Jeremy Eichler

This weekend in the Berkshires, the BSO reprised established classics of American music, and Aston Magna celebrated its first 50 years.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra’s concerts were interspersed with presentations from the Tanglewood Music Center’s Festival of Contemporary Music.

Mr. Heiss was on the faculty for 54 years at NEC, where his classes “were a joyous illumination of music.”

Mr. Sherman was a pianist of arresting insight, majestic technique, and transfiguring grace.

On Thursday night as part of a Music for the Senses festival, Andris Nelsons led works inspired by Mark Rothko and by an early-20th-century vision of color matched with sound.

On Thursday night in Symphony Hall, Andris Nelsons led the orchestra in a recent work by Anna Thorvaldsdottir alongside music of Mozart and Brahms.

Portland’s Palaver Strings is remaking classical music.

A season of orchestral concerts, grand opera, new music, and chamber festivals.

A surprisingly personal new film appraises an iconic score in a time of war.

“In such a fiercely capitalist society,” writes Eichler, “critics can strive, in partnership with readers, to help make the gift legible, make it tangible, make it real, understood, and felt. . . . They can explore not only how we listen — but why.”