Author Archives: Alan Rich

Free at Last And so the stigma has been lifted, and we can sport the mantle of “minimalist” in public without shame. It comes, in fact, in all sizes, shapes and colors. At a symposium on the final day of … Continue reading →

Wild Oats Several minutes into the second act of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, the lovesick adolescent Cherubino sings a song, addressed ostensibly to the Countess Almaviva but really aimed at womanhood in general. “You [plural] who know about love,” … Continue reading →

Late Night Thoughts Seven years separated the writing of Mahler’s Fifth and Ninth symphonies; just a week separated their hearings at Disney Hall early this month. Ingo Metzmacher (whose photo appeared in this space last week miscaptioned “Louis Andriessen”; oops) … Continue reading →

Red-hot Needles The scene: a January night in New York’s Carnegie Hall, 1973. The Boston Symphony is in town for one of its hot-ticket subscription nights, but conductor Michael Tilson Thomas is trying something new. This will be an experimental … Continue reading →

Cloud Nine There is no sound more beautiful in a concert hall than the silence of an audience profoundly moved at the end of a musical experience and held captive by the invitation to share the performer’s trance. For well … Continue reading →

Well-Schooled Brave and forthright rang the sounds of the Santa Monica High School Symphony; I don’t remember anything quite so ear-shattering in Disney Hall’s two-and-a-half-year history. Near the end of Tchaikovsky’s Second Symphony, in fact, the guy on cymbals had … Continue reading →

Maybe it’s something I ate, or didn’t, but I’ve been feeling unusually good about new music these days, for any number of reasons. The Philharmonic has had Thomas Adès as guest composer/conductor/pianist, and after some concerts there have been crowds … Continue reading →

A Mighty Fortress Sunday morning in the devout Leipzig of Sebastian Bach, centuries before the Lutherans’ conquest of Minnesota, was an arduous if uplifting experience. The faithful gathered in one of the two main churches, St. Michael or St. Thomas, … Continue reading →

Twinkle, Twinkle . . . There is no music for piano, large-scale or small, quite like the G-major Sonata of Franz Schubert. Its first sounds tease your imagination: What instrument could Schubert possibly have had in mind, in October 1826, … Continue reading →

The Inner Music Silenced Robert Wilson’s production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, as produced by the L.A. Opera two years ago, soared both on Puccini’s lyric urgency and on an inner music created out of Wilson’s own visions, his unique sense … Continue reading →