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The article discusses the life and legacy of conductor Claudio Abbado who passed away in 2014 and highlights perspective of Abbado on power in music and belief that music is an essential part of life.

Reports on the plans by the New Jersey Symphony to investigate into the purchase of 30 period string instruments the orchestra acquired in 2003. Controversy generated by the acquisition; Allegations of misappropriation of funds.

Presents a review of the recording "Sibelius: Symphonies Nos. 5 and 6" composed by Jean Sibelius and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Colin Davis. Difference from Davis' 1975 recording with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Davis' 1992 version with the London Symphony Orchestra; Popularity of Sibelius' Fifth Symphony for its final release.

This article describes how musicians try out for the New World Symphony orchestra in Miami Beach, Florida. The New World is trying to find and mold musicians who are not only technically great classical musicians, but are also able to communicate with their audiences in such ways that they will draw more people to hear their music. Because of the economic difficulties of maintaining symphony orchestras, orchestra members need more than musical talent.

The article reports that Esa-Pekka Salonen, the next music director of the San Francisco Symphony, conducting the orchestra for the first time since his appointment.

The article profiles musical maestro Bernard Haitink, who is gaining greater prominence in the United States. He has served as the principal guest conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Massachusetts. He has recorded all nine of the Beethoven symphonies with the London Symphony Orchestra. Haitink is the principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Focuses on the objections by musicians to a decision by board members and management that the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra would appoint Marin Alsop as its new musical director. Criticism of the search process by the musicians; Issue of confidence in the orchestra's leadership; Comments of Jane Marvine, chairwoman of the players' committee, and James Glicker, the orchestra's president, who disputed the charge; How the turmoil at the Baltimore Symphony is part of a long history of orchestra players' seeking a greater choice in leadership; Background on the debate.

Presents a review of the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center in New York City. Review of the thematic base for the thirty-ninth season, which opens on July 28, 2005; Author's view that organizers have stretched the thematic concepts of the festival in the past; Comments on the festival from Jane S. Moss, vice president for programming at Lincoln Center; Discussion of various works to featured in festival performances.

Previews the performance of the New York Youth Symphony at the Carnegie Hall in New York City on December 5, 2004.

The article focuses on the orchestra conductor Maurice Peress, who will tackle a piece for the first time since 1970s in Flushing, New York City. It says that "Resurrection" has a symphony with a theme of life-after death is to be performed by Peress whose life reflects on the said piece particularly his relationship with Leonard Barnstein, his mentor. It adds that the concert is Peress' last before a sabbatical which some say indicates his retirement.

GaL: SYMPHONY NO. 4; SCHUMANN: SYMPHONY NO. 2 Orchestra of the Swan, conducted by Kenneth Woods. Avie AV2231; CD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Touring orchestras usually bring their best game to New York, but the weeklong Spring for Music festival at Carnegie Hall has upped the ante. The series, which opened its second season on Monday evening, requires ensembles to offer creatively assembled programs and to demonstrate in the application process that these are their norm. And it is not a parade of the symphonic world's superstars. Part of its point is to shine a light on the many superb American and Canadian orchestras that have not achieved that status, though some are better traveled than others. All get a significant boost: the programs are broadcast by WQXR (and streamed on wqxr.org) and are available for on-demand listening at springformusic.com. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When Alan Gilbert commissioned the composer Marc Neikrug to write a piece for the New York Philharmonic, he couched the request simply: he wanted something that would show off the full orchestra. It could have been a symphony or a tone poem, but for Mr. Neikrug the solution was a concerto for orchestra: a score in the tradition of Bartok's and Lutoslawski's similarly titled works, in which every part of the ensemble would be treated equally. His goal, he said in a recent interview on YouTube, was to write music that would require the Philharmonic to ''play ferociously difficult music like ferocious animals.'' Mr. Gilbert led the Philharmonic in the premiere of Mr. Neikrug's 30-minute Concerto for Orchestra at Avery Fisher Hall on Thursday evening, and whatever else it had going for it, ferocity was not among its more notable qualities. It was, on the contrary, surprisingly gentle as showpieces go, with two central slow movements -- including, of all things, a scherzo, traditionally a fast or at least high-spirited movement -- surrounded by brisk but hardly explosive ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ARMS carve the air. A hand closes as if to pull taffy. An index finger shoots out. The torso leans in, leans back. And somehow, music pours forth -- precisely coordinated and emotionally expressive -- in response to this mysterious podium dance. Concertgoers, who train their ears on the orchestra, inevitably fix their eyes on the conductor. But even the most experienced listener may not be aware of the subtle and deep connection between a conductor's symphony of movements and the music emanating from the players. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

