Category Archives: A Little Night Music

Who would have believed it? On February 29, 1988, England’s Arditti Quartet played its usual killer new-music program in its first-ever Los Angeles concert, and lured a gathering of some 20 people to LACMA‘s Bing Theater. Last week the Arditti’s … Continue reading →

Toward the end of a recent symposium celebrating hardcore musical creativity, someone asked what seemed to be a sensible and important question: How can a listener, confronted with an abstruse piece of new music, recognize what‘s going on? How do … Continue reading →

Before there was Scrabble, there was the string quartet. The dinner dishes were cleared, and the company retired to the music room to try out the latest chamber-music delectation from the busy presses in Berlin, Vienna or Paris. Music for … Continue reading →

Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto is so immediately lovable that we can forget what an original and important work it really is. It can bring out the best in a performer, as it did for Sarah Chang in her Philharmonic appearance … Continue reading →

I would like to live long enough to see this happen: A pianist’s recital ends with Opus 111, the last of Beethoven‘s 32 sonatas; as its final cadence — music touched by an angel — merges into the surrounding silence, … Continue reading →

You could write a history of musical consumerism around the varied positions that Bach‘s St. Matthew Passion has held on the scene in the quarter-millennium of its existence. You start with the century of neglect, then the rediscovery and reconstruction … Continue reading →

Dirty old man gets hots for sweet young thing, ends up with egg on face. A week that began with Der Rosenkavalier in Costa Mesa and moved on to Don Pasquale at the Music Center bore reminders of how much … Continue reading →

Sometimes you have to ask yourself: Does the world deserve me, or vice versa? ”My opinion is correct; therefore, your opinion must be wrong“; so — in so many words — writes a self-appointed protector of Stravinsky on last week‘s … Continue reading →

George Grove, lighthouse builder Precious words abide. In 1986, I turned up in one of the Grove dictionaries as “an unpredictable gadfly”; now, in the latest Grove, I still am. At least they spelled my name right, both times. The … Continue reading →

Murray Perahia‘s concert at the Cerritos Center last week strengthened my conviction that he is the most satisfactory, the most honorable, American pianist. Watching him at work, you are touched by his sublime confidence. He knows what he’s good at, … Continue reading →