Monthly Archives: August 2002

Even Ludwig Nodded

MY OH MY, HOW THE LETTERS HAVE poured in! “How could you?” their writers fairly scream, as if I had turned my back on motherhood, America and a hot lunch for orphans — which, by the way, I haven’t. What … Continue reading

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TAN DUN

Suddenly Tan Dun is everywhere you look, everywhere you listen. In just the past few months audiences in Lisbon and Singapore have flocked to his large-scale orchestral works. His Water Passion After St. Matthew  reached its first American audiences last … Continue reading

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Reich

“it is a principle of music to repeat the theme. Repeat and repeat again, as the pace mounts. The theme is difficult but no more difficult than the fact to be resolved.” William Carlos Williams, “The Orchestra” in Steve Reich’s … Continue reading

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The Sound of Silence

1.34 METERS TALL, SHORT ARMS, SEVEN FINGERS — four right, three left — large, relatively well-formed head, brown eyes, distinctive lips; profession: singer — so reads, in its entirety, Thomas Quasthoff’s autobiographical entry on his Web site: a profile in … Continue reading

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Opera on High

Santa Fe‘s opera house is a scenery-studded 800-mile drive from Los Angeles; last week it seemed like home away from home. You ran into familiar Los Angeles faces everywhere — at the operas, and at other soul-renewing gathering places by … Continue reading

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Perfect Opera

What makes an opera work? If I had to guide a friend through the devious answers to that question, my final goal would be an understanding of the human interplay with Mozart‘s music in The Marriage of Figaro, tempered with … Continue reading

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