Bach and the Romantics, Dickens at 200, the Soul of Tango, and more.

Last Sunday, going stir crazy on a nasty rainy day, I took (dragged) my son and a friend of my daughter’s out to hear a woodwind quintet called PUFF! at South Orange Performing Arts Center in NJ ($10–15). The ensemble, in residence at Juilliard (an participants in the upcoming Focus! Festival, details after the jump), [...]

A modest stack of new Bach CDs has been piling up on my desk over the last several months—when you’re a Bach-lover it’s hard for this not to happen periodically. There are keyboard sonatas (David Fray), violin sonatas (David Grimal), The Art of Fugue (Pierre-Laurent Aimard), two- and three-part Inventions (Till Fellner), and even a [...]

In this episode of Young Opera, meet Saeunn Thorsteinsdottir, a cellist currently studying at the Julliard School of Music. Learn about her musical upbringing in Iceland, hear how she discovered her passion for the cello in a place as unlikely as Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and watch her perform “Prelude in E-flat” from J.S. Bach’s A [...]