Lloyd Schwartz

In the 1940s, recording engineers perfected new sound techniques that were used in World War II — and which launched a hi-fi revolution. Lloyd Schwartz reviews the new 53-CD Decca box set.

The string quartet invited composers like Vijay Iyer and Bill Frisell to compose pieces inspired by something outside of their world.

Many historic recordings have been transferred to CD, but not always as accurately as desirable. But a small record company in France has been remastering these recordings in a revolutionary way.

The Boston Museum of Fine Arts has assembled one of the largest exhibits of Goya's artwork ever seen in the U.S. His paintings, prints and drawings range in technique from exquisitely refined to raw.

The Metropolitan Opera will be celebrating New Year's Eve with Franz Lehar's The Merry Widow in a new production starring soprano Fleming. But its greatest incarnations have been on film.

There are many recordings of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. Do we need another?

EMI has just reissued a broad spectrum of German conductor Otto Klemperer's recordings, including a box set of one of the composers he's most associated with: Gustav Mahler.

With an unforgettable story and score, the 1927 musical tackled complex racial issues. Music critic Lloyd Schwartz says the 1936 film version of Show Boat is the best — and it's now out on DVD.

In 1937, two Nazi art shows aimed to teach the public to despise modernist art and show them what art should be. An exhibit at New York's Neue Galerie reunites works from both landmark shows.

Fresh Air's classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz recently published a poem about friendship and loss on Poets.org.

At 44, the German tenor Jonas Kaufmann may be the most popular tenor of his generation in the international opera world, and one of the most versatile. Among his recordings this year ...

New York City is home to more paintings by Johannes Vermeer — eight — than any other city. And until mid-January, it's playing host to one more: the world-renowned Girl with a Pearl E...

A movie last year called A Late Quartet told the traumatic story of what happens when a famous string quartet has to change personnel. But, in fact, most string quartets — like symphony orchestras, only more conspicuously — continually change players, because players retire, or die, or get more ...

The sculptor Claes Oldenburg was born in Stockholm but grew up in Chicago, went to Yale and came to New York in 1956, where he became a key player in the pop art movement — the major counter-reaction to the abstract expressionism that dominated the 1950s. So much for art ...

Note: Wilhelm Furtwangler's last name is typically spelled with an umlaut over the 'a' character. The npr website does not support characters with umlauts over characters. A variation of Furtwangler's name without the umlaut is spelled Furtwaengler.

Wilhelm Furtwaengler's name may be hard for Americans to pronounce, but ...

The Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Musee d'Orsay in Paris have two of the world's best collections of the work of the French postimpressionist Edgar Degas. The two museums have collaborated on an important show called Degas and the Nude, which includes pieces from major museums ...