SIBELIUS: SYMPHONIES NOS. 2, 5 Minnesota Orchestra, conducted by Osmo Vanska. Bis SACD-1986; CD. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

If one word could summarize the performance of Bruckner's Eighth Symphony that the conductor Zubin Mehta delivered with the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall on Thursday evening, the likeliest would be ''noble.'' For nearly as long as Mr. Mehta has been in the public eye -- more than 50 years now -- he has shown a clear affinity for Bruckner, whose Promethean symphonies require an intensity and focus that do not come easily to every conductor. For a time, particularly near the end of his 13-year tenure as the Philharmonic's music director, from 1978 to 1991, Mr. Mehta was characterized as a specialist in spectacle and flash. Accounts of the period report waning spirit in the orchestra and a lack of ensemble discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

RECENTLY Bartok trounced Schubert in an impromptu audience poll at Carnegie Hall. I was surprised and delighted. It seemed an indicator, albeit fanciful, that the battle for contemporary music had been won. The event was the first concert of the pianist Andras Schiff's Perspectives series. The Budapest Festival Orchestra, conducted by Ivan Fischer, had just played a Schubert overture, Bartok's First and Third Piano Concertos (with Mr. Schiff as soloist) and Schubert's Fifth Symphony. Mr. Fischer charmingly offered the audience a choice of encores: Schubert or Bartok. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We are long past the time when extensive podium experience is regarded as an absolute prerequisite for performance of the symphonic repertory's grandest works. Even so, when the British conductor Daniel Harding stepped onto the podium at Avery Fisher Hall to lead the New York Philharmonic in Mahler's 10th Symphony, on Thursday evening, you had to readjust any lingering preconceptions about what a Mahler conductor should look like. At 36, Mr. Harding is thin, just beyond boyish and conducts with a balletic flair, but he clearly has devoted considerable thought to Mahler's music and what makes it work. When he made his New York Philharmonic debut, only eight months ago, he had another Mahler symphony in tow -- the Fourth -- and offered an unusual view, finding restlessness in passages that other conductors perform more dreamily. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital gadgetry has increasingly been making its mark on classical music performance. It hit a milestone this week at the New York Philharmonic. Jeffrey Kahane, the pianist and conductor who is making a guest appearance at the orchestra, used an iPad on Tuesday instead of a score to lead the orchestra in a Mozart symphony. It was a first for the orchestra, the Philharmonic said. Mr. Kahane said it was also his debut with the device in such a major setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There's a grainy 1972 video online of Eddie and Charlie Palmieri playing ''Vamonos Pa'l Monte'' at the old Central Park Bandshell. It is one of the most deeply New York things you will ever see, multi-ethnic and multi-generational and crazily rocking. As the onstage hand-held camera whirls around, you see the brothers Andy and Jerry Gonzalez, then in their early 20s, in the band, Andy on bass and Jerry on congas, each in his own rhythmic trance. It's an apotheosis of this city's musical culture, and Friday's Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra concert at Symphony Space, celebrating the Gonzalezes, felt much the same. When the brothers were starting out in New York -- Jerry playing trumpet as well as congas -- the first great wave of 20th century heroes in Afro-Latin music and jazz were starting to slip away. Perhaps as an indirect result American musicians were beginning to look seriously at their cultural patrimony. And so they examined their roots in the academies, where scholarship about the origins and practice of American music was gaining ground; on the street; in the rumba circles of Central Park and Orchard Beach; and in the clubs, where working musicians played jazz and salsa and funk, and bandleaders who'd seen it all could cultivate them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

