Author Archives: Alan Rich

Any lingering doubts as to the high place of Witold Lutoslawski among today’s progressive composers can now be set aside. Thursday night the great Polish composer led the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a program of his own music, and drew … Continue reading →

Bored with the perishable artifacts of our own time, we travel far in search of something rooted in history. We come out of Rome’s train station to have our sensors astounded by the ruined grandeur of Diocletian’s Baths; we marvel … Continue reading →

Nobody has yet devised a more congenial concert companion than the six “Brandenburg” Concertos of Johann Sebastian Bach, and it’s not likely that anyone ever will. That being so, it should come as no surprise that UCLA’s Royce Hall was … Continue reading →

Even allowing for his usual boyish exuberance, Peter Sellars overstated the case for Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” only slightly, in his preamble to his famous video versions aired last winter. “A completely shattering experience,” he called the opera, “an evening in … Continue reading →

“You have to realize,” says a contestant at Moscow’s Ninth International Tchaikovsky Competition, “that two weeks from now, one of us will be a world- renowned pianist, and the rest of us will be right where we are, or maybe … Continue reading →

Classical music is dead. So began a column encountered recently, by some writer beyond the mountains hiding behind the generic name of Jones. The premise of his morose words is that the giants have fled, and that they have taken … Continue reading →

Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony, that grinning, gibbering fast ride across the hellish environs, that most sacred of all symphonic monsters, ricocheted dizzyingly through the Chandler Pavilion of the Music Center on Thursday night. Everyone knew that Yuri Temirkanov, the Leningrad … Continue reading →

Of all living composers generally accorded a place in the upper echelons, Hans Werner Henze is one of the most difficult to classify. German by birth, his musical inclinations are toward the earmarks of the French manner. To call him … Continue reading →

Historic site, historic sounds: the Tallis Scholars were in town again on Sunday night, performing their superb repertory of Renaissance liturgical music, and also performing their familiar miracle of cleansing the ears and raising the spirit with the pure beauty … Continue reading →

A mighty man, this Yuri Temirkanov. He proved it last month, when he brought his own Leningrad Philharmonic to the Music Center and had it jumping through hoops. He proved it again on Friday afternoon with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, … Continue reading →