Venue: Segerstrom Center for the Arts, Costa Mesa

American Ballet Theatre's Whipped Cream should be seen for Ryden's sets and costumes alone. A free-floating eye and a sweetshop whose ingredients come to life create a very surreal world.

Jeremy Denk's take on Brahms didn't impress Brahms, the Piano Concerto no. 1 in D minor proving an unequal, if refreshing, contest. 

In “five large symphonic movements”, the performance had a celebratory air, poised somewhere between Mahler's “Resurrection” Symphony and Mozart's Requiem.

The Mozart was a immaculately smooth performance teased out with historically-informed ornaments and trills and turns. 

Renée Fleming joins the Pacific Symphony for Strauss, Italian Songs and Rodgers and Hammerstein. 

The moment a mouse peeked out of a stewpot in the kitchen of the Stahlbaum’s kitchen, I knew that the current American Ballet Theatre version of The Nutcracker would keep me engaged all evening.

The Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists performed Monteverdi's L'Orfeo in Costa Mesa.

Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis is an odd piece. Despite having a rich recorded legacy, it is not a piece that one encounters often in the concert hall. The technical challenges of this music are up there with virtually any other piece of combined music for choir and orchestra.