SINCE its premiere in 1742, Handel's ''Messiah'' has been interpreted, reinterpreted and, some say, misinterpreted so many times that its identity has become muddled. But that is not stopping two of Connecticut's major orchestras, joined by leading choirs, from weighing in with their own versions of the piece -- versions that contrast markedly in scale and style. From Thursday to Sunday, the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, together with the Cathedral of St. Joseph Schola Cantorum, will offer a production that uses only 17 instrumentalists and 21 singers. Alternatively, the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, along with the Hartford Chorale, will on Friday and Saturday present a version that employs roughly twice that number of instrumentalists and more than five times that number of singers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THE NINTH Beethoven and the World in 1824 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The management of the Boston Symphony Orchestra has said that it has no idea what shape its music director, James Levine, will be in after his next round of surgery for lower-back problems, let alone whether other medical issues are likely to crop up as they have in recent seasons. And Mark Volpe, the orchestra's managing director, who scrambled to fill an empty podium when Mr. Levine had rotator-cuff surgery in 2006, kidney surgery in 2008 and an operation on a herniated disk, near his neck, early this season, has said that he and Mr. Levine have to have some ''frank conversations about what's possible.'' But this is the time of year when musical institutions announce their plans for the coming season, in the hope of getting subscribers to sign up early for a slate of concerts. Now the orchestra has announced a 2010-11 season that counts on Mr. Levine to be on hand for some demanding programming, including three Mahler symphonies, a double bill of Bartok's ''Bluebeard's Castle'' and Stravinsky's ''Oedipus Rex,'' and the premiere of a new work by Harrison Birtwistle. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Symphony orchestra musicians, in public at least, rarely cast aspersions on other orchestras. But the principal flutist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra had some less than complimentary things to say about the Los Angeles Philharmonic, according to a newspaper report. The flutist, Mathieu Dufour, had been on leave and was performing with the Philharmonic temporarily -- a fairly common occurrence when first-chair players are considering a move. Mr. Dufour has decided to stay at his Midwestern job, The Chicago Sun-Times reported on Tuesday, quoting him as saying that the Los Angeles Philharmonic has ''no tradition there -- no tradition of sound and no tradition of working together as a dedicated ensemble.'' He added, ''Maybe they will have that someday in the future.'' Los Angeles has fine musicians, he said. ''But we have achieved a very strong common purpose and set of aims in Chicago that they do not have or do not yet have there.'' Deborah F. Rutter, the Chicago orchestra's president, called Mr. Dufour's decision ''great news.'' A spokesman for the Philharmonic, Sophie Jefferies, said: ''We're very sorry to see him go and wish him all the best. He is an amazing player.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One quirk of the classical music world is that James Levine has never conducted Beethoven's Symphony No. 4. That was to have changed with this year's cycle of Beethoven symphonies by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, where he is music director. But back surgery earlier this month means the quirk will stand, for now. The Boston Symphony said on Thursday that Mr. Levine would not be back on the podium for a concert until Oct. 30 and 31, when he is scheduled to conduct Beethoven's Symphonies Nos. 6 and 7 at Symphony Hall, and then move on to the Eighth and Ninth the following week. Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos will substitute for Mr. Levine in the first program of the cycle, featuring Symphonies Nos. 1, 2 and 5, from Oct. 22 through Oct. 24. The orchestra's assistant conductor, Julian Kuerti, will step in for the second program, which consists of Symphonies Nos. 3 and 4, on Oct. 27 and 29. Mr. Levine was to have led the orchestra at Carnegie Hall's opening night this month, but the surgery forced him to withdraw. The Boston Symphony said he expected to conduct it at Carnegie on Nov. 2., when he will repeat performances of the Sixth and Seventh. Mr. Levine is also music director of the Metropolitan Opera, where he is expected to return for his engagements to lead ''Les Contes d'Hoffmann,'' opening on Dec. 3. