Three distinguished performers gave us a generous sampling of music from the early Renaissance to the late Baroque on the much-praised 2000 Richards, Fowkes organ at First Lutheran Church Boston last Thursday.    [continued]

“Versailles: Portrait of a Royal Domain,” this year’s Boston Early Music Festival chamber opera, channeled the tastes of Louis XIV at Jordan Hall on Saturday.    [continued]

For those hankering after a relaxing nightcap and a time capsule experience, RCMF offered a second Saturday evening concert, “Weimar Cabaret,” which offered exuberant performances from Blake Pouliot, Cristina Zavalloni, and Stephen Prutsman.    [continued]

Inspired performances of Brahms and Mozart at the hands of the Parker Quartet and friends cured chestnutitis at Rockport Saturday night.    [continued]

Friday evening’s appearance in Emmanuel Church marked the 10^th anniversary of the British vocal ensemble Stile Antico’s first appearance in Boston. During these years, Boston Early Music Festival, has booked the ensemble almost annually.    [continued]

Odyssey Opera presented the wacky and bouncy operetta La belle Hélène in a “new” English translation last night at the Huntington Avenue Theater. The show repeats Sunday afternoon.    [continued]

The Rockport Chamber Music Festival opened its 48^th season, dubbed “Source and Inspiration,” joining American Jazz standards with European reactions to the quintessentially American idiom. On Friday night at the Shalin Lu Center, some things worked phenomenally, some missed the mark.    [continued]

Singer/harpist Benjamin Bagby in collaboration with Sequentia reached back several centuries earlier than in the usual BEMF fare on Wednesday at Jordan Hall.    [continued]

The 12-piece string ensemble made its Boston Early Music Festival début Wednesday in Emmanuel Church, spanning works by Antonio Bertali, Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, Samuel Capricornus, Giovanni Valentini, and other eccentric gems from the mid-late 17^th century.    [continued]

Kristian Bezuidenhout led Dunedin Consort’s two 11-piece orchestras, organ, and three vocal quartets in Bach’s Matthew Passion at Jordan Hall on Monday.    [continued]

Boston Early Music Festival’s magical production of Agostino Steffani’s Orlando generoso continues on June 12^th and 14^th at 7 pm and June 16^th at 3:30 pm at the Cutler Emerson Majestic Theater. Absolutely not to be missed!    [continued]

Seven Berklee College composers each scored a “reel” of the 90-year old silent masterpiece The Passion of Joan of Arc, and then conducted their sections with the Berklee orchestra, passing the baton relay-style while the film screened uninterrupted at the Cabot Cinema in Beverly last night.    [continued]

The Craft Ensemble’s “Art Deco” program graced the newish concert series sponsored by the First Baptist Church of Medford on Saturday.    [continued]

Modern instruments, composers, and transcribers embraced and enlivened the master at St. Paul’s Brookline Sunday night.    [continued]

“Teach us about listening” and “if you have one of these wretched noisemaking things, turn it off, ”declared the eager impresario in introducing the Kurganov-Finehouse Historical Piano Concert. The duo performed French music on a piano by Erard from 1877 Paris and a 2013 violin patterned after a 1732 Antonio Guarnieri example by luthier Andrew Ryan.    [continued]

Emmanuel Music staged Britten’s The Beggar’s Opera Saturday and Sunday at Longy under conductor Ryan Turner and with Nathan Troup’s clever direction and staging.    [continued]

Commonwealth Lyric Theater’s concise Carmen showed idiomatic accuracy and flavor Sunday in Newton’s War Memorial Auditorium.    [continued]

The reliable ensembles joined forces for the first time in a Jordan Hall concert Friday. Works evoking ocean voyaging, longing, and searching for home balanced a world-premiere setting of extended passages from a new translation of Homer’s Odyssey.    [continued]

Chameleon’s Deborah Boldin characterized the group’s last concert of the season as “in the twilight air, swan songs and farewells,” examining the passage of time through the lens[es] of 5 master composers.”    [continued]

St. Paul Church in Cambridge resonated gloriously Friday during the ensemble’s concert of wind-accompanied works of Bruckner, Stravinsky, and Gabrieli.    [continued]

Boston Chamber Music Society offered up masterful performances of rarely heard works by Ravel, Loeffler, and Chausson on Sunday evening in Sanders Theater.    [continued]

Brahms’s beloved German Requiem served as conductor Jameson Marvin’s Schwanengesang with his eponymous ensemble on Friday at Jordan Hall. Marvin founded The Jameson Singers in 2010 after concluding his distinguished 32-year tenure as Harvard University’s Director of Choral Activities.    [continued]

Who could have imagined that Benjamin Zander would be co-conducting on the Sanders Theater stage yesterday with a jazz-dancing, scatting Doppelgänger? But the success the players and soloists achieved as they adventured forth under Zander’s lofty standard surprised no one.    [continued]

Violinist Soovin Kim and pianist Gloria Chien, both well-known to Boston audiences as soloists and chamber musicians, played a thoughtfully conceived program with passion and a passionate attention to detail at Jordan Hall Saturday night with many distinguished NEC faculty in attendance.    [continued]

The Boston Lyric Opera chose to perform the powerful operatic version of the novel, with music by the Danish composer Poul Ruders, on a brilliantly crafted libretto by Paul Bentley, in the precise basketball court that might have been Atwood’s inspiration for the opening scene of her novel.        [continued]