Author Archives: Alan Rich

You have to admire the thinness of the line that sometimes separates the very old from the very new. Here at hand, for example, are recent discs that demonstrate some interesting across-the-centuries coincidences. On a Nonesuch collection called, simply, Early … Continue reading →

Any entertainment that consists of two or more consecutive events under the same management qualifies as “festival” – from Bayreuth to Ojai – and the crowds come running. I’m not sure whether last week’s “Resistance fluctuations,” which was identified as … Continue reading →

The crescent moon emerged in the sky over Ojai. The woodpeckers, at home in the huge sycamore to the right of the bandstand at Libbey Bowl, had finished feeding their newborn brats and chattered for a while about the day’s … Continue reading →

Symphony orchestras, like fine wines, travel badly; yet travel they must. It’s not enough, for both commodities, to garner fame and fortune in their own back yards. The Philadelphia Orchestra must also conquer audiences in Costa Mesa, as a superb … Continue reading →

Interesting paradox: At a time of continued lamentation in certain unenlightened circles over the overdose of hardcore atrocities being foisted upon helpless local audiences, the past few weeks have seen more kindness extended to new music than to the warhorses. … Continue reading →

So far, the Philharmonic’s extraordinary celebration of Gyorgy Ligeti’s music has concentrated on his work from the 1960s – the decade of assassinations, Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs, Cuban missiles and the walk on the moon. For Ligeti it was … Continue reading →

Everything that’s right about romantic Italian opera, and everything that’s wrong, comes into focus in Verdi’s Il Trovatore. The plotline cries out for parody, and has been handsomely treated in that regard by the Brothers Marx in A Night at … Continue reading →

There was a tingle in the news. UCLA’s Royce Hall, shut for over four years of earthquake repairs and retrofitting, was to reopen its doors with a most newsworthy event: a major collaboration between those blithe, innovative spirits, director/designer/poet Robert … Continue reading →

Several weeks ago I wrote off the symphonies of Robert Schumann as some of music’s “most honorable failures.” Esa-Pekka Salonen had performed the “Rhenish” Symphony in an acceptable but hardly stirring manner – as he had the “Spring” Symphony a … Continue reading →

Every year around this time, the excellent local ensemble called the Armadillo String Quartet puts on a concert of music by its anointed composer-in-nonresidence, Peter Schickele. Peter comes out from New York for the concert; sometimes – as a pretty … Continue reading →