Three artists strive for beauty through unpredictability.

Headphones and chill with VAN.

Alina Ibragimova wants it darker.

Roland Kayn’s cybernetic compositions.

Alice Goodman defends her libretto to “The Death of Klinghoffer.”

Song, rap, speech and sexuality.

And how they translate to timbre, in issue #71.

Addressing the political with the classical at the Lucerne Festival.

Amy Williams’s overlapping textures.

An interview with Brian Ferneyhough.

Classical music’s bizarre side.

Kristian Bezuidenhout wants to program music in its context.

In issue #70, tracing the contours of context.

Philip Venables’ formalized violence.

On politics and solace in Schubert’s “Winterreise.”

Underpin the music in issue #69.

Music of intricate construction and gut-punch intensity.

And how they interact with sound.

The harpsichordist Richard Egarr’s music between worlds.

Concert Hall Hopping with Kate Wagner of McMansion Hell.

Leaders who set the tone.

Uri Caine’s classical improvisations.

New initiatives and resistance to them, in issue #68.

Are large ensemble tours worth their environmental cost?

The aesthetic campaigning of Against Modern Opera Productions.

In music new, radical, and fraught.

What makes it hard, what makes it worth doing.

A haunting new “Meistersinger” at Bayreuth.

Claire Chase and Anna Thorvaldsdóttir shape the concert.

The musical realms of Elizabeth A. Baker.

Classical music that takes a stand.

Find new music in old traditions, in issue #66.

Paul Jacobs trusts his audience.

What’s up at the Center for Black Music Research.

Annea Lockwood’s sonic geographies.

Tackle the pressing questions with us in issue #65.

It may be old, but it definitely isn’t boring.

When a conservatory professor fell in love with his student, it tore a class apart.

An interview with Brian Brandt, the founder of Mode Records, on the future of the music industry.

Orientalism and a plea for humanity in “The Land of Smiles.”

Classical music has always been a little different.

The sounding objects of Ellen Fullman and Theresa Wong.

Discover the sounds of issue #64.

The enigmatic composer’s obsessions and influences.

An interview with Michel van der Aa.

No two experiences of music are the same.

Mark Andre’s disappearing sounds.

Why that matters in issue #63.

Saul Williams’s words to music.

Rethinking the voice with contemporary music.

Read our coverage of divas, drama queens, and the human voice.

Explore how in issue #62.

Matthias Pintscher looks for moments of perfection.

Correcting misogynist interpretations of Élaine Radigue’s “Biogenesis.”

Is the prevalence of suicide in opera harmful or healing?

On the New York premiere of “Three Way.”

Andrés Andrade teaches opera to teenagers.

George Lewis on opera, genre, and race.

What classical music gets up to on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

A new choral work by Michael Gordon.

An interview with the pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet.

Listening to Czech music with the conductor Jakub Hrůša.

Why studies questioning the Stradivarius myth are so persuasive.

An interview with the cellist Steven Isserlis.

Yarn/Wire’s “Currents” series comes full circle.

How Berlin and techno saved Joshua Fineberg.

Behind the hype of Teodor Currentzis.

The cellist Mariel Roberts searches for transformation.

Improvisations by Rhymes With Opera.

On a search for the perfect music education.

The artistic director of a Jewish orchestra discovers a genre’s roots.

Kristine Opolais on acting and emptiness.

How two amateurs created the world’s most important resource on the French composer.

A photo essay from Thessia Machado’s studio.

What musicians listened to during the runoff between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen.

Where did classical music’s most famous label go wrong?

Venezuelans respond to Gustavo Dudamel.

Alex Temple’s polystylistic exuberance.

The Refugee Orchestra Project envisions an open America.

Would Pierre Boulez have approved of the Pierre Boulez Saal?

And that’s OK.

When the concert stage becomes a trigger for trauma, and what to do about it.

Yair Klartag wants to live peacefully with doubt.

What classical music gets up to on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

A playlist by Sung Jin Hong, artistic director of the One World Symphony.

How did the repertoire become so narrow?

Sounds and wanderings by the composer Kristina Wolfe.

Andreas Staier responds to our interview with Mahan Esfahani.

An interview with the new JACK Quartet cellist Jay Campbell.

Music for books, ruined pianos, stone xylophones, and more.

Steven Osborne’s piano psychologies.

A profile of Michael Maierhof, explorer of objects.

A call for clarity in calls for scores.

Mahan Esfahani on piety and conservatism in early music.

What British musicians listened to as their country triggered Article 50.

A profile of the composer and ping pong player Chung Yiu-kwong.

An interview with the composer Ashley Fure.

Sigiswald Kuijken’s matters of principle.

A selection of music by women for orchestras to program.

When the concert stage becomes a trigger for trauma, and what to do about it.

Tim Rutherford-Johnson discusses his new book “Music After the Fall.”

