Cellist David Finckel, pianist Wu Han. Lisa-Marie Mazzucco photograph. The duo joins violinist Benjamin Beilman June 14 for two Schubert trios, D. 898 and D. 929, at the Rockport Chamber Music Festival.
Please read at bottom as well, a brief note about the MCANA meeting this month in Atlanta. The spotlight of that weekend was Götterdämmerung, sung by Tomer Zvulun’s Atlanta Opera. The production was the culmination of a four-year Ring cycle, and snapshot of the impressive growth of AO in accomplishing it.
Moving first though to another special event, and another dynamic director. Barry Shiffman’s Rockport Chamber Music Festival opens this week, and everyone knows I love my hometown festival. Not without reason.
Shiffman’s mix of established voices and new ones, of egghead presentations and straightforward pleasers, shows in the five weeks of music: Denk, Bell, Biss, Brentano for one; Poesis, Mira Kardan, Galvin for the other. All presenting interesting programs in a chamber music heaven—the Shalin Liu Performance Center in downtown Rockport. There are great festivals every summer all over the country and in Europe—and these are the performers who go there.
Rockport is a beach town, but this is no outdoor venue. SLPC is built for chamber music, frequently used in recordings—and with well-played music onstage, makes audiences wish concerts would last forever.
I will be writing a capsule review of the first couple weekends for Classical Voice North America. Opening night features Brahms, with pianist Jon Kimura Parker, violinist Chee-Yun Kim, and others. There are two brunch-hour sonata programs—not to miss: Cellist Mira Kardan with Micah Yui play a mixed Romantic program June 13; Mark Steinberg with Jonathan Biss perform Mozart sonatas June 20.
David Finckel and Wu Han take time out before their final season at their own summer festival, Music at Menlo, to present a deep-dive program with violinist Benjamin Beilman—Schubert trios D. 898 and 929. Pianist Simone Dinnerstein, whose work I don’t hear enough, plays Rameau, Lasser, Bach and Jarret. Brentano plays early Haydn and Beethoven quartets, then joins Biss for Dvorak. Are you getting all this? Yuja plays the gala concert. Lindemann, Balourdet, Goodyear—just come and hear it for yourself.
Cellist Mira Kardan (courtesy photograph) performs the first of two brunch-hour sonata programs on June 13, with pianist Micah Yui. Mark Steinberg and Jonathan Biss perform the second on June 20—Mozart violin sonatas.
The Rockport Chamber Music Festival begins Friday, June 12 and continues through July 12, with scattered performances later in the summer.
Lise Lindstrom sings Brünnhilde in Atlanta Opera’s Götterdämmerung, June 5, 2026. Raftermen photograph
In early June a group of writers traveled to Atlanta for the MCANA conference. The yearly business discussions were punctuated by generously hosted musical presentations: the Alliance Theatre’s opening of the Estefans’s new musical theater piece Basura; the finale of Wagner’s Ring tetratrology, Götterdämmerung, staged by Tomer Zvulun’s Atlanta Opera, the culmination of a four-year Ring cycle; and Natalie Stutzmann conducting the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, examining Mahler’s Resurrection symphony.
I was not assigned to review anything, and won’t here. Tom May, the thoughtful Seattle writer, was covering the Götterdämmerung performance, and other reviewers were as well. It was a brilliant weekend, with little rest and lots of music. Götterdämmerung can be a lifetime experience on its own, but for this weekend the spotlight was shared equally by Wagner’s magnificent music, and the point-of-pride held by Atlanta Opera in accomplishing it all.
This production culminated four years of consecutive Ring performances, all available at the forward thinking Atlanta Opera Film Studio (check that archive sometime). The company announced a future one-week complete cycle—why not? the engine is warm—for 2029.
Zvulun, Atlanta Opera artistic director, spoke to the MCANA group twice about his company tackling a cycle, its decades-long planning, and his own distinguished mentorships, especially from his time in Seattle. (Seattle Opera is known for its own recent Rings, planned mainly by director Speight Jenkins, one of those mentors. Jenkins (1937–2026) passed away during the weekend.)
Six hours of Wagner’s magnificent score—to my thinking, mostly a luscious slow vocal recital, solo voice against instruments, weaving mythology. Please find Thomas May’s CVNA review, or any of the others who will speak informatively about the cast (Stefan Vinke, Lise Lindstrom, others) and production.
Natalie Stutzmann and the young-looking Atlanta Symphony Orchestra look poised for a long period of musical growth. Stutzmann’s own background, first as an early-music vocalist, now as a conductor willing to tackle anything (including the pit at Bayreuth), brings extra juice when watching her music-making. I would gladly spend a season or two writing about her work. I wish I could have loved the hall in the Woodruff Center more deeply, but Boston’s Symphony Hall can spoil some things for other venues.
The basic set of Atlanta Opera’s Götterdämmerung—Brutalist, monocromatic, geometric. Easy to see Escher or Mondrian ideas. June 5, 2026. Erhard Rom photograph
Much has happened musically in the past few months, not all of it good. The Boston Symphony Orchestra season ended in turmoil, and I expect more of the same at Tanglewood. I’ll be there for the Philip Glass symphony on opening weekend, and then back for the Festival of Contemporary Music (Salonen curates this summer) and more of Salonen’s work in the Shed. Music Director Andris Nelsons will be there too, and for one more season and one more summer after that as well.
The BSO organization changes all the time, but the departures of artistic administrator Tony Fogg and several members of the press staff should be noted. Fogg has programmed the BSO seasons for at least two decades; musicians love him, and everyone trusts him. I met him when I first began covering music in Boston—an interview for the Improper Bostonian. I have followed many of the musical choices he has made since then, and learned much. Fogg retires after the Tanglewood season this summer.
Both Matthew Erikson and Rena Cohen are leaving Jan Devereux’s press staff—Erikson has already left. Both have provided significant expertise with professional grace over the years, doing a largely unforgiving job.
Conference room ceremony: Sarah Kirkland Snider accepts the MCANA Best New Opera award from juror Arthur Kaptainis. Snider’s opera Hildegard, a Beth Morrison production, premiered in Los Angeles in 2025. Jacquelyn Ball photograph
MCANA also presented its annual Best New Opera award over the Atlanta weekend to composer Sarah Kirkland Snider, for her Hildegard, which premiered Nov. 2025 in Los Angeles and played at the Prototype Festival this January. Snider wrote the libretto as well. Recent Best New Opera awardees (composer/librettist) include Reid/Perkins, Mazzoli/Vavrek, Tesori/Thompson and other collaborations—an impressive collection. Chicago-based journalist Hannah Edgar gets this year’s Littler Prize.