Author Archives: Alan Rich

Earthbound What is there to say about the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto? Its music evokes the full vocabulary of bland, useless adjectives: well-balanced, elegantly detailed, perfect. On my well-stocked shelves of critical writing I find no poisoned pen aimed against the … Continue reading →

Molar Malaise There are moments in Hector Berlioz’s music when the harmonies become so clumsy, so befuddled in the sheer ugliness of their sound, that the mere progression around a simple turn of phrase starts to throb like a toothache … Continue reading →

Magnificent Obsession Those of you who have been following this page for any length of time, and are easily shocked, are advised to direct your gaze elsewhere this week, because my mood, which no amount of medication in my well-stocked … Continue reading →

Editor’s note: Alan Rich has been the classical music critic at the L.A. Weekly for the past 15 years. Prior to the Weekly, he wrote for Newsweek and the Herald Examiner and California Magazine and, before that, New York Magazine … Continue reading →

Pedophilia in Elysium In Austria about 20 years ago, I had the rare good fortune to chat with the legendary critic H.H. Stuckenschmidt, shortly before his death. The old man had lived through everything, all the way back to Mahler, … Continue reading →

Another Opening . . . I will never tire of writing about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, or of encountering new reasons for wanting to. On a benign Tuesday last week, that music – calm and openhanded one moment, furious and mysterious … Continue reading →

Only Partly Used Memories around John Mauceri come to mind as he begins his final season as the Hollywood Bowl’s Man of Much Music. They start back in 1973, as the Yalie with the golden curls, still John MOSS-ery to … Continue reading →

Please Send No Flowers Old Sourpuss has been heard from again. “A large chunk of masonry fell off the music industry last week . . .” announced the London-based critic, observer, editor (of a book of mine, even) and all-around … Continue reading →

The Mundane Earlier this month, the Philharmonic ended its Disney Hall season with Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, music as familiar to me as the oldest shoe in my closet. I don’t wear that shoe anymore, yet I went to the concert with … Continue reading →

Blackbirds at Dawn The sun broke through only in the last minutes of this year’s Ojai Festival, embracing the final Bach chorus in that legendary pink twilight that is part of the local legend. This was the 60th, the third … Continue reading →