Category Archives: soiveheard.com

WHO’S AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD WOLPE? Surely not Eric Huebner! This is what we know about Stefan Wolpe (Born in Berlin to Jewish parents, 1902– died in New York, 1972) a member of the Bauhaus, he befriended the Dadaist … Continue reading →

There was a moment in Disney Hall last night that I will not soon forget. Christoph Eschenbach was playing Schubert’s last Piano Sonata – the B flat, No. 960 in the Deutsch chronological catalog. The slow movement came to its … Continue reading →

WELCOME: John Adams has been in town these past weeks, as good company as company can get. He came with some of his own music, which was wonderful enough. What’s more, at a Green Umbrella concert, the last of the … Continue reading →

Any notion of the season winding down –with Esa-Pekka departed and nothing to sing about except another creaky old Traviata across the street – needs a couple of weeks’ postponement, as it happens. Two of our best homegrown series ended … Continue reading →

THEY’RE STILL OUT THERE The following, which the good people at Jacaranda received recently and have allowed me to send along, might be worthy of comment. At least I hope so. Subject: Pretentious Bullshit I just received your advertising card … Continue reading →

MUSIC FOR TWELVE: Steve Reich’s Double Sextet began the week by copping the 2009 Music Pulitzer, and began this  next week by proving to a local audience – in a Colburn School Chamber Music Society program at the Zipper Auditorium … Continue reading →

…AND FAREWELL A melancholy event it surely was, and yet a transforming event, an exhilarating event. At the start there may have been reasons to raise an eyebrow at the choice: our spellbinding, so-easy-to-love Music Director taking his leave with … Continue reading →

There had been a rumor – or perhaps I had mis-heard – that Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Violin Concerto, the parting work of his Los Angeles adventure, might also include a part for a dancer or several. That didn’t happen, or perhaps … Continue reading →

The winter storms abate; Wagner’s grandiose music sweeps the stage clean, and our souls as well. The transformation from last month’s deliriously cluttered Rheingold to the spacious, think-for-yourself Die Walküre is as the composer and his music ordained, and the … Continue reading →

MUZAK, ANYONE? The latest from embattled Cleveland – where Rodzinski, Szell and Dohnanyi once guided an orchestra to high distinction – is encapsulated in a report from a Plain Dealer article on that orchestra’s current plight and current emergency plans, … Continue reading →