By Robert D. Thomas

Music Critic

Goldstar is offering "half-price" tickets for the upcoming Los Angeles Opera production of Benjamin Britten's opera Albert Herring, which opens Feb. 25 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Tickets that are regularly priced at $75-$230 are being offered at $38-$115, plus a service charge that adds about 12% to the purchase price. Effectively, that makes the discount on a $230 ticket about 44%, still a good bargain. LAO has its own discount programs for senior, students and families available through its Web site.

Goldstar information: www.goldstar.com

LA Opera information: www.losangelesopera.com

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(c) Copyright 2012, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.

By Robert D. Thomas

Music Critic

Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News

Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic have won a 2012 Grammy for "Best Orchestral Performance" for their performance of Brahms' Symphony No. 4, which was recorded by Deutsche Grammaphon (DGG) live in Walt Disney Concert Hall as part of the Phil's "Brahms Unbound" festival last spring.

The award was Dudamel's first Grammy. It's the second Grammy in which the Phil has been involved. In 1986, the orchestra's recording of Lutoslawski's Symphony No. 3 (led by Esa-Pekka Salonen) won the award for "Best Contemporary Composition." As a Phil spokesperson noted, "The awardee was Lutoslawski as it was a composition award, but the recording was done by the LA Phil."

Dudamel and the Phil beat out Andrew Davis and the BBC Philharmonic's recording of English composer York Bowen's Symphony Nos. 1 & 2; Nicholas McGegan and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra playing Haydn's Symphonies 104, 88 and 101; Marek Janowskiu and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin playing Hans Werner Henze's Symphony Nos. 3-5; and Jirí Belohlávek and the BBC Symphony Orchestra playing the six symphonies of Bohuslav Martinu.

The Phil's Brahms Symphony No. 4 is available download from iTunes but not (at this point) on a CD.

The 2012 Grammy for "Best Opera Performance" went to the Metropolitan Opera for its Sony Classical recording of Dr. Atomic by John Adams, who is the L.A. Phil's Creative Chair. Adams wrote the opera in 2005 and the Met first presented it last year.

Information: www.grammy.com

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(c) Copyright 2012, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.

By Robert D. Thomas

Music Critic

Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News

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Los Angeles Opera: Verd's Simon Boccanegra

February 11, 2012 • Dorothy Chandler Pavilion

Next performances: Feb. 15, 21 and March 1 at 7:30 p.m.; Feb. 19, 26 and March 4 at 2 p.m.

Information: www.losangelesopera.com

Plácido Domingo and Ana Maria Martinez star in Los Angeles Opera's production of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, which opened last night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Photo for LAO by Robert Millard.

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Simon Boccanegra isn't the least performed of Verdi's operas but it's not at the top of the list of the Italian composer's favorites, either. It was given, to quote Thomas May's article in the printed program, "a lukewarm premiere" when it debuted in Venice in 1857 and, again according to May, subsequent performances in Florence and Milan were "outright fiascos." In 1881, Verdi -- who had by then ostensibly retired from the writing opera -- revised the work, and the success of that revival led him to write his final two -- and greatest -- operas: Otello and Falstaff.

What Verdi created in Boccanegra was somewhat formulaic; even though the two plots are different, I had the feeling I was reliving last season's Rigoletto all over again. Part of the reason for the familiarity may be that Michael Yeargan designed both productions, Rigoletto originally for San Francisco and Simon Boccanegra for Royal Opera, Covent Garden.

Nonetheless, wonderful music pours out of every page of Boccanegra and the ensembles he wrote -- trios, quartets and, in particular, a marvelous sextet to conclude the first Act -- the famous "Council Chamber" scene -- are quite special.

For Los Angeles Opera, the major reason for mounting Simon Boccanegra is that Plácido Domingo wanted to undertake the title role. After a century as one of the world's great tenors, Domingo (who turned 71 on Jan. 21) has discovered the joys of once again being a baritone (he actually began that way as a young adult). Actually, it's quite a rare feat; normally a tenor voice doesn't have the heft necessary for baritone roles but Domingo has always been unique.

Last night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Domingo's lower register wasn't as deep as many who have been baritones all of their adult lives, but the glorious ring that has characterized his more than 130 tenor roles remains very much in evidence. Moreover, he brought an anguished pathos to the role of an elder statesman struggling to unite his country while wrestling with personal demons, as well.

So, if you're hesitating whether to attend one of the six remaining performances, hearing and seeing Domingo's riveting performance in his "new life" is worth the price of a ticket. Besides, there's no guarantee that he can keep going; Domingo has already announced that he'll perform in Verdi's even more rarely heard I Due Foscari to open LAO's 2012-2013 season in September (yet another baritone role), but the clock is, regrettably, ticking.

Fortunately, Domingo is not the only reason for making the trip to downtown Los Angeles; the balance of the cast is uniformly strong and, in a couple of cases, better than that. For me, the highlight of the evening was soprano Ana Maria Martinez, who in her fourth appearance with LAO sang the role of Amelia with a rich, lustrous tone and tossed off a spiffy trill at the end of the sextet to boot. She also brought deep emotion to her acting.

Vatalij Kowalijow's portrayal of Jacpo Fiesco echoed the nobility that the Ukranian bass brought to his portrayal of Wotan in LAO's Ring cycle three years ago, Stefano Secco made an impressive LAO debut as Gabriele Adorno a gleaming top tenor range. The balance of the cast included Paolo Gavanelli as Paolo Albiani (and didn't have to worry about remembering his first name), Robert Pomakov as Pietro, Sara Campbell as Amelia's maid, and Todd Strange as a captain. The LA Opera Chorus was effective in the crowd scenes.

To no one's great surprise -- he has conducted 25 performances of three productions of Boccanegra before last night -- James Conlon conducted with assurance and sensitivity and the LA Opera Orchestra played beautifully; it would be a shock if either were otherwise but such skill is not to be taken lightly or for granted. David Washburn sparkled as a one-man banda.

The production features a simple unit set with columns to symbolize Italy and a moveable back wall alternating two different styles of graffiti with Trajan-style letters, each trying to figure out clever ways to slip Simon Boccanegra's name among the other words. The costumes, originally by Peter J. Hall, ranged from colorful to nondescript and the lighting design by Duane Schuler was suitably atmospheric for the most part. Elijah Moshinsky directed the six scenes skillfully.

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Hemidemisemiquavers:

• The opera ran just under three hours including one intermission.

• Conlon revealed in his printed-program article that Simon Boccanegra was among the first operas he saw, at age 13 from the standing-room area of the old Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.

• The large banners of Domingo and Conlon that used to hang from atop the Pavilion are no longer present. They were destroyed in big windstorms in December.

• In addition to the remaining Simon Boccanegra performances, LAO's production of Britten's Albert Herring opens Feb. 25 for six performances through March 17. Information: www.losangelesopera.com

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(c) Copyright 2012, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.

By Robert D. Thomas

Music Critic

Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News

As the Pasadena Symphony heads into its third season following the 25-year-tenure of former Music Director Jorge Mester, the orchestra continues to find a new rhythm as evidenced by its 85^th season that was announced yesterday.

Although there still seems to be no successor to Mester on the horizon, three of the six guest conductors for the 2012-2013 season will have led the PSO during the past and current seasons. James DePreist continues in his role as music advisor but is not on next season's maestro list after leading a concert last season and conducting the final programs on this year's schedule. Russian repertoire will be very much in evidence throughout next season, and newly named Composer-in-Residence Peter Boyer will have not one but three of his works performed during the season.

As has been the case during the past couple of years, the upcoming season will have five classical concerts with two performances each at Ambassador Auditorium (2 p.m. and 8 p.m.). Next year will also see a reprise on Dec. 1 of last year's sold-out holiday candlelight concert at All Saints Church, Pasadena. Grant Cooper will again conduct and soprano Lisa Vroman will return as soloist.

The classical season will open on Oct. 6 when Mei-Ann Chen, who was a dynamo leading the PSO in this season's opening concerts, returns to open next season, as well. Now music director of the Chicago Sinfionetta and the Memphis Symphony, Chen's PSO program will be Beethoven's Egmont Overture, Shostakovich's Symphony No. 9, and Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2, with 16-ytear-old George Li, recipient of the 2012 Gilmore Young Artist Award, as soloist.

