Much of this year’s Ojai Music Festival, which begins next week, will be streamed live and archived online in broadcast quality HD. It’s free at www.ojaifestival.org. You can watch and listen on your smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop. Here’s the schedule for the live feeds. Times are PDT:
Review: Long Beach Opera makes warehouse sing with Philip Glass’ ‘Hydrogen Jukebox.’ The Orange County Register, May 31, 2015.
photo: Keith Ian Polakoff
Mozart Classical Orchestra announces 2015-2016 season. The Orange County Register, May 28, 2015.
Review: Pacific Symphony gives Andre Previn his due. The Orange County Register, May 29, 2015.
I found this online the other day, a review I wrote for the L.A. Times in 1992 of Andre Previn conducting the L.A. Phil. The common remembrance is that Previn resigned as music director suddenly in 1989 and never again conducted the orchestra, but, in fact, he did, several times.
The following will be of interest to very few, but I reproduce it here for them. It seems to me that the young version of myself pretty much summed up Previn’s years in Los Angeles with this review. I take no credit, necessarily. I had been reading Martin Bernheimer and others, after all.
(By the way, for the young version of myself to get the opportunity to review the Los Angeles Philharmonic for the L.A. Times — I was just a young and lowly free-lancer — was a very big deal. Perhaps you can sense it in the following.)
Conductors usually get what they ask for. Trouble is, Andre Previn didn’t seem to ask for much Thursday.
On the podium, he was pretty much the traffic cop. Expressive gestures were few, cues for entrances and beat patterns soberly laid out. He often looked bored–and the playing, not surprisingly, reflected this. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Andre Previn to visit Orange County for the Pacific Symphony’s annual American Composers Festival. The Orange County Register, May 24, 2015.
Photo: A. P. Mutter
Anne-Sophie Mutter, Roman Patkoló, Boston Symphony Orchestra, André Previn.
Review: Philharmonic Society gives tribute to Carl St.Clair. The Orange County Register, May 20, 2015.
Review: Pacific Chorale ends season with Poulenc’s ‘Gloria.’ The Orange County Register, May 18, 2015.
