Author Archives: Alan Rich

Photo by Joshua Paul The Death of Klinghoffer is again before us, insistent, moving, inescapable. Nobody of consequence has ever challenged the intense musical power of John Adams’ opera; within a different dramatic context, absent the outcries of Palestinian terrorists … Continue reading →

In Glendale’s Alex Theater on a Saturday night in late September, the voice of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson soared upward on a jagged trajectory laid down by Johann Sebastian Bach. “Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut,” she sang, and the heart’s blood … Continue reading →

1 Footsteps on Disney Hall’s balcony stairs: They clatter, they clomp, and musicians onstage have been known to complain out loud. Berlin Philharmonic violinists, over on stage left, could be seen mocking the noisemaking before the start of one of … Continue reading →

Little Joe’s mother is sick, but there’s no money for milk. Joe and his friend Annette go to the village square to sing for money, but that annoys Brundibár, the town minstrel. He drowns them out with a loud song. … Continue reading →

The year was 1978, and while some guys on Sunset were concocting the prototype of the paper you now hold, I was 2,500 miles away, holding down the classical-music gig at New York magazine and convinced that life held no … Continue reading →

TO ALL THAT OPULENCE on view at Disney Hall, REDCAT is the perfect counterbalance. Nobody cares about the acoustics, since most of its music is miked. Nobody cares about the look of the place, since its 200-seat space is infinitely … Continue reading →

Photo by Alan Wood “ISN’T THIS A DREADFUL orchestra?” said Simon Rattle, curly-topped, dimpled, transfixingly blue-eyed – not yet “Sir” – over cups at a downtown coffee den. The year was 1981, and he had just been made principal guest … Continue reading →

The most beautiful sound I have yet heard at Disney Hall was the dark-blue/violet invocation from James Rotter’s alto saxophone that began Darius Milhaud’s La création du monde at last week’s Philharmonic program: throbbing, mysterious, hall-filling yet seeming to rise … Continue reading →

Photo by Anne Fishbein FINDING YOUR WAY through the intricate programming of this first Disney Hall season – the “Creation Festival” here, the “Baroque Variations” there, the “Sounds About Town” all over the place – is as challenging a process … Continue reading →

Elliott Carter composed his Night Fantasies in 1980, and entrusted its power to the four pianists who had commissioned it (and later recorded it): Paul Jacobs, Gilbert Kalish, Ursula Oppens and Charles Rosen. Nearly a quarter-century later, this half-hour work … Continue reading →