical labels continue year-round, giving aficionados sonically rich performances not meant for the tinny speakers of smartphones...

Mention the names Mozart, Beethoven, Bach or Brahms to even non-classical music fans and they will almost assuredly ring a bell. But say Kchel, Hoboken, Longo or Deutsch and you’ll get a blank stare. Even classical listeners might have trouble recognizing them. Yet these are the names of gentlemen who...

When listening to classical music, acoustics and where you sit in the hall are almost as important as the performance itself. At the Sunday afternoon Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra concert I was seated in row J on the main floor, about eight or nine rows closer than my regular seats. That doesn’t seem like much, but the difference was enormous. Further back in the hall the sound...

Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, one of the icons of Western art music, should have a sense of occasion about it. The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra performance last Saturday night fell short of that. The guest conductor, Lawrence Renes, obviously had a theory about the historical period of the piece, evidenced by a reduced string section and a smaller chorus than usual. One would expect a scaled-back performance stressing tight transparency based on this...

As part of a program billed as “Breaking Through to Joy,” the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, with four vocal soloists, will perform Beethoven's Ninth, one of the composers most beloved compositions, followed by the Concerto for Bassoon and Orchestra in B-Flat Major, K. 191 by W.A. Mozart (1756-91). This is a work Mozart composed when he was 18 years old for an instrument that had only recently been developed. The soloist for this work will be Theodore Soluri. Conducting tonight’s 8 p.m. performance at the Marcus Center...