Category Archives: A Little Night Music

Christopher O’Riley toiled honorably at the Hollywood Bowl last week, and so did the Philharmonic under its excellent assistant conductor Yasuo Shinozaki, but the music slumbered on. Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto has, I’m afraid, reached the end of its useful … Continue reading →

Okay, so the science guys have backed down, and Mozart’s music no longer bears the seal of approval as a remedy for dumbness. Believe this if you will – you and the Times‘ Mark Swed, who broke the sad tidings … Continue reading →

If you’re as old as I am, you can remember a time when Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons was one of music’s unknown quantities. My Gramophone Shop Encyclopedia from 1948 – the year the long-playing disc hit the market – doesn’t … Continue reading →

Twenty years, give or take, separate Beethoven’s “Emperor” Piano Concerto and Berlioz’s “Fantastic” Symphony; one week separated their presence at the Hollywood Bowl (in very classy performances, if you were wondering). The two works sing in different languages, but they … Continue reading →

Strange are the workings of the Fates. A couple of weeks ago, as I rummaged through the collected writings of Olin Downes in search of his adulatory bloviations on the matter of Jan Sibelius, the telephone rang with the news … Continue reading →

Tod Machover’s Hyperstring Trilogy, on the Oxingale label and by some distance the most exhilarating disc release of these otherwise drab summer months, sets off memories of the not-too-distant past and stirs up all kinds of hopes for a not-too-hopeless … Continue reading →

“There is the feeling of the vasty deep,” wrote Olin Downes in the days when music critics coined not only phrases but actual words, “of the thresh of waters and the sough of winds . . .” At the Hollywood … Continue reading →

Something about La Traviata, fragrant creation from Verdi’s early mastery, takes hold no matter what. At the Los Angeles Opera it has survived several reruns of Marta Domingo’s clumsy staging; Linda Brovsky’s San Francisco Opera production, brought down to Costa … Continue reading →

Photo by James Minchen The timing was, as usual, immaculate. Only one aircraft penetrated the space over the Hollywood Bowl on opening night of the Tuesday/Thursday “classical” series, but that transgression occurred during the evening’s quietest moment. In the slow … Continue reading →

Thanks to the separate efforts of the record company called Naxos and the Web site–cum–magazine known as Andante-dot-com, recorded music’s past appears in better shape than its present – and probably its future as well. I wrote last week about … Continue reading →