For those of us who have followed Yuja Wang’s career for the last 15 years or so (at least since her major American orchestral debuts) and especially over the last five, we have more or less come to expect two things: to be dazzled and to be surprised. Los Angeles...
Yuja Wang — April 6, 2022, Disney Hall
Jean-Yves Thibaudet at Disney Hall — Through the fog and straight to the moon Jean-Yves Thibaudet plays the complete Debussy Préludes — December 1, 2021, Walt Disney Concert Hall
“Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir.” Charles Baudelaire, “Harmonie du soir,” Les Fleurs du mal (1857) The title of the first of the 12 Preludes in Book II of Debussy’s Préludes is “Brouillards”—and Jean-Yves Thibaudet’s audience at Disney Hall was...
Moving Shadows, Constant Stars – Young Caesar
Young Caesar is born of a certain moment – a definably Californian, forward- and global-looking moment. In Lou Harrison’s music and the awkwardly framed conceits of its libretto by Robert Gordon, there is yearning, rather than the ‘ambition’ we might associate with...
Making the “Un-Private” Public – and Urban
In many ways, Monday evening’s “Un-Private Collection” panel/conversation at Disney Hall, featuring The Broad Museum’s principal architect, Elizabeth Diller, of the Diller, Scofidio + Renfro firm of architects, and moderated by the distinguished architecture critic,...