The composer on clashes, frictions, and utopian mixtures.

An interview with Alvin Lucier.

Would Pierre Boulez have approved of the Pierre Boulez Saal?

What classical music gets up to on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

What gets lost when orchestras share their conductors.

Musicians and listeners respond to our survey.

What music says about the history of colonialism in Brazil.

Teju Cole’s musical obsessions.

The solace of John Cage’s speaking and writing.

The extremes of the baritone Georg Nigl.

Olivier Latry and Iveta Apkalna discuss the pleasures and perils of the organ.

And that’s OK.

A new production of Robert Ashley’s “Dust.”

An interview with the soprano Marina Rebeka.

What classical music gets up Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

What one octogenarian performer’s experience reveals about getting old in the music business.

Chaya Czernowin discusses her upcoming opera “Infinite Now.”

The Refugee Orchestra Project envisions an open America.

Oscar Edelstein’s curiosity and defiance.

A profile of the artist and interviewer Helga Davis.

Alex Temple’s polystylistic exuberance.

What classical music gets up to on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

King Ludwig II’s Wagnerian castle and a lineage of obsession.

Empathy and perception with the composer Sky Macklay.

A new exhibition on the life of Richard Wagner’s decidedly gay, ambivalently Nazi son.

An interview with Nabil Arbaain, a Syrian musician who fled Damascus.

A profile of George Crumb at 87.

Songs from a gay Australian childhood and youth.

Talking motherhood and opera with Margarete Joswig.

Does a composer’s country matter?

The composer Jennifer Walshe’s overwhelming worlds.

Yuval Sharon takes on opera’s future.

The violinist Vilde Frang searches for clarity.

What classical music has been up to in 2016 on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The sounds of the composer and artist’s “obsessive aesthetic fence-straddling.”

Music on the border to the Gaza Strip.

Matt Haimovitz in Sarasota, Florida.

Janáček’s “Jenůfa” and the politics of forgiveness.

What classical music gets up to on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The conductor John Eliot Gardiner’s Monteverdi.

On the future of the Archivio Luigi Nono.

On the interaction between personal identity and artistic freedom.

The conductor Thomas Sanderling’s life with Mravinsky, Weinberg, and Shostakovich.

Does marijuana have a future in classical music?

On the effort performers put into looking effortless.

The composer Kaija Saariaho prepares for the Metropolitan Opera’s historic production of “L’Amour de Loin.”

Music from the 64th parallel north.

What’s a classical musician to do in Trump’s America?

An interview with the violinist Hilary Hahn.

Classical musicians respond to the election.

Music for self-reflection and post-election blues.

A profile of the Cambodian composer Him Sophy.

The conductor Elena Schwarz is developing her intuition.

The music of the people who tried, and failed, to achieve America’s highest office.

The composer and songwriter Gabriel Kahane is staying candid.

The violinist Leila Josefowicz is a tough cookie.

Explorations of experimental music with Jennie Gottschalk.

What fan fiction based on a rock opera tells us about the musician’s life.

Katherine Balch dives into plant sounds, nonlinear novels, humming, and shivering.

Weinberg and Lady Gaga with the Baltic Sea Philharmonic.

“Dichterliebe” in a collage with the pop and the pornographic.

What classical music gets up to on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The conductor on intimate, intertwined threads of Finnish music.

The “Human Requiem,” before it arrives in New York City.

An interview with the composer Sarah Nemtsov, a winner of RicordiLab.

An interview with the journalist and musicologist William Robin on “a scene without a name.”

What’s behind the obsession with children who compose?

Cult appeal and the universe with the composer Dylan Mattingly.

An interview with Helmut Lachenmann.

On pacifism in Britten and the music world today.

Selling the manuscript of Mahler’s Second Symphony.

Who’s Your Conductor Soul Mate?

An interview with the composer Jüri Reinvere, on a musical life in the orbit of Ingmar Bergman and Käbi Laretei.

Bibliophilia, secrecy, Valium, and the world’s most important collection of contemporary music manuscripts.

Wolfgang Rihm teaches the Lucerne Festival’s Composer Seminar.

The mixes of the electroacoustic composer Carl Stone.

What classical music gets up to on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The composer and saxophonist Matthew Evan Taylor on false binaries, anger as pitch, and the surprises of working with visual artists.

On the Multi-Story Orchestra, an ensemble based in a car park.

Where do piano tuners spend their days?

Matt Haimovitz in Cormons, Italy.

Procrastination and the search for simplicity with the composer Natalie Draper.

A new release of a pivotal Julius Eastman work.

The personal and political histories of Lukas Ligeti.

“The Hubble Cantata” in Brooklyn.

The composer Nathan Currier preserves the Midtown scene.

Early music specialist Reinhard Goebel still knows best.