Other programs on the schedule are:

• Nov. 3 -- Edwin Outwater, conductor; Rueibin Chin, piano

A native of Santa Monica, Outwater has been music director of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony in Ontario, Canada for five years. Now 41, Outwater was resident conductor of the San Francisco Symphony for four years and recently made his professional opera debut conducting Verdi's La Traviata at San Francisco Opera.

His PSO program will include Huang Li's Spring Festival Overture, Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 and Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, with Chin as soloist.

• Jan. 12 -- Tito Muñoz, conductor; Carolyn Goulding, violin

Muñoz -- music director of the Opéra National de Lorraine and the Orchestre symphonique et lyrique de Nancy in France -- made an impressive PSO debut last season. He returns to lead Brahms' Symphony No. 1 and Sibelius' Violin Concerto, with Carolyn Goulding as soloist. The program will open with Boyer's "Apollo" from Three Olympians.

• Feb. 9 -- Nicholas McGegan, conductor; Yulia Van Doren, soprano; Donald Foster, clarinet

McGegan is known primarily as a Baroque music specialist but his program next month concludes with Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 (Eroica) and his concerts next season will finish with Mahler's Symphony No. 4. For contrast, the PSO's principal clarinet, Donald Foster, will step out from the ranks as soloist in Mozart's Clarinet Concerto.

• April 27, 2013 -- Jose Luis Gomez, conductor; Peter Boyer, conductor; Chee-Yun, violin

Gomez is another of the young conductors to come out of Venezuela's "El Sistema" music program, following in the footsteps of Los Angeles Philharmonic Music Director Gustavo Dudamel. In 2010, Gomez won the fifth International Georg Solti Conductor's Competition in Frankfurt by unanimous decision of the jury. Gomez will conclude the PSO season by leading Borodin's In the Steppes of Central Asia and Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto. Meanwhile, Boyer's composition Festivities is on the agenda and the composer will conduct the inaugural performance of his Symphony No. 1 to conclude the season.

Read the complete media release HERE.

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(c) Copyright 2012, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.

By Robert D. Thomas

Music Critic

Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News

With three big anniversaries occurring in 2013 -- the bicentennials of the births of Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner and the centennial of Benjamin Britten -- hopes were high that Los Angeles Opera's 2012-2013 season might move beyond the current one, which continues with Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, opening Saturday night in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

No such luck. The upcoming season will have 37 performances of six operas, the same as 2011-2012 and down considerably from the 2006-07 high of 10 productions and 75 performances. Unlike the previous two seasons, there will be no Britten operas next season and LAO's "Recovered Voices" project of music and composers suppressed and/or murdered by the Nazis remains on hiatus (although a version of the latter surfaced at The Colburn School earlier this year). The company also added some details to its new "dynamic pricing policy.

LAO continues to cite the economic downturn and the financial effects of its production of Wagner's Ring cycle in 2009 as reasons for its cautious stance "Our mission to present world-class performances is matched by our need to be fiscally sound," says CEO Stephen D. Rountree in the media release. "We have been conscientious about maintaining our artistic standards while adhering strictly to our budgets. We have even been able to repay--a year ahead of schedule--half of the Bank of America loan, guaranteed by the County of Los Angeles, that helped to stabilize the Company during the worst part of the economic downturn."

Also continuing a recent trend, five of the six 2012-2013 productions will be imported from other companies -- Lyric Opera, Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera figure heavily into the mix. The one "new" production is the opening opera, Verdi's rarely heard The Two Foscari (l Due Foscari), which is a coproduction between LAO and companies in Valencia (Spain, not Calif.), Vienna and London. The opera offers Plácido Domingo another baritone role suited to his age (the character is described as "an aging head of state). James Conlon will conduct, one of four productions he will lead next season. Thaddeus Strassberger makes his company debut directing.

The Two Foscari (which will be sung in Italian with English supertitles) will open on Sept. 15 in the first of six performances. It will run in tandem with Mozart's Don Giovanni, which will open Sept. 22 and run for seven performances. Conlon will conduct the first five performances and Domingo will conduct the last two. The production is from Lyric Opera, Chicago, first seen in 2004.

Other offerings are:

• Puccini's Madama Butterfly, beginning Nov. 17 for six performances. Soprano Oksana Dyka (Tatiana in this season's production of Eugene Onegin) sings the title role. The other notable cast name is Eric Owens (Grendel in 2006) as Sharpless. Grant Gershon, who was recently promoted to LAO's resident conductor, will lead the LAO orchestra for six performances beginning Nov. 17. Ron Daniels directs a production he created originally for San Francisco Opera.

