MUSIC REVIEWS
Pushing the Envelope: Enticing New Music at La Jolla SummerFest
Thursday, August 16, La Jolla SummerFest featured Marc-André Dalbavie’s stunning Quartet for Piano and Strings, a La Jolla Music Society commission premiered here in 2012, and paired it with Pierre Jalbert’s 2017 Piano Quintet, an equally impressive work which the La Jolla Music Society co-commissioned.
Read MoreA Sumptuous Banquet of Lin’s Favorites at La Jolla SummerFest
The August 14 SummerFest concert offered an embarrassment of riches, from the warmth and allure of Joaquin Turina’s “Escena Andaluza,” to Claude Debussy’s profound yet unsentimental Cello Sonata, to Lei Liang’s extravagantly exciting new “Vis-à-vis” for Pipa and Percussion, to Gustav Mahler’s transcendent Rückert-Lieder song cycle to Alberto Ginestera’s breathtaking String Quartet No. 1.
Read MoreOpera NEO’s gift of Early Mozart Splendor: ‘Idomeneo’
Opera NEO produced a musically sparkling although spare production Mozart’s early opera “Idomeneo” as part of this year’s Opera NEO Summer Opera Festival and Workshop at the outdoor Palisades Presbyterian Amphitheater in Allied Gardens
Read MoreThe FLUX Quartet: SummerFest’s Powerful Champions of the Avant Garde
As a salute to the UC San Diego Department of Music, La Jolla SummerFest’s host for most of the 2018 music festival’s concerts, Music Director Cho-Liang Lin featured two of the university’s resident composers in his festival’s annual program of contemporary music: Rand Steiger’s new work “Tropes” and Lei Liang’s 2005 “Serashi Fragments.”
Read MoreLeonard Bernstein: a Family Remembrance at La Jolla SummerFest
Even if the classical music community were not observing Leonard Bernstein’s centennial year, Nina Bernstein Simmons’ program “Late Night with Leonard Bernstein” for La Jolla SummerFest would have provided a well-spent evening.
Read MoreBronfman Grotesquely Roars Through Mozart, Schubert and Schumann
After Friday’s uplifting, beautifully crafted opening night SummerFest concert, I was shocked to experience such a tasteless, aggressive musical assault attending SummerFest’s second concert on the following night, August 4, in UC San Diego’s Conrad Prebys Concert Hall.
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