Jeremy Eichler

This weekend in the Berkshires, the BSO reprised established classics of American music, and Aston Magna celebrated its first 50 years.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra’s concerts were interspersed with presentations from the Tanglewood Music Center’s Festival of Contemporary Music.

Mr. Heiss was on the faculty for 54 years at NEC, where his classes "were a joyous illumination of music."

Mr. Sherman was a pianist of arresting insight, majestic technique, and transfiguring grace.

The wooded slopes of the Ettersberg stand in the center of Germany, a few miles north of Weimar. Beginning in the eighteenth century, the area served as the playground of dukes, who went there for hunting, and later as the preserve of poets, who traversed its rugged hills while contemplating the wonders of nature. No less an eminence than Goethe, the greatest of all German poets, traveled often to the forests of the Ettersberg, and over the years he grew particularly fond of one large oak tree near a clearing with expansive views of the countryside. On a bright autumn morning in 1827, a banquet-like breakfast was laid out in the shade of this grand oak. Leaning back against its regal trunk, Goethe feasted on roast partridges, drank wine from a gold cup, and gazed out at the rolling landscape. “Here,” he declared, “a person feels great and free…the way he should always be.”

On Thursday night as part of a Music for the Senses festival, Andris Nelsons led works inspired by Mark Rothko and by an early-20th-century vision of color matched with sound

On Thursday night in Symphony Hall, Andris Nelsons led the orchestra in a recent work by Anna Thorvaldsdottir alongside music of Mozart and Brahms.

On Thursday night in Symphony Hall, Andris Nelsons led the orchestra in a recent work by Anna Thorvaldsdottir alongside music of Mozart and Brahms

Imagine, for a moment, this multilayered dilemma. You are a gifted young classical musician, a string player with a passion for communicating your art.

ROCKPORT CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL Rockport's jewel box of a hall, the Shalin Liu Performance Center, overlooks Sandy Bay and is one of New England's most picturesque spots for chamber music.