Author Archives: Alan Rich

A Broken Vow Brett Dean and his music burst rather politely upon the local scene over the past two weeks. Australia born, with several seasoning years as a violist with the Berlin Philharmonic and now a full-time composer back home, … Continue reading →

The Ring? Wrongly Rung The performance annals of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung abound in tales of solemn ritual, of audiences driven to ecstasy thousands at a time, of published philosophical analyses by the ream. To George Bernard Shaw’s Perfect … Continue reading →

Zero Decibels About an hour before the start of the Philharmonic’s subscription season on September 29, a friend and I were ushered into the empty Disney Concert Hall by an orchestra official. My friend had never seen the hall; I, … Continue reading →

Best Fiddler’s Friend Down the pathway beside the house on the West L.A. hillside, past the red door and down the steps, Kyozo Watanabe sits surrounded by bright, gleaming, brand-new stringed instruments: s, violas, cellos, perhaps a few double basses … Continue reading →

Gloria in Excelsis The crowd at Zipper Hall last Tuesday night, for the first of this season’s “Piano Spheres” concerts, was one of those spectacles that renew your confidence in the future of energetic, serious musical programming. These concerts have … Continue reading →

To Hell With Perfection Don Carlo is Verdi’s Everest, its peak shrouded, unattainable, magnificent. The Los Angeles Opera’s current version, at the Music Center through October 1, handily measures the company’s emergence as a major performing force since its previous … Continue reading →

The New Regime La Traviata was my first opera; wasn’t it everybody’s? Jan Peerce howled and wobbled; Jarmila Novotna sobbed. Nobody noticed whether the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra played in tune; from a vantage point in the standing room at the … Continue reading →

Concert Mastery The annual schizophrenic week of the music season is upon us: the time of overlap that ordains the alternation of Hollywood Bowl picnic supper one night and grand opera, with mandatory matching socks, at the Music Center’s Dorothy … Continue reading →

One of a Kind Few musical works of consequence have endured the variety of treatment, ranging from the ecstatic to the abusive, that befalls Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. Even though its time in the spotlight has been relatively brief … Continue reading →

Backward, Turn Backward At 14, the precocious Wolfgang Mozart had already turned out 10 symphonies, four operas, three concertos, masses, sonatas, a string quartet and a basket of serenades. At that age, the slowpoke Jay Greenberg has ground out a … Continue reading →