Author Archives: Alan Rich

The performers’ parts for Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, on the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s music stands at the Music Center on Tuesday night, were yellowed with respectable old age. They’re entitled; this was the orchestra, after all, that gave the work … Continue reading →

Mention the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and good vibrations arise. Here is a musical organization whose very name suggests longevity (210 years, in fact), distinguished bloodlines (Felix Mendelssohn was one of its conductors) and adherence to solid, middle-class virtues. (The Gewandhaus … Continue reading →

There were only two people on the stage, and not many more in the audience, for this week’s Monday Evening Concert at the County Museum. The concert was extraordinary even so, a reunion with one of the most remarkable musical … Continue reading →

Suddenly, there are Estonian composers where there were none before. The past few years have seen the emergence of Estonia’s Arvo Part, whose quiet, mystical compositions have won a large following. As Wednesday night’s County Museum concert by the California … Continue reading →

The Ardittis have done it again.Miracle workers in the cause of contemporary music, master musicians unafraid, the London-based Arditti Quartet came to town once again on Tuesday night, drawing a large (but not capacity) crowd to USC’s Bovard Auditorium, taking … Continue reading →

For a few hours last Saturday morning and early afternoon, the center of Los Angeles’ musical life shifted northward from its usual downtown location to some dusty, sunbaked real estate in the Santa Clarita Valley. The occasion was “A Day … Continue reading →

There were many empty seats at the Music Center at the start of Thursday night’s Los Angeles Philharmonic concert, and many more after intermission. The sounds of electronic beepers and the squeal of moribund hearing aids rang out in the … Continue reading →

I HAVE ART, ONE VERTICAL; WILL BRING IN THURSDAY A.M. [F/L]The music at Wednesday night’s concert by Ensemble P.A.N. (“Project Ars Nova”) may have been old in years, but it was thoroughly modern in spirit. It was, if anything. fairly … Continue reading →

Like the shock waves streaming from Dr. Mesmer’s magnets that figure in its dizzy plotline, Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte” seems to have had a revitalizing effect on the Music Center Opera. The production, cheered to the rafters at its first … Continue reading →

Music of a poignant beauty almost beyond the reach of mere words, achieved with means so simple that they, too, disappear in the telling: that was the essence of a most extraordinary concert on Wednesday night at Saint Basil’s Church … Continue reading →