Grigory Sokolov's debut recital on Deutsche Grammophon: some of the finest piano recordings one could ever hope to hear.

In a season of superlatives, the Canadian Opera Company saves the best for last, in its season-ending production of Donizetti’s Anna Bolena.

Two problematic symphonies by a tortured composer are despatched by the Boston Symphony and its Latvian conductor with near-nonchalance.

It is no secret there is a crisis surrounding gender balance in classical music composition. But in Toronto’s Heliconian Hall Saturday night, the scales were tipped, at least temporarily.

Make no mistake, Alden’s interpretation of Johann Strauss Jr’s most popular comic operetta — one long accepted on fine, serious opera stages everywhere — has a great concept, a brilliant set design by Allen Moyer, Constance Hoffman’s colourful costumes and some of the finest operatic lighting (by Paul Palazzo) that I’ve seen in a long time.

Peter Longworth is, I would like to argue, Toronto’s most accomplished collaborative pianist right now. It sometimes looks like there’s nothing he can’t do. So it’s particularly worth paying attention to his first solo album.

Billed as a Parisian soirée, the programme featured art song, poetry, film, modern music for piano, baroque-era chamber music and a sacred detour into the Lamentations of Jeremiah complete with interpretive dance.

The German-speaking law-school dropout with a talent for writing opera arrived in England on the coattails of an unpopular German-born king (George I, the first of the Hanover monarchs, who later Anglicised themselves as Windsors) in the mid-1710s.

Soprano Adrianne Pieczonka and Kristina Szabó contend with George Crumb and a few missteps at Soundstreams 2015/16 season opening.

Here is a copy of what I filed to the paper last night: