The audience members took their seats among boxes of medicine, first-aid kits and intravenous tubes. The orchestra was missing four men who are now fighting on the war’s front lines. A handful of guest singers who had fled bombings and bloodshed stood onstage with the choir. The war in UkraineContinue Reading
Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma, an Indian musician and composer who was the foremost exponent of the santoor, a 100-string instrument similar to the hammered dulcimer, died on Tuesday at his home in Mumbai. He was 84. Indian news reports said the cause was cardiac arrest. Over a career spanning nearlyContinue Reading
A planned benefit concert in support of Ukraine was canceled in Vienna on Monday amid concerns about the Russian-based ensemble it was to feature, MusicAeterna, which is led by the conductor Teodor Currentzis and is supported by a state-owned bank in Russia. The concert, organized by the Konzerthaus in Vienna,Continue Reading
She saw her first opera at 10 years old, when her father performed in an amateur production of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” in a church hall. It was a distinctly lo-fi production: Her father’s costume for the role of Papageno was “a flat cap and some pan pipes on aContinue Reading
When bombs began falling on the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv late last month, forcing Vera Lytovchenko to shelter in the basement of her apartment building, she took her violin with her, hoping it might bring comfort. In the weeks since, Lytovchenko, a violinist for the Kharkiv Theater of Opera andContinue Reading
The Russian conductor Tugan Sokhiev, who recently resigned from two high-profile posts after facing pressure to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine, will no longer lead a series of concerts with the New York Philharmonic because of the war, the orchestra announced on Friday. Sokhiev, who until this month wasContinue Reading
As the Russian military began its attack on Ukraine in late February, the Estonian American conductor Paavo Järvi was in Moscow, leading rehearsals for a long-planned engagement with a Russian youth orchestra. Järvi, who was born in 1962 in Tallinn, Estonia, then part of the Soviet Union, had a difficultContinue Reading
A prominent Russian conductor said on Sunday that he would resign from his positions with two orchestras — at the storied Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and in Toulouse, France — after facing intense pressure to condemn President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The conductor, Tugan Sokhiev, hadContinue Reading
Anna Netrebko, the superstar Russian soprano, will no longer appear at the Metropolitan Opera this season or next after failing to comply with the company’s demand that she distance herself from President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as he wages war on Ukraine. The end of Ms. Netrebko’s engagements, whichContinue Reading
LONDON — Every Christmas Eve, the British composer Cecilia McDowall follows the same routine. At 3 p.m., as family members arrive at her London home, she goes into the kitchen, turns on the radio and starts making a Christmas pudding — a slow-cooked, booze-soaked British dessert — while listening toContinue Reading