Author Archives: Alan Rich

Hildegard von Bingen abides. Her 900th birthday occurred sometime this year and has been lavishly celebrated. An eight-disc box on BMG Classics honors the event with a comprehensive anthology of her music, gently and respectfully updated by the performers most … Continue reading →

Artwork by Akg London Nobody composed better art songs than Franz Schubert. Many tried, and Hugo Wolf came close. In his 43 years – a life cut short by syphilis and insanity – he produced some 300 songs, feverishly devouring … Continue reading →

Between a 1610 violin sonata by Giovanni Paulo Cima and the 1995 Fifth String Quartet by Elliott Carter there stretches a chronological and stylistic gap of nearly four centuries. Still, the music in both cases – the one played last … Continue reading →

Photo by Zoe DominicAlban Berg’s Chamber Concerto and Donald Martino’s Notturno, composed 50 years apart (1923 and 1973, give or take a few months), were performed two days apart here last week: the Berg by the Philharmonic under Esa-Pekka Salonen … Continue reading →

In 1928, Arnold Schoenberg began sketches for his Moses und Aron and completed his orchestration of Bach’s “St. Anne” Prelude and Fugue: the one an opera completely atonal in style, the other a transcription of music that celebrates the full … Continue reading →

Between Joseph Haydn’s Opus 1 and George Crumb’s Black Angels – two centuries, give or take a decade – lies the realm of the string quartet, subtlest and most secretive of all kinds of music, demanding the listener’s most concentrated … Continue reading →

A silent-movie paean to life at its most forlorn, the grit ‘n’ gloom of a live soundtrack cobbled from works of the grittiest and gloomiest of composers – who, even among the most sanguine, could have mistaken these as ingredients … Continue reading →

At the season’s final classical concert at the Hollywood Bowl last month, Yo-Yo Ma was the marvelous soloist in John Tavener’s 48-minute The Protecting Veil, with Jeffrey Kahane and his Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; at the end, the crowd of … Continue reading →

Willem Wijnbergen can’t wait to get back into music. His job description, after all – as executive vice president and managing director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic – demands at least as much attention to musical matters as to fund-raising, … Continue reading →

Andre Previn’s score is bland and derivative; Philip Littell’s libretto reduces the play to a skeleton; Colin Graham’s staging is busy and hectic. Still, a fair portion of the blame for the failure of the San Francisco Opera’s A Streetcar … Continue reading →