John Adams on the podium. © Riccardo Musacchio Although premiered more than three decades ago, John Adams’s second opera The Death of Klinghoffer (1989-91) has lost none of its topicality and dramatic intensity over the years. Based on an original concept by director Peter Sellars, Adams’s score is a terrific setting of one of the... Continue Reading →
Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the Walt Disney Concert Hall auditorium. © Danny Clinch Back at Walt Disney Concert Hall for two weeks closing the Los Angeles Philharmonic season, Music & Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel conducted the orchestra in a thrilling program on Thursday and Friday, combining two notable world premieres from... Continue Reading →
Iveta Apkalna. © Photos provided courtesy of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association As an afterparty par excellence to her last week’s appearances with LA Phil as soloist on Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Sinfonia concertante for organ and orchestra (2020-22), Iveta Apkalna delivered yet another unforgettable performance on Walt Disney Concert Hall organ, a. k. a. Hurricane Mama... Continue Reading →
Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic. © Craig T. Mathew and Greg Grudt/Mathew Imaging “It feels kinda nice, with hindsight, to think that at this age, after so many decades, I had to learn a whole new world, but there were these moments over the past couple of years, when I was really pulling... Continue Reading →
Stranger Love in its world premiere at Walt Disney Concert Hall © Craig T. Mathew/Mathew Imaging Written in the course of seven years, Dylan Mattingly’s three-act opera Stranger Love (2012-19), based on a concept jointly developed by the composer and his librettist Thomas Bartscherer, is something quite out of the ordinary. A milestone piece of... Continue Reading →
Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic. © Photos provided courtesy of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association Returning to the podium for this week’s performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Conductor Laureate Esa-Pekka Salonen presented the Walt Disney Concert Hall audiences with the US premiere of his fabulous Sinfonia concertante for Organ and Orchestra (2020-2022),... Continue Reading →
Within the realm of contemporary chamber music, Jörg Widmann’s Clarinet Quintet (2017) stands out as something quite unique. Cast as a forty-minute Adagio, the one-movement quintet has found its abode at the delicate end of the dynamic scale, out of which textures of dazzling finesse and subtle fortitude are wrought, derived from utmost distilled core... Continue Reading →
Every once in a while new music of such resplendence comes across that one is transfigured by the encounter. For this writer, the album premiere of Thomas Adès’s three-part ballet Dante (2019-20) marks such an occasion. Recorded in conjunction with concert performances by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Master Chorale under Music... Continue Reading →
Stage imagery from Tero Saarinen's Transit, based on the music by Sebastian Fagerlund with sound design by Tuomas Norvio © Kai Kuusisto Unveiled for the first time in its full scope and scale at Tampere Hall on Friday evening, Transit, a striking collaboration between composer Sebastian Fagerlund, choreographer Tero Saarinen and sound designer Tuomas Norvio,... Continue Reading →
Among ever-flourishing Eastertide traditions in music, The Street, a 2022 collaboration between harpist Parker Ramsay, librettist Alice Goodman and composer Nico Muhly comes off as one of the most compelling contemporary takes of the Via Crucis or The Fourteen Stations of the Cross. Joined by the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, Daniel Hyde, Director of... Continue Reading →
AIM - Adventures in Music 