Writing about music, like the art itself, is alive and well in this country.
In three concerts over eight days, the excellent Penderecki String Quartet – visitors from Canada despite their chosen namesake – re-created the life span of one of the past century’s giants: Béla Bartók, through his six quartets. Though he never acknowledged them as such, these remarkable works stand forth as the autobiography of his most [...]
Photo by Friedrun Reinhold If I tell you that my favorite disc of recent months contains over an hour’s worth of three-minute bursts of the same kind of music, seven centuries old and built on principles in no way related to anything else in our repertory experience, you may want to change stations . . [...]
On Tuesday of last week, and again on Friday, Alfred Brendel – current patron saint of thinking piano aficionados – played music by the usual dead Viennese (Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert) in the usual concert garb (white tie, tails) to the usual sold-out house at Disney Hall. On Thursday, on the same stage, Lang Lang, current [...]
Matthias Goerne, who has spent some quality time with us at Disney Hall over the past two weeks, is a transfixing musical presence. As dramatic baritones go, he is at 37 barely dry behind the ears, but he has already taken his place in a distinguished dynasty. In my time that dynasty has included such [...]
Photo by Diane Alancraig Two events on last week’s crowded calendar, with music created eons apart, came agreeably close to whatever it is that people can define as “perfection.” One was Gloria Cheng’s piano concert in Santa Monica on Saturday, especially in extended works by Olivier Messiaen and John Adams; the other came a night [...]
Alan's Poppies and Sage, photographed by Paul Cabanis, Spring 2010.