For many Canadian music-lovers, clarinettist James Campbell will be the main attraction on this new Naxos CD.

Driven under the dancing baton of visiting conductor Krzysztof Urbański, it’s not hard to see how the Rite provided a way out of the “theatre of the mind.”...

In general, I find the best concert-going experiences are when not only the music is excellent but when the experience delivers a revelation. A presumptuous attitude, perhaps, but I feel this is what divides an entertaining experience from an artistic one...

The Toronto Symphony and its many guests on stage had earned every single one of the hundreds of loud shouts of Bravo! that rang out after the music stopped.

American pianist Garrick Ohlsson is one of the greats — as he reminded everyone present at Koerner Hall two weeks ago. So when he turns to something obscure, we need to see and hear what he’s up to.

There are many dichotomies at play on this dual release, as soprano and tenor navigate well-trodden and less unfamiliar opera arias.

The fad started the early 1990’s, and quickly sputtered out when people started to realize that the idea of genre, rather than an artful use of a specific musical style as a mater of depth, doesn’t really hold much water. It’s an empty statement that poses itself as an answer rather than a question.

The Roy Thomson Hall audience was warmly appreciative of Gerstein’s easy virtuosity and lyrical playing. He made this old warhorse sound fresh and full of life.

This situation includes two worthy new albums of piano sonatas by Franz Schubert (1797-1828): One by Inon Barnatan on the Avie label featuring two of the composer’s last three — C minor (D958) and A Major (D959) — plus the sweet Op. 90 No. 3 Impromptu; and an ATMA Classique release by Janina Fialkowska of the No. 13 in A Major (D664) and No. 18 in G Major (D894).

Fortunately for the clever troupe of singers, actors and orchestra musicians having the dramatic time of their lives at the Gladstone Hotel until Aug. 31, their modern English adaptation of George Frideric Handel’s 1707 cantata Clori, Trisi e Fileno, renamed A Synonym for Love, is an unqualified success.