Category Archives: A Little Night Music

Photo by Alan Wood “ISN’T THIS A DREADFUL orchestra?” said Simon Rattle, curly-topped, dimpled, transfixingly blue-eyed – not yet “Sir” – over cups at a downtown coffee den. The year was 1981, and he had just been made principal guest … Continue reading →

The most beautiful sound I have yet heard at Disney Hall was the dark-blue/violet invocation from James Rotter’s alto saxophone that began Darius Milhaud’s La création du monde at last week’s Philharmonic program: throbbing, mysterious, hall-filling yet seeming to rise … Continue reading →

Photo by Anne Fishbein FINDING YOUR WAY through the intricate programming of this first Disney Hall season – the “Creation Festival” here, the “Baroque Variations” there, the “Sounds About Town” all over the place – is as challenging a process … Continue reading →

Elliott Carter composed his Night Fantasies in 1980, and entrusted its power to the four pianists who had commissioned it (and later recorded it): Paul Jacobs, Gilbert Kalish, Ursula Oppens and Charles Rosen. Nearly a quarter-century later, this half-hour work … Continue reading →

Consider the irony. In 1940 there was Fantasia, the hat-in-hand appeal by the Walt Disney Studios to secure a blessing from the citadels of High Culture. Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring was the big number, its 33 minutes hacked down … Continue reading →

Photo by Jay Blakesberg In Santa Monica there was In C, Terry Riley’s first great work, now approaching 40. In Costa Mesa there was Sun Rings, Riley’s latest great work, in its first local hearing. The music of the years … Continue reading →

The office of composer laureate does not yet exist here; if it did, John Adams would be the hands-down choice for occupant. In the quarter-century since his works reached their first thunderstruck, cheering audiences, he has found within his soul … Continue reading →

Two recent items from the University of California Press, too small for the wisdom they contain, provide some interesting insights on American music making and creative attitudes over the last several decades. One is Paul Bowles on Music, a collection … Continue reading →

Everything that is splendid about the Los Angeles Opera’s Damnation of Faust – about which I rhapsodized at our last get-together – is imponderably awful in Deborah Drattell’s Nicholas and Alexandra, the season’s second offering and the company’s first full-scale … Continue reading →

Photo by robert millard Everything you could hope to encounter in an evening of truly enlightened musical drama – superb music splendidly comprehended, a dramatic concept original yet honorable, a stage design to stimulate the eye – is there for … Continue reading →