What classical music gets up to on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

An interview with the composer and sound artist Lisa R. Coons.

Science fiction and Morton Feldman’s “Three Voices.”

Hartmut Haenchen jumps in at Bayreuth.

Why aren’t we discussing structural inequality in classical music?

A strange homage to Ligeti’s Violin Concerto.

At the Belvedere Singing Competition, in Cape Town, with the tenor Lukhanyo Moyake.

Matt Haimovitz in Fishtail, Montana.

Composing in the era of entrepreneurship.

A concert of black female composers in New York.

The actor chooses voices of the past and present.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard after the Aldeburgh Festival.

In Berlin with the South African composer Philip Miller.

What classical music gets up to on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The risks of using famous artists as opera set designers.

An interview with the composer Tristan Murail.

Hold music and dance music with the choreographer Mark Morris.

The evolving relevance of John Adams and his music.

Samir Chatterjee seeks detachment.

On Autism and emotion in music.

The composer Jakob Ullmann’s ongoing resistance.

Discovering the New York Opera Fest.

Dispatches from the Ojai Music Festival and Jordan Hall.

Herbert von Karajan and Arthur Honegger’s “Symphonie Liturgique.”

The present and future of artificial intelligence in composition.

A visit with Rebecca Saunders.

The Black tenors who’ve taken on the role of Otello.

What classical music gets up to on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Marin Alsop in São Paulo and Baltimore.

“The assumption is often that music is used to drown out other sounds of torture; in fact, music is an additional weapon used against prisoners.”

A Concerto with Cornel West and pieces on Sonia Sotomayor and Donald Trump at the Apollo Theater.

Faced with a hostile government, new, improvised music in Russia is flourishing on the fringe.

A conversation with the cellist Jan Vogler on the rise of Pegida in Dresden.

The liberation of the Syrian city of Palmyra from ISIS by Russian forces called for a celebration. But this was no ordinary open air concert.

Reflecting on musical white privilege in Kenya and Benin.

Artists take over the Brazilian Ministry of Culture.

An opera playlist on injustice, violence, and making a beautiful ruckus.

The violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja is fed up.

An interview with the composer Christian Wolff.

What classical music gets up to on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The prevailing 19th-century attitudes towards injury and disability in classical music harm musicians and those around them.

The composer Liza Lim on judging composer competitions.

Scoring Hong Kong film and arranging Harry Partch.

The world of custom baton makers.

Conversations with Polish music engravers.

What the mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča looks for in a production.

Improvisation with family as a cure for orchestral burnout.

What classical music gets up to on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The formative sounds and experiences of composer Pauline Oliveros.

Transfiguration and tradition in Schoenberg’s “Verklärte Nacht.”

The composers who matter to Ilan Volkov.

An interview with the German mezzo-soprano Waltraud Meier.

A new production of “Lucia di Lammermoor,” by Heartbeat Opera.

An interview with Odradek Records founder John Anderson.

What does it mean when a conductor says he’s “bringing music” to societies with rich musical traditions?

Two graphic designers on new classical album covers.

A conversation with Olga Neuwirth on the persistence of sexism in classical music.

Dr. Joanne Loewy, director of the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine, on the pitfalls of the audition process.

A new staging of George Benjamin’s opera “Written On Skin.”

On experiencing the Boston Symphony Orchestra live.

What classical music gets up to on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Is it better for your music to be streamed or pirated?

From mountain camping to Concertgebouw audition.

Cellist Kevin McFarland on his favorite melancholy, macabre music.

Playing Chopin and poker, at home and abroad.

The baritone Thomas Hampson on listening to his own voice, the vulnerability of Lied, and bringing an opera role home.

The director Morgan Neville discusses his documentary on Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble.

A poem by David Ferry, in sound.

Conversations with members of Europe’s first black and minority ethnic orchestra, Chineke!

Listening to Kim Jong-il’s operas.

Christian Gerhaher doesn’t want to entertain.

On Johannes Brahms and his ever-complicated relationship with women.

The composer on her—mostly non-classical—musical influences.

An interpretation of Schubert’s “Erlkönig” by the composer Georg Friedrich Haas.

The composer Georg Friedrich Haas starts living his sexuality.

Did Claude Vivier predict his own murder?

Why do people stop playing music? Conversations with current and former musicians.

A student remembers Lilian Kallir and her unusual illness.

The violinist Christian Tetzlaff goes deeper.

The soprano explores her character Ophelia, in Hans Abrahamsen’s “let me tell you,” through song.

A photo essay from an organ builder’s workshop.

A concert in São Paulo’s Cracolândia.

An interview with the composer Betsy Jolas.

A former El Sistema violinist on endless rehearsals, political manipulation, and what needs to change for the Venezuelan youth orchestra training program to live up to its reputation.

Is El Sistema really a revolution in music education?