Category Archives: A Little Night Music

On September 11 John Adams was in London, rehearsing vocal forces for his 10-year-old opera The Death of Klinghoffer, which the BBC was preparing for its first-ever British hearing. “The news arrived in early afternoon,” Adams remembered last week, back … Continue reading →

If the Philharmonic’s first-of-2002 concert should be remembered at all — and I see no special reason why — it ought to be tagged in the index as “D-minor Turgid.” D minor is a dangerous key anyhow: icy and menacing. … Continue reading →

At the County Museum last week, a fair-size crowd sat through Morton Feldman‘s Crippled Symmetry with remarkable attentiveness, the near silence in the auditorium blending into the near silence on the stage. Two or three people left before the end. … Continue reading →

As is proper, we start a new year with Genesis. In 1943 the notion befell a modestly endowed but immodestly ambitious Hollywood music man, Nathaniel Shilkret (born Schuldkraut, uncle of the late Wayne), to turn nothing less than the Book … Continue reading →

The Philharmonic’s ongoing ”Schoenberg Prism,“ the long-overdue tribute to the resident who endured only limited celebrity status here in his lifetime, leans with undue caution toward the composer‘s more ”accessible“ side — the post-romantic works like Transfigured Night, Pelleas and … Continue reading →

The Merry Widow here, The Merry Widow there: twice in four days, and twice betrayed. Shouldn’t there be a Purple Heart for critics? Having found much to deplore in the San Francisco Opera‘s current jihad against Franz Lehar’s endearing and … Continue reading →

In 1989 a group of Soviet composers brought their music to Boston, most of it for its first American hearings. There were some familiar names among the group; music by Schnittke, Shchedrin and Kancheli had already leaked out of the … Continue reading →

The Philharmonic‘s admirable chamber-music series has moved to a new home, the recently completed Ahmanson Hall at the Skirball Center, across the freeway from the former site at the University of Judaism’s Gindi Auditorium. Neither is a satisfactory venue for … Continue reading →

The big guys had their Verdi last week: the Music Center‘s La Traviata ending its run (not a moment too soon!) at one end of I-405; Opera Pacific’s Rigoletto starting its shorter run (in happier estate) at the other. Midway … Continue reading →

It‘s now 50 years since Elmer Bernstein composed his first Hollywood film score — a forgettable college-football number called Saturday’s Hero. Now pushing 80, he‘s still at it. Thus, the celebration of his work that begins tonight at the Los … Continue reading →