Category Archives: A Little Night Music

Well, that was more like it. Two nights of Paul Daniel‘s conducting at the Hollywood Bowl last week were enough to bring the Philharmonic out of its opening-week funk, back to the major orchestra it can be under the right … Continue reading →

The week began with Madama Butterfly, not my favorite opera. Four days later came Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, which I had successfully avoided for several years. In between, on the Tuesday-night concert that, two weeks into the season, is … Continue reading →

Up north, Good Friday came late this year. Three daunting artworks translate Christendom’s central tragedy into music that churns in the hearer’s gut. Bach wrote two of them, the St. Matthew and St. John Passions, works that surround the telling … Continue reading →

”Someday we shall all be free,“ Garth Brooks sang at the end of his stint at the Hollywood Bowl the other night, and the crowd of 11,000 or so sang along. The great entertainers do that: create a community around … Continue reading →

”We were playing in Fargo,“ Amy Knoles remembers, ”and there was this old woman in the front row who wasn‘t very happy with what she was hearing — it was Art Jarvinen’s Sextet for Amplified Handcuffs. And so she yelled … Continue reading →

A London coal dealer named Thomas Britton had a loft above his shop, reachable by ladder, where, for several decades starting around 1680, hired musicians gave weekly instrumental concerts for a paying audience. Britton’s concerts were a hot ticket; the … Continue reading →

The Motherland reclaimed some of its territory these last few weeks: Benjamin Britten rampant at the L.A. Opera and some magnificent noises from two of his younger compatriots at the 54th running of the Ojai Festival. Britannia rules — or … Continue reading →

The quiet blessing that ends Mahler’s Fourth Symphony receded into silence, and the Philharmonic’s season was over. The last weeks were glorious. A few days earlier, in the final concert of the orchestra’s “Green Umbrella” series, splendidly dispatched by Markus … Continue reading →

It was billed as a “gala”; the ticket prices bespoke “gala,” and so, I’m told, did the fancy sit-down dinner upstairs after the music ran out. The farewell entertainment concocted by the Los Angeles Opera last week to wish Godspeed … Continue reading →

I‘m still obsessed with memories of Marino Formenti’s piano concerts at LACMA; you would be, too, if you‘d been there. On the third concert, he pulled off an acrobatic marvel, performing simultaneously on two pianos, tuned a quarter-tone apart, set … Continue reading →