Email Author Alan Rich

2000 Stories by Alan Rich

• Franz Among Friends

  published December 28, 2000

  It’s not pleasant, witnessing the gradual retreat of the classical-record industry from artistic significance to blandness and the spread o... More >>

• Roll Call

  published December 21, 2000

  Over two recent weeks I heard 14 works by composers of the century just ended (or just ending, if you’re one of those), spread through si... More >>

• Pianissimo

  published December 7, 2000

  AndrAs Schiff began his recent Philharmonic stint with Bach‘s D-minor Concerto, seated at the keyboard of a 9-foot concert grand piano with th... More >>

• All-American

  published November 30, 2000

  By accident or design, the past few days‘ musical offerings added up to an impressive sweep through a varied American music -- a festival i... More >>

• All-American

  published November 30, 2000

  By accident or design, the past few days‘ musical offerings added up to an impressive sweep through a varied American music -- a festival i... More >>

• All-American

  published November 30, 2000

  By accident or design, the past few days‘ musical offerings added up to an impressive sweep through a varied American music -- a festival i... More >>

• All-American

  published November 30, 2000

  By accident or design, the past few days‘ musical offerings added up to an impressive sweep through a varied American music -- a festival i... More >>

• All-American

  published November 30, 2000

  By accident or design, the past few days‘ musical offerings added up to an impressive sweep through a varied American music -- a festival i... More >>

• All-American

  published November 30, 2000

  By accident or design, the past few days‘ musical offerings added up to an impressive sweep through a varied American music -- a festival i... More >>

• Birthday Boy

  published November 23, 2000

  Conventional wisdom about Aaron Copland is that he is America‘s best “serious” composer so far. Already, however, we’re in trouble; that ... More >>

• Time Capsules

  published November 16, 2000

  Bertrand Desprez Five years ago I used some of this space to exult over my discovery of the French composer Pascal Dusapin at his first... More >>

• Witchcraft

  published November 9, 2000

  I had forgotten -- if, indeed, I ever knew -- the somber, deep beauties of On Wenlock Edge. Nothing of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ music, I mus... More >>

• Rage, RAGE Against the Dying

  published November 2, 2000

  Only 16 years (1945--1961) separate Benjamin Britten‘s Peter Grimes from his War Requiem; they are alike in many ways but different in man... More >>

• Shards

  published October 19, 2000

  There is comfort in the news that millenniums don‘t occur very often. The accumulated ”Year 2000“ observances already loom large, and there... More >>

• The Power of 9

  published October 12, 2000

  In Japan, an estimable guidebook informs us, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is the end-of-the-year music of choice, even ahead of “Auld La... More >>

• The Moon and the Stars

  published October 12, 2000

  Certain performances go beyond mere greatness; they serve to define both the music and the act of perceiving it. This is, of course, a personal... More >>

• Plácidalia: The Empire Strikes Ahead

  published October 5, 2000

  Photo by Peter Mountain First there was the promise: “Operalia,” Plácido Domingo’s contest teeming with enough spectacular young singing talen... More >>

• The Grandeur That Was (Or Might Have Been) Egypt

  published September 21, 2000

  Finally Aida, worth the wait if not quite worth the weight. The auspices are splendid: the 15th opening night for a company that some had... More >>

• Fourth Right

  published September 14, 2000

  By late August, most of my crack-pot enthusiasm about the Hollywood Bowl and its contents has worn pretty thin. On Tuesday of last week, for... More >>

• Bach, Brubeck and the Bridge

  published September 7, 2000

  To my generation of budding musicologists, ardently perusing the heavily footnoted scholarly literature on Bach and Before, Dave Brubeck was... More >>

• Island of Bliss

  published August 31, 2000

  The best operatic performance I’ve seen this year took place not in Los Angeles, Long Beach or Costa Mesa, but in Santa Barbara. There, sinc... More >>

• Meat and Potatoes by the Bowlful

  published August 24, 2000

  Phopto by Christian Steiner There is a magical moment — one of many, actually — midway in the first movement of Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symp... More >>

• Timeless and Timely

  published August 17, 2000

  Anyone who attended the Glynde-bourne Festival Opera‘s 1996 production of Handel’s Theodora is probably still talking about it; the event h... More >>

• Multimedia, 1500 Style

  published August 10, 2000

  The concert at the Getty Center two weekends ago, the second of three events this summer tied into museum exhibits, came as close to perfection... More >>

• Second Wind, First String

  published August 3, 2000

  Well, that was more like it. Two nights of Paul Daniel‘s conducting at the Hollywood Bowl last week were enough to bring the Philharmonic ou... More >>