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It took a lot of last-minute scrambling, but the Boston Symphony Orchestra found a suitable substitute to take the place of James Levine for the concert on Thursday night that opened the 119th season at Carnegie Hall: the Italian conductor Daniele Gatti. Only on Tuesday did word come that Mr. Levine would have to withdraw because of a herniated disk in his back that required immediate surgery. One of the Boston Symphony's gifted assistant conductors could have stepped in. But the orchestra wanted a known maestro for this prestigious event. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The audience at Carnegie Hall on Sunday afternoon gave Daniel Barenboim and the musicians of the Staatskapelle Berlin a rousing ovation even before the orchestra began its performance of Mahler's Ninth Symphony. With this program, devoted to that single 80-minute work, the orchestra concluded its survey of all nine completed Mahler symphonies, as well as the Adagio from the unfinished 10th Symphony; Mahler's great song symphony, ''Das Lied von der Erde''; and several orchestral song cycles, all performed over 12 days. On a technical level this historic orchestra, whose roots go back 450 years, may not rival the world's greatest ensembles. But the Mahler cycle is the toughest marathon in symphonic music, and there was a sense of event in the hall as this dedicated, accomplished orchestra completed the series over the weekend. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ending a yearlong experiment, the Seattle Symphony is cutting its concertmaster contingent to one from four. The orchestra said it named Maria Larionoff to the position after the players' union objected to multiple leaders. Last summer the orchestra's music director, Gerard Schwarz, named a quartet of violinists, including Ms. Larionoff, to share the post, saying ''it doesn't make sense'' to have one person, given the length of the season. On Friday Mr. Schwarz called the arrangement a ''tremendous artistic success'' but said Ms. Larionoff, the associate concertmaster since 1997, would take over. ''The way she has embraced this new position speaks volumes about her remarkable talent and ability to lead the orchestra,'' he said. Tom Philion, the executive director, said the other three players -- Ani Kavafian, Emmanuelle Boisvert and Frank Almond -- would continue to appear with the orchestra. Michael Crusoe, the leader of the union, said it had protested the four-concertmaster arrangement as a contract violation. Mr. Philion said the appointment, which was part of a deal reached with the union, would address their concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The stooped figure, his head topped with a shock of white hair, made his way slowly out onto the stage of a toy-size theater on Sunday as muses gazed down from the frescoed ceiling. Taking his seat facing the Orchestra of the 18th Century, the man, Frans Bruggen, began conducting Beethoven's ''Eroica'' Symphony, batonless, his right hand karate-chopping the air. It is a piece he has conducted more than 100 times, but players said that it was his favorite Beethoven and that he always seemed energized by it. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article reports that an anonymous donor has gifted $90 million to the New World Symphony orchestra in Miami Beach, Florida. The orchestra plans to spend the money on its project, which includes a new building and technical equipment. It is mentioned that the orchestra officials wanted to announce the gift after starting the project, but a board member talked about the building's plans in a meeting, due to which the issue was prematurely disclosed to the public.

The article reports that the orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Italy will begin an extended symphonic tour of the U.S. in October 2007. Musician Riccardo Chailly will conduct the orchestra in seven cities.

The article reviews the classical music "Symphony No. 2: Imago Mundi," conducted by Christopher Lyndon-Gee.

Discusses how the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra has taken up residence in Montgomery County,a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C, where it will play at the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda, Maryland. How the orchestra will have homes in two cities, in an attempt to find new audiences and plow new fund-raising territory; Risks of such a move to a new city, both financially and artistically; Description of the gala opening of the Strathmore music center; Speculation on whether the Baltimore Symphony will be able to draw audiences away from the National Symphony Orchestra; Details of the Strathmore's architecture.

Provides information on the perception of the audience members on the directorship of music director James Levine on the Boston Symphony Orchestra starting on November 11, 2004.

Presents information on the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra's performance of Haydn's "Drum Roll" Symphony. Description of the symphony; Impact of Haydn's symphony on the audience; Discussion on the performance of the conductor.