Lloyd Schwartz

Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen explores questions of time, memory, nature and human isolation. His recent collaboration with soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan has garnered worldwide attention.

The inaugural show at the Metropolitan Museum's Met Breuer branch raises the question of what makes a finished work of art. Critic Lloyd Schwartz calls it "an astonishing gathering of masterpieces."

Music critic Lloyd Schwartz first met poet Elizabeth Bishop when she moved to Cambridge in the early 1970s after living in Brazil for nearly 20 years. Now Schwartz has co-edited a new collection of work by the former U.S. Poet Laureate.

When his mother was turning 90, music critic Lloyd Schwartz wrote poems that put her memories into verse. Composer Mohammed Fairouz set three of the poems to music on the new recording, No Orpheus.

The opera, by the late composer Maurice Ravel, spins a modern fairy tale about a naughty child at bedtime. Critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews a new recording of it by conductor Seiji Ozawa.

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.

Some 30 years ago, the Kronos Quartet created a sensation by releasing an album of chamber music that included an arrangement of Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze." Now Brooklyn Rider, another gifted string quartet, is again blurring the boundaries between classical and more popular kinds of chamber music. Fresh Air classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz says he admires that blur.

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.

Among the best loved recordings from the 1950s were 15 LPs of Haydn string quartets played by the Schneider Quartet. They originally appeared on the Haydn Society label, but were never reissued on CD until now.

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.