Category Archives: A Little Night Music

The New Art Act 2 of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo begins in a sunlit meadow. Orpheus and his pals – nymphs, shepherds, homeless – are celebrating his recent marriage to Euridice. Orpheus, the greatest singer of the day, spins off song after … Continue reading →

John ADAMS: An atomic opera in San Francisco and a multimedia Nativity last month here preserved hopes for classical music’s present and future. Heinrich BIBER: Madcap violin virtuosity from Germany’s leading composer pre-Bach. In concerts and on disc, he’s taken … Continue reading →

Morton Feldman’s music, the perceptive Alex Ross once wrote, works best in isolation. A week in mid-April had begun with splendid public chamber music: the exuberant Cuarteto Latinoamericano in a “Historic Sites” setting, playing music to match in an animated … Continue reading →

Artist in Resonance It was a smooth transition, from the substantial wisdom of John Adams’ Harmonielehre, which ended the Minimalist celebration, to the no less imposing substance of the Bach program that ensued. Disney Hall surely needed the two days … Continue reading →

Free at Last And so the stigma has been lifted, and we can sport the mantle of “minimalist” in public without shame. It comes, in fact, in all sizes, shapes and colors. At a symposium on the final day of … Continue reading →

Wild Oats Several minutes into the second act of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, the lovesick adolescent Cherubino sings a song, addressed ostensibly to the Countess Almaviva but really aimed at womanhood in general. “You [plural] who know about love,” … Continue reading →

Late Night Thoughts Seven years separated the writing of Mahler’s Fifth and Ninth symphonies; just a week separated their hearings at Disney Hall early this month. Ingo Metzmacher (whose photo appeared in this space last week miscaptioned “Louis Andriessen”; oops) … Continue reading →

Red-hot Needles The scene: a January night in New York’s Carnegie Hall, 1973. The Boston Symphony is in town for one of its hot-ticket subscription nights, but conductor Michael Tilson Thomas is trying something new. This will be an experimental … Continue reading →

Cloud Nine There is no sound more beautiful in a concert hall than the silence of an audience profoundly moved at the end of a musical experience and held captive by the invitation to share the performer’s trance. For well … Continue reading →

Well-Schooled Brave and forthright rang the sounds of the Santa Monica High School Symphony; I don’t remember anything quite so ear-shattering in Disney Hall’s two-and-a-half-year history. Near the end of Tchaikovsky’s Second Symphony, in fact, the guy on cymbals had … Continue reading →