Category Archives: A Little Night Music

All the articles written for the L.A. Weekly under the column title “A Little Night Music”

Prize Packages

Among the piano soloists listed for this summer’s concerts at the Hollywood Bowl are Garrick Ohlsson, who in 1970 won the Chopin International Competition in Warsaw; Jon Nakamatsu, who won last year’s Van Cliburn Competition in Fort Worth; Natalia Troull, … Continue reading

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Nudity, Gunshots, Sex, Feathers

They’ve done it again, Michael Milenski and his weird and wonderful Long Beach Opera. What looked on paper like a couple of time-wasting, doom-destined ventures in operatic futility have turned out – in the time-honored Long Beach tradition – fascinating, … Continue reading

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Something Old…

You have to admire the thinness of the line that sometimes separates the very old from the very new. Here at hand, for example, are recent discs that demonstrate some interesting across-the-centuries coincidences. On a Nonesuch collection called, simply, Early … Continue reading

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A Fluctuating Sameness

Any entertainment that consists of two or more consecutive events under the same management qualifies as “festival” – from Bayreuth to Ojai – and the crowds come running. I’m not sure whether last week’s “Resistance fluctuations,” which was identified as … Continue reading

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For the Birds

The crescent moon emerged in the sky over Ojai. The woodpeckers, at home in the huge sycamore to the right of the bandstand at Libbey Bowl, had finished feeding their newborn brats and chattered for a while about the day’s … Continue reading

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Three for the Road

Symphony orchestras, like fine wines, travel badly; yet travel they must. It’s not enough, for both commodities, to garner fame and fortune in their own back yards. The Philadelphia Orchestra must also conquer audiences in Costa Mesa, as a superb … Continue reading

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Roll Over, Beethoven

Interesting paradox: At a time of continued lamentation in certain unenlightened circles over the overdose of hardcore atrocities being foisted upon helpless local audiences, the past few weeks have seen more kindness extended to new music than to the warhorses. … Continue reading

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Mastery, Mastery

So far, the Philharmonic’s extraordinary celebration of Gyorgy Ligeti’s music has concentrated on his work from the 1960s – the decade of assassinations, Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs, Cuban missiles and the walk on the moon. For Ligeti it was … Continue reading

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The Misery of Il Trovatore

Everything that’s right about romantic Italian opera, and everything that’s wrong, comes into focus in Verdi’s Il Trovatore. The plotline cries out for parody, and has been handsomely treated in that regard by the Brothers Marx in A Night at … Continue reading

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Monstrous Disgrace

There was a tingle in the news. UCLA’s Royce Hall, shut for over four years of earthquake repairs and retrofitting, was to reopen its doors with a most newsworthy event: a major collaboration between those blithe, innovative spirits, director/designer/poet Robert … Continue reading

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