Category Archives: A Little Night Music

Starting From Here December wasn’t much; you get so many sing-alongs. One night, a young man of scholarly mien, Jonathan Biss, tried out his fingers, but not apparently his heart, on the Beethoven Fourth Piano Concerto at Disney. Afterward, he … Continue reading →

More Sharp Than Flat Long faces greeted the last new year. Record stores went broke; so did the manufacturers; so did symphony orchestras; so (sob!) did music critics. Long faces were soon replaced around here, however, with one that was … Continue reading →

Art Thou Not Kent? In Munich one week last month, Kent Nagano conducted three operas on that many nights. Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland in Achim Freyer’s staging was as delightful the second time around as when I’d seen it … Continue reading →

Spectral Delivery With a brassy blast onstage and an ethereal sigh from violas as if from another planet, the Monday Evening Concerts proclaimed their return in full force at Zipper Hall last week. Last year’s concerts had been a tentative … Continue reading →

Small Perfection I like the L.A. Opera’s La Bohème, as I usually do. Hearing Puccini’s infinitely appealing score at Mrs. Chandler’s Pavilion the other night, in a generally excellent performance under Hartmut Haenchen, who had also led an okay Don … Continue reading →

Dirty Business Afoot “Don Giovanni,” the question ran, “is it the world’s greatest work of art, or merely Mozart’s greatest opera?” The late Winthrop Sargeant raised it, but left it dangling, in the old Life magazine in its juiciest days … Continue reading →

Those Were the Days As we waited for Alex Ross to show up to talk about his new book at the Los Angeles Central Library a couple of weeks ago, the hypnotic sounds of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians … Continue reading →

Worth the Wait Martha Argerich is a force of nature, pure and undiminished. Perhaps it’s true that she cancels out of many of her engagements; she has been ill a lot in recent years. But when she does appear, in … Continue reading →

Strength in Numbers Chances are that the Philharmonic’s new music director, when he takes over the podium a couple of years from now, will not ask the orchestra to perform in patriotic jackets, nor will he ask the players to … Continue reading →

The Glorious Fourth The six blows of Thor’s hammer – the metaphor is Donald Tovey’s, not mine – resounded through Disney Hall on Friday night, and then we were done with Sibelius. Esa-Pekka Salonen had chosen the Fifth Symphony to … Continue reading →