Posts by Ken Herman
The Artistry of Emanuel Ax and Friends at La Jolla SummerFest
La Jolla SummerFest titled its Wednesday, August 22, concert “An Evening with Emanuel Ax.” But it was much better than that. It turned out to be an evening with Emanuel Ax and friends.
Read MoreSummerFest’s Glowing Concert of French Music from Gounod to Ravel
The La Jolla SummerFest concert on August 21 presented a beautifully performed program that captured that late Romantic flowering of French chamber music from Charles Gounod to Maurice Ravel.
Read MorePushing 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.”
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