The Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra is a great orchestra under the direction of any conductor, but when their 28-year-old Principal Music Director, Gustavo Dudamel, takes the podium, they are one of the world’s best orchestras.
And so it was on Saturday night when Dudamel led the orchestra in two works, each inspired by love and loss, [...]

Last night Jaap van Zweden, the director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (DSO), returned to LA to conduct the LA Phil in the overture, “Cyrano de Bergerac,” Op. 23 by the Dutch composer, Johan Wagenaar, the Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor, Op. 1 by Sergei Rachmaninoff, and the Symphony No. 4 in E [...]

On April 3, Russian conductor Semyon Bychkov led the LA Phil in the challenging and expansive five-movement Symphony No. 5 by Gustav Mahler, perhaps his best-known symphony after the First.
Mahler divided his Fifth Symphony into three sections with the first two movements comprising the first section, the extended Scherzo comprising the second section, and the [...]

April starts out with a bang at Disney Hall. And that’s no joke. For three nights beginning on Thursday, April 1, Russian conductor Semyon Bychkov leads the LA Phil in performances of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony.
On Wednesday, April 14, the St. Louis Symphony under the direction of David Robertson, visits Disney Hall in a performance of [...]

The Dutch conductor Edo de Waart is visiting LA this weekend leading the LA Phil in three varied works, “The Five Elements” by Chinese composer Qigang Chen, Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto in C minor, Op. 37, and Richard Strauss’ “Ein Heldenleben.”
On Saturday, the concert opened with the quietest shimmers in the Chen to an especially [...]

This weekend, James Conlon is leading the LA Phil in a series of all-Prokofiev concerts, including the Symphony No. 1 in D major, Op. 25, the “Classical Symphony”; the Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-flat major, Op. 10; and selections from “Romeo and Juliet.”
The concert on Saturday night began a little late not just because [...]

The very last pizzicato note of “Petrushka” in a February concert conducted by Charles Dutoit was overshadowed by someone’s badly timed cough. Therefore, I decided it’s time to publish a set of rules of etiquette for Disney Hall that have been sitting on my computer for several months now.
But, first, here are the March highlights [...]

On Saturday night, Charles Dutoit conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic in three works all composed within a period of about 40 years of one another, the Variaciones concertantes by Alberto Ginastera (1953), Concerto for the Left Hand by Maurice Ravel (1931) and Petrushka by Igor Stravinsky (1911).
Because of their relatively close temporal contiguity, all three [...]

Even though February is the shortest month, it is still jam-packed with great performances led by a host of world-renowned conductors at Disney Hall. Starting on Friday, Feb. 5, Herbert Blomstedt conducts the LA Phil in performances of Haydn’s Symphony No. 101, The Clock, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. The program repeats Saturday and Sunday, [...]

On Thursday night, I attended church. My church is Disney Hall, and my religion on Thursday night was the Symphony No. 8 in C minor by Anton Bruckner — a fitting composer because Bruckner was a very religious and pious person whose symphonies were often musical offerings to his gods, either the supernatural variety or [...]