En direct, Vidéo: Rechercher des critiques de musique classique, opéra et ballet | Hollywood Bowl

Guest conductor James Gaffigan celebrated musical Americana in a program of Copland, Barber, Ellington, and Karpman. 

Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra go out on a limb for a second night at the Hollywood Bowl. 

Paolo Bortolameolli leads the LA Phil in a programme mixing the familiar with the obscure. 

Stéphane Denève and Augustin Hadelich each prove themselves to be at the very forefront of performers active today. 

Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic unleash the darkness of Verdi’s late masterpiece Otello upon the picnickers at the Hollywood Bowl. 

The Los Angeles Philharmonic's last week of its classical music season at the Hollywood Bowl began with romantic French music under an almost full moon played the sexy Seattle way.

A starry night at the Hollywood Bowl for Gustavo Dudamel, Alice Sara Ott, Miah Persson, Gerald Finley and the LA Phil to perform Mozart.

A remarkable debut from cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl. 

“The most beautiful sound an audience can make,” Dudamel told the expectant masses, “is silence.” They chuckled knowingly. Dudamel’s request was borne out of the obvious production being made of Tuesday night’s performance. The giant boom and manned onstage cameras indicated that the performance was indeed being filmed.

Bramwell Tovey, the principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Hollywood Bowl concerts, is no stranger to the venue, though his ability to give a freshly minted polish to everything he conducts makes his appearances seem all too infrequent.His musicianship is subtle, but the results can be eye-opening – and they’re always deeply satisfying.

In a radio speech given by Sir Thomas Beecham to celebrate Jean Sibelius’ 90th birthday in 1955, the conductor praised the Finnish composer’s tenacity in pursuing his personal musical vision – even if that meant, as Beecham sardonically noted, that the music would go “rather over the head of [...] the public and [...] musical press”.

Seeing a classical concert at the Hollywood Bowl is always an event. While (to put it kindly) it is not the ideal acoustic for classical music, the iconic venue is surrounded by glowing hills and always seems to have perfect weather.

Gripped in the clutches of a persistent heatwave, music-loving Angelenos had a difficult choice to make last Thursday. Stay bunkered down in their air-conditioned homes. Or defy the sweltering heat and choking traffic to make the trip to the Hollywood Hills for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s last Hollywood Bowl concert of 2012.

The Hollywood Bowl’s annual “Tchaikovsky Spectacular with Fireworks” has become, along with Labor Day, something of a marker denoting the unofficial end of summer in Los Angeles. When bidding farewell to summer, one may as well do so with a bang—in this case both figuratively and literally. Tchaikovsky. Fireworks.

The name of last Tuesday’s Hollywood Bowl concert was “Three Russian Masters.” That’s Prokofiev, Stravinsky, and Shostakovich, whose music made up the program that night, by the way. But it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that the audience got to hear a fourth Russian master: pianist Denis Matsuev. The first half of the program was centered around him. Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto no.

What a stark contrast between the visual and the aural at last Thursday’s concert at the Hollywood Bowl. On stage was the 79-year-old conductor Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, appearing frail as he shuffled towards the podium; the gauntness of his features accentuated by his suit which hung loosely from his frame.

There might be a shiver of fear in some quarters when the listener is confronted with the name Nicholas McGegan. Mercilessly rushed tempi, slipshod ensemble—and the wool-on-chalkboard horror of vibratoless strings.

Adjectives that come to mind for your typical summer concert: fun, friendly, safe. Would any of those have fit last night’s Hollywood Bowl program? “Fun” absolutely works; maybe “friendly”. But “safe”? The centerpiece of the program – Alberto Ginastera’s wild Piano Concerto no. 1 – was anything but that. Try “daring”. Or even “dangerous”.

A mid-19th-century Italian opera with the sound of the human voice front-and-center, and seemingly dependent on the trappings of the theater.

It was only a year ago when Yuja Wang last visited the Hollywood Bowl, leaving tongues wagging and gray-hairs clutching to their heart medication. The audience may not remember how she played, or even what she played (it was the Rachmaninov Piano Concerto no. 3). But they sure remember what she wore—the "little orange dress.

Johannes Brahms' Piano Concerto no. 2 and Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations. Both solidly—not to mention stolidly—popular works. Safe programming choices. Maybe too safe. Both works are well loved. Well worn, too. Think of the Brahms. Every pianist of note that has ever lived (and will ever live) has recorded and played it.

"Freedom fries": no two words could better summarize the crassness that characterized the early years of the American 21st century.In the wake of disagreement over the Iraq War, American xenophobes sought to eradicate from these shores any vestige of the Tricolour.

In the early years of the 20th century, along the streets of Paris, a society of writers, artists, and musicians—among them Maurice Ravel—known as Les Apaches would exchange the secret greeting devised for members to recognize each other.

It was a night that didn't augur well for those Hollywood Bowl patrons seeking the usual symphonic serenade under starlight. Los Angeles, on Thursday night, was seized by a sudden heat wave that was accompanied with stifling humidity more fitting for Manila or Saigon than the Hollywood Hills.