Lionel Bringuier was sitting in a car on an LA freeway, but by the joy of his voice, you’d think he was somewhere much more glamorous or perhaps sitting on a beach. “I love Los Angeles,” he declared, his smile coming through loud and clear over the phone. “It’s always so special for me to be here.” … Continue reading
Ah, the Hollywood Bowl season. The music under the stars. The celebrity soloists. The reliable if relatively unheralded conductors. The people watching. The pre-concert drinking and picnicking. The mid-concert helicopters. The late-concert fireworks. The post-concert crush of many thousands all trying (and largely failing) to quickly amble downhill to their bus or car at the same time. Good times, good times … Continue reading
The London Symphony, 111-year old bastion of UK musical institutions famed for its virtuosity and flexibility, is an orchestra in transition. The peripatetic Valery Gergiev remains its official Principal Conductor through the end of this year, but the LSO created a big splash earlier this month when it announced that Simon Rattle will become its Music … Continue reading
A little bit of Esa-Pekka Salonen is better than none at all. And so it turned out this past week with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The original plan was that the orchestra’s beloved Conductor Laureate was supposed to be at the Hollywood Bowl for two concerts, beginning Tuesday night when he and pianist Yefim Bronfman (long-time … Continue reading
Tchaikovsky concerts at the Hollywood Bowl are common occurrences. Thursday night’s Los Angeles Philharmonic concert was pretty typical, with a program featuring a pair of frequently heard warhorses: the Piano Concerto No. 1 and the Symphony No. 4. Then again, in some ways, this wasn’t all that typical. There were no fireworks, no 1812 Overture, … Continue reading
Different people have different habits, especially when it comes to how you like to consume information. Some of you like to watch Olympic coverage in real time online or read about the results on ESPN or Twitter immediately after gold medals are handed out, while others prefer to sit through NBC’s tape-delayed faux-suspense-laden Olympic coverage … Continue reading
Yuja Wang is the real deal. If there was any doubt that might have crept in as to whether or not she was a “serious” pianist and/or musician based on a spate of recent cancellations and a critic’s unfortunate comments about her attire at the Hollywood Bowl, let them be put to rest after this … Continue reading
I am still trying to piece together the data for the next installment of my analysis of Gustavo Dudamel’s penchant for new music (as promised in my previous post); however, these things take time and the day job keeps getting in the way. In the meantime, it seems like every time you turned around recently, … Continue reading
All is Yar 