Mary Beth Crain

This week, in an odd coincidence, Los Angeles hosts two brilliant young violin virtuosos by the name of Hahn, in two outdoor concerts. And they’ve got lots more in common. Hilary Hahn started performing at age 3; made her major orchestral debut with the Baltimore Symphony at 11; was voted......

One string bass is enough of an experience, but six all at once? Welcome to Bassiona Amorosa, a sextet of brilliant young virtuosi from Munich who, under the auspices of Young Artists International and the International Laureates Festival 2006, make their West Coast debut in a program of classical and......

There are few summer music events more charming than Southwest Chamber Music’s outdoor series at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens. On the splendid terrace overlooking magnificent garden vistas and ancient statues, consummate musicians perform works classical and contemporary as the sun sets, the birds join in with......

If you remember your Beowulf, Grendel was the big, bad monster who ate Danes for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks and terrorized good King Hrothgar’s realm until the mythic Scandinavian warrior Beowulf himself told him where to get off. Well, it’s taken some 1,000 years, but Grendel is finally having......

The original members of the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus would have kids of their own by now. Considered one of the country’s leading children’s choirs, LACC celebrates its two decades with a bash featuring all five choirs — Concert, Intermediate, Apprentice, Preparatory and Chamber Singers — along with a reunion......

In 1920, radical young composers calling themselves “Les Six” banded together in Paris. Rebelling against “outmoded” Wagnerism and Impressionism, Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc and Germaine Tailleferre — and their pals Erik Satie, Jean Cocteau and other obstreperous visionaries — produced works designed to meet......

When Ben Johnston caused riots in Rio in 1962 with his infamous Knocking Piece for Grand Piano Interior, a rhythmic onslaught that requires the players to beat the piano with any available malletlike objects, he was probably surprised at the brouhaha. After all, Johnston was only fooling around with ratios......

Franz Josef Haydn has been called the father of numerous musical genres — hence the nickname “Papa.” Of all his paternal honors, however, Father of the String Quartet is perhaps the most enduring, for Haydn took that medium to heights unequaled by anyone with the exception of Mozart and Beethoven,......