Writing about music, like the art itself, is alive and well in this country.
“There’s strange and wonderful stuff in this lifetime of Lou’s music,” I wrote in 1987, under the spell of the Cabrillo Festival. “Much of it is so damned beautiful, so open-handed and eager to please.” Just arrived from New York, where open-handed newness was the brand of the musical sissy, I found Lou’s big diatonic [...]
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Fears and doubts, couched in terms of cynicism and the old fin-de-siècle blues, may truly be set aside after last week’s Philharmonic event at Disney Hall. Our young maestro has earned his spurs not so much with another whoop-de-doo orchestral Saturnalia but with a much-loved, subtle [...]
HAYDN THE HEAVEN-SENT This is a major anniversary year — for Haydn, Mendelssohn, Lincoln, etc. All are being properly feted, none more lavishly or more deservedly, than Joseph Haydn (born 1809). On my desk sits one of many Haydn celebrations, excellent and lovable: a box containing, 21 Haydn symphonies on 7 CDs. They bear numbers [...]
ARRIVALS: My favorite Dudamel moment (so far) occurs during his 2007 performance of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra – the performance in Disney Hall, about two years into his romance with the L.A. Philharmonic and which you now can download via iTunes and buy for not very many bucks. The second movement of that wonderful work [...]
High over Cahuenga Pass, the fireworks spelled out the evening’s message: “Bienvenido Gustavo!” Others in the Philharmonic’s history among our ten previous music directors – Salonen, Previn, Giulini — had acceded more-or-less quietly to their podiums; not so, our new wonder-kid. The Dudamel era exploded into sight and sound last week in an [...]
