Michael Tilson Thomas began a two-week stint with the Los Angeles Philharmonic this past weekend with performances of his own Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74 (“Pathétique”) at Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Tilson Thomas originally composed Four Preludes in 2003, and then revised it in [...]
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Jean Sibelius was the most popular composer then living in the Anglosphere, not to mention in his native Scandinavia. Fame was a double-edged sword for the notoriously self-critical composer. Doubt, its flames stoked by alcoholism, gnawed away at his creative drive, aggravated further by the disdain of the modernists [...]
Philip Glass’ Satyagraha is a complicated opera with many layers of thought and artistry. At the same time, it is a minimalist work that does not follow the rules of traditional opera. In other words, it is quintessential Glass. Which means you may already have formed an opinion about whether you will like LA Opera’s [...]
If you love opera and don’t know the Verdi Chorus, perhaps it’s time you did. Their 35th anniversary season culminates with Passione! Opera! for two performances only at the First United Methodist Church in Santa Monica on Saturday, Nov. 10, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Nov. 11, at 2 p.m.
The Verdi Chorus is the only choral [...]
I’m not crazy about pumpkin spice anything, but one thing I definitely look forward to each fall is Wicked Lit — the Halloween-themed theater experience that haunts Mountain View Mausoleum and Cemetery in Altadena each October and November.
This is Paul Millet and Jonathan Josephson’s 10th annual fall production of Wicked Lit; and instead of going [...]
The new release in the Pittsburgh Live! series is a revelatory performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55 by Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
It’s been a few years since we’ve heard Manfred Honeck and the PSO perform Beethoven, and that was a recording of the fifth and seventh symphonies [...]
MacArthur “genius” grant recipient Branden Jacobs-Jenkins worked at “The New Yorker,” but has said in interviews that his Pulitzer Prize-nominated play “Gloria” is not based on his experience there. No matter. It rings so true — as any good fiction does. You can see the Echo Theater Company’s West Coast premiere of his 2015 work, [...]
Composer Mark Abel’s 2018 DELOS CD release, Time and Distance (DE 3550), features acclaimed Los Angeles area vocalists, soprano Hila Plitmann and mezzo-soprano Janelle DeStefano. Their task was immense in this endeavor — to mediate operatic texts by Abel and area poets Joanne Regenhardt and Kate Gale that address difficult social, psychological and political issues. [...]
The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills presents the Bristol Old Vic’s award-winning production of Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” directed by Sir Richard Eyre and starring Oscar winner Jeremy Irons (“Brideshead Revisited,” “Reversal of Fortune,” “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice”) opposite Olivier winner Lesley Manville (“Another Year,” “Harlots,” and “Phantom [...]
On Saturday night, the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the direction of its music director, Gustavo Dudamel, performed a concert of orchestral works by Robert Schumann, including the Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54 and the Symphony No. 2 in C major, Op. 61. This concert was the second part of the Schumann Focus series [...]
