Monthly Archives: September 2005

Star Tracks

September 29, 2005

Photo by Dan PorgesShake
Ernest Fleischmann summoned me to lunch a few weeks ago, to share the following concern: Under no circumstances, stated Ernest in his familiar brook-no-opposition tones, was I to miss the forthcoming Hollywood Bowl engagement of the young Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel, the first-ever appearance in this country of a young man who [...]

Posted in A Little Night Music | Comments (0) |

Pained Notes

September 22, 2005

Marni Nixon is probably best known as the voice of Audrey Hepburn’s Eliza Doolittle in the film version of My Fair Lady. She continues her own stage career as well – most recently in a nationwide tour as Frau Schneider in Cabaret.
“Smog is the reason I don’t live in Los Angeles any more,” writes Nixon. [...]

Posted in A Little Night Music | Comments (0) |

High Notes, and Low

September 15, 2005

More or Less
Offenbach at the L.A. Opera in the hands of Garry Marshall . . . need I go on? Doom descends even before a note is sounded, when a smarmy character, gotten up to impersonate composer Jacques Offenbach in the flesh, pops up on the podium and tries to wrestle the baton away from [...]

Posted in A Little Night Music | Comments (0) |

Carrying On

September 8, 2005

Photo by Betty FreemanBoy Wonderful
At 35, Thomas Adès continues to surprise, delight, mystify and elude me. If I had my way, everyone on the planet would own the new EMI recording of his recent Piano Quintet, as the indisputable evidence that classical music is still being created as a manner of expression urgent, powerful and [...]

Posted in A Little Night Music | Comments (0) |

Nerve Endings

September 1, 2005

To Any Lengths
Gustav Mahler has some goddamn chutzpah. Envious of my general good feelings at the evening’s start, he rams a solo trumpet into my ear to kick off his Fifth Symphony. “These are my neuroses, my Weltkvetch,” he screams at me through the agency of a zillion-member symphony orchestra, “and you will pay attention [...]

Posted in A Little Night Music | Comments (0) |

  • Donations

  • Categories

  • Archives