A German chanteuse and German pianist teamed with an Israeli string quartet at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall presenting songs from multiple cultures to celebrate the 50th anniversary of German-Israeli diplomatic relations.

You wouldn't know the music business was in crisis from the number of press releases Blogcritics receives every day. Unfortunately, far too many of them aren't doing their subjects any good.

Violinist Lara St. John and pianist Matt Herskowitz present new and scarily inventive arrangements of traditional tunes from Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the Middle East, many with Jewish roots.

This avant-garde but entertaining show brings Queen Elizabeth I's personality craftily and colorfully to life using her poems, prayers, and speeches, dozens of threads stitched artfully together into a gracefully energetic mini-biography.

"Music starts where words end," says the cellist as she prepares to record these difficult, seminal works.

As long as people like Ilona Oltuski are "on the job," I'm also betting on an indefinitely extended delay in the "decline" of classical music.

What did the search giant's motto really mean, anyway?

The musicians established their interlocked feels for the ebb and flow of the music right off. With grace and power they brought out the Romantic spirit of the music as well as the proto-Modernism in Brahms's unexpected harmonies and transitions.

This isn't the first show I've seen featuring deaf actors. But it's the first on a Broadway scale, and the first musical. It is, to switch metaphorical senses, eye-opening.

The latest dance-theater extravaganza from Austin McCormick and his scarily talented troupe transports us into a magical world of tongue-in-cheek glitz and deeply felt emotion rolled densely into a concoction of wonders.