Author Archives: Alan Rich

Photo by Betty Freeman Bill Kraft pushes on toward 80; Mort Subotnick has just steamed past 70. Leonard Stein’s 87th looms on the horizon. In successive Wednesday-night concerts at the County Museum in May, all three geezers were the matter … Continue reading →

Backstage at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall – one of the world’s less-inviting concert venues – the usual day-before-the-concert chaos reigns on a Monday night in late April. The critics and the connoisseurs have come to town for the premiere of … Continue reading →

Just at the moment when our ears were most in need of refreshment and a thorough cleaning out, along came MicroFest to accomplish exactly that. Month after month the gnrr had piled up in our auricular canals: all those turgidities … Continue reading →

In March 1984 I lived through a week forever memorable. In Rome I sat in on rehearsals for Act 5 of Robert Wilson’s the CIVIL warS to Philip Glass’ music, at the time when there were plans for all five … Continue reading →

Illustration courtesy the Bettmann Archive, New York The Philharmonic’s celebration of Dmitri Shostakovich – all 15 symphonies performed over five years, with all 15 string quartets as a welcome supplement – is now two years along. The observance may have … Continue reading →

H.K. (as in Heinz Karl) Gruber paid us a welcome return visit last week, while memories of last year’s trumpet concerto – appropriately titled Aerial — continue their happy throb. At the season’s final Green Umbrella, he unfurled his Zeitfluren … Continue reading →

Gerald Levinson’s Five Fires wasted the Philharmonic’s time (and mine) two weeks ago with the same bag of aimless sound effects that afflicted his Second Symphony here eight years ago – shorter this time but no less distasteful. Both works, … Continue reading →

Three unchallenged masterworks, each over 250 years old, serve civilization as the musical translation of the essence of humanness. On successive evenings over one weekend early this month, all three – the St. John and St. Matthew Passions of J.S. … Continue reading →

Iannis Xenakis’ Persephassa went zooming around the inner space of Zipper Hall the other night, and for the length of that journey – half an hour, give or take – it obliged me to believe that music couldn’t get any … Continue reading →

Photo by Robert Millard To the accusers of deprivation in the ranks of ardent Wagnerians, the Los Angeles Opera throws a small bone now and then, the current offering being The Flying Dutchman, which runs through April 12. The shortest … Continue reading →