Category Archives: A Little Night Music

One hundred years after his birth, 50 years after his death, Kurt Weill can finally be measured. Against all the news about the abandonment of serious music by the giants of the recording industry, EMI Classics has produced the first-ever … Continue reading →

There was chamber music in town last week, the wrong pieces beautifully played. On Wednesday, three delightfully earnest and talented young musicians from overseas — the violinist Christian Tetzlaff, his younger sister the cellist Tanja, and the pianist Leif Ove … Continue reading →

A gap of 166 years separates the C-minor Piano Concerto of Mozart (K. 491) from the Piano Sonata of Jean Barraqué, but they share at least this: the ability to wreak sheer violence upon an audience, to numb the ears … Continue reading →

Will American opera audiences ever see the Light? I wouldn‘t count on it, not while the Mmes. Butterfly and Tosca fatten their lead in the audience polls, on Momma Domingo’s cooking. The Light I refer to is the collective title … Continue reading →

I have seen the operatic future — part of it, anyhow — and it makes me nervous. I view the L.A. Opera under the Domingo dynasty as a grandiose mom ‘n’ pop operation. Pop Placido nurses his aging voice, transposing … Continue reading →

In common regard, the violin concertos — even the last three, which are the most often played — are a violinist‘s throwaway pieces, the easy music at the start of the program before getting down to serious stuff. Last week, … Continue reading →

In another 75 years I might — just might — run out of things to say about Johann Sebastian Bach. Then again, I might not. The evidence is at hand that the Bach of 75 years ago — the Bach, … Continue reading →

It is quite possible that I was the only unhappy soul, among 3,000 or so ecstatic well-wishers, who failed to recognize the San Francisco Symphony’s recent appearance at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion – a.k.a. The MTT Homecoming – as a … Continue reading →

The greatest of the romantic operas — the panoramas of lovehate, deceptionredemption, hearts broken and hearts aflame that drew the sellout crowds in Verdi’s time and sent them home singing the tunes — gleaned their life force from one basic … Continue reading →

I smoked my first joint to the Beatles‘ Sgt. Pepper, and my second to George Crumb’s Ancient Voices of Children. The year was 1970 or thereabouts, and I was already pushing 50; I had been slow to ripen. These two … Continue reading →