There are, I believe, four ways to approach the new film, “The Fourth Kind.” These four approaches are derived from J. Allen Hynek’s system of classification for alien encounters. According to Hynek, THE FIRST KIND is the sighting of a UFO (unidentified flying object). THE SECOND KIND refers to the collection of material evidence of…

Morton Feldman was, it could be fairly said, the twentieth century’s most talkative composer.

Platitudes undercut any sense of character development. An eight-page denouement covers a shabby and stale period of mourning: grief washes over in a quick bout of puffy eyes, then all move on. Perhaps Ms. Jacobs will flesh out the wounds of loss in her sequel, “Knit Two,” arriving November 25, but I recommend that she…

Classical composers usually improve as they age. Beethoven reached dizzying heights during his late period; his last few symphonies and string quartets, intensely personal meditations on human nature and God, radically altered the way composers thought about form and harmony. Stravinsky, whose upward trajectory is harder to trace, given his restless desire to explore different…

It is a shame that most performers (or perhaps concert organizers) don’t have the courage to end a program with Bartók, instead opting for the Romantic route. With the Takács at the helm of the evening, however, the audience was willing to go wherever they took us.