• Wagner's Der Flieglende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman) opens March 9, 2013, for six performances. Conlon conducts and, rather than exhume its own Julie Taymor-created production, LAO is importing one from San Francisco Opera. Icelandic baritone Tómas Tómasson makes his company in the title role, Elisabete Matos (also in her LAO debut) will portray Senta and, most interestingly, Jay Hunter Morris, who has sung the role of Siegfried in the Met's current Ring cycle to great acclaim, returns as Erik.

• Rossini's La Cenerentola (Cinderella), which begins March 23, 2013 and runs for six performances. Conlon conducts and, again, rather than use its own previous production (which, unlike Taymor's Flying Dutchman, was very well received when it appeared in 2000) will import one, this time a co-production of Houston Grand Opera and Gran Teatro de Liceu of Barcelona directed by Joan Font. Perhaps it's cheaper to rent than renovate.

• Puccini's Tosca opens May 18 and plays (somewhat surprisingly for such a warhorse) for just six dates. Sondra Radvanovsky will perform the title role and Domingo conducts. Again bypassing its own production, this one will come from Houston Grand Opera, first seen in 2007.

The company will also present soprano Renée Fleming and mezzo-soprano Susan Graham in recital on Jan. 19 but at Walt Disney Concert Hall rather than the Pavilion, which will host all of the operas.

LAO also formally announced several new pricing initiatives. The company is remapping the Pavilion's seating plan to make more seats available at "affordable" prices (described in the release as $99 or less). The statement also said that the number of tickets priced at $50 or less has been increased by 10 percent, although it did not give an actual number. LAO is also instituting a program where seats are allocated for every performance for students, seniors and "underserved groups" so they can attend at "minimal cost."

On the other side of the coin (literally and figuratively), the company will institute a "demand-based pricing" system whereby when ticket sales reach certain unspecified levels, prices will be reset upward (the release used as an example popular Sunday matinee performances). However, prices will not be lowered if a particular performance tanks in ticket sales (although venues such as Gold Star often offer discounted ticket prices). "Season subscribers will always pay the lowest ticket prices," the release emphasized, "at a discount from the base price."

Subscriptions are now sale; single tickets will go on sale later in the year. Information: www.laopera.com

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(c) Copyright 2012, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.

By Robert D. Thomas

Music Critic

Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News

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Each Thursday, I list five events that pique my interest, including (ideally) at least one with free admission (or, at a minimum, inexpensive tickets). Here's today's grouping:

• Tonight at 8 p.m., Zipper Hall, Los Angeles

Tuesday at 8 p.m. at Huntington Library, San Marino

Camerata Pacifica

This traveling group (each concert plays in venues in four different cities) brings its latest program to Zipper Hall at The Colburn School in downtown Los Angeles tonight and to the Huntington Tuesday night. The program is a mixture of old and new: John Harbison's Variations for Clarinet, Violin and Piano; Sheng's Seven Tunes Heard in China for Cello; Schuman's  Märchenbilder (Fairy Tale Pictures), for Viola and Piano, Op. 113; and Beethoven's Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano No. 4 in B-flat Major, Op. 11, Gassenhauer. Information: www.cameratapacifica.org

• Saturday at 9:00 a.m. in local movie theatres

Metropolitan Opera in HD: Wagner's Gotterdamerung

If you've wondered what has caused all the kvetching vis-à-vis the Met's new Ring cycle, here's your chance to see the last part of the cycle: Gotterdamerung. The reviews have been generally negative not only of this production but also pretty much of all four productions, although there's been lots of praise for Fabio Luisi's work in the pit leading the Met Orchestra. However, as we learned from Siegfried, what comes across on the big screen may be quite different from the experience in the Met. Personally, I'd vote for L.A. Opera's production of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra (see below) but if you're a glutton for punishment, you have time to do both with dinner in between. Also, take note that Gotterdamerung runs six hours. An "Encore" date has not been announced. Information: www.metoperafamily.org

• Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion

Los Angeles Opera: Verdi's Simon Boccanegra

Plácido Domingo performs the title role, which was written for a baritone and fits Domingo's voice at this stage of his career. James Conlon conducts and gives a pre-concert lecture one hour before the performance. Elijah Moshinsky directs this production from Royal Opera, Covent Garden (Brian in Out West Arts has one of his informative "10 Questions" features on Moshinsky HERE). There are six other performances, beginning Wednesday. Information: www.laopera.com

• Sunday at 7:00 p.m. at Walt Disney Concert Hall

Los Angeles Master Chorale: Bruckner and Stravinsky

Music Director Grant Gershon leads 115 members of his Chorale and a wind orchestra in Anton Bruckner Mass in E Minor and the motet Os Justi, along with Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms. Should be a real treat in the Disney Hall acoustics.  Information: www.lamc.org

And the weekend's "free admission" program ...

• Sunday at 6 at St. James Episcopal Church, Los Angeles

Edward Tipton, who from 1989-2010 was Canon of Music at the American Cathedral in Paris and is now Minister of Music for St. John's Pro-Cathedral in Los Angeles, appears on St. James International Organ Laureate Series. The recital will follow an Evensong service at 4:30 p.m. and will be played on a historically important instrument (read about it HERE). The church is located on Wilshire Blvd., two blocks west of Western Ave. and is reachable via a short walk from the Metro Purple Line's Wilshire/Western station. Information: www.saintjamesla.org

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(c) Copyright 2012, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.

By Robert D. Thomas

Music Critic

Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News

Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra are coming to Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa next Friday (Feb. 17). Tim Mangan, the Orange County Register's classical music critic (when he's not covering the celebrity beat) has just posted an excellent article based on a phone interview with Muti, the CSO's music director, who will conduct the concert. Conductors like Muti aren't easy to corral for interviews but Tim really made the most of his opportunity -- I learned more about Muti from this article than almost any I've read. Here's a LINK.

Friday's CSO program (sponsored by the Orange County Philharmonic Society) is quite out of the ordinary for a tour concert: Pacific 231 by Swiss composer Arthur Honegger (a piece based on trains); Alternative Energy, a new work by CSO Composer-in-Residence Mason Bates; and Franck's Symphony in D minor, once a repertory staple but now mostly languishing in obscurity. Information: www.philharmonicsociety.org

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(c) Copyright 2012, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.

By Robert D. Thomas

Music Critic

Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News

Conductor Sir Neville Marriner has been named recipient of the 2012 Richard D. Colburn Award and will lead The Colburn Orchestra, the flagship ensemble of The Colburn School, in a gala concert on April 22 at Walt Disney Concert Hall as part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic's "Sounds About Town" series.

The award honors an individual "whose lifelong dedication, work, talent and reputation enhance the teaching and performance of classical music or dance in the Southern California Community." This is the first time the award has been given to a musician. Previous winners were Ernest Fleischmann, former executive director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2009, former L.A. City Councilman and L.A. County Supervisor Ed Edelman in 2010 and Toby Mayman, the school's founding president, last year.

Marriner, who will turn 88 a week before the event, co-founded and was music director of Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra from 1969-1978. In announcing the award, Sel Kardan, the school's President and CEO, said: "Sir Neville shaped the artistic landscape of Los Angeles with his time as the Music Director of LACO and inspired and mentored our students during his guest conductor residency in 2011. We are thrilled to honor him with a special night of performance and celebration."

Marriner will conclude the April 22 concert (which will start at 6:30 p.m.) by leading Elgar's Enigma Variations. Earlier, current Colburn Orchestra Music Director Yehuda Gilad will conduct Rossini's William Tell Overture and Barber's Violin Concerto, with Mayumi Kanagawa, a Colburn student and winner of the 2011 Irving M. Klein International String Competition in San Francisco, as soloist.

The Colburn Orchestra concert becomes the second event on the Phil's "Sounds About Town" series this season. "SAT" presents top-notch local performing groups and is the cheapest way to see concerts in Disney Hall (tickets for the Colburn Orchestra concert are $15-37).  Information: www.laphil.com

The first event on the current "SAT" series will be a joint appearance by the American Youth Symphony and Los Angeles Children's Chorus on March 4 at 7:30 p.m. James Conlon, Los Angeles Opera music director, and Alexander Treger, AYS music director, will lead the ensembles in a program that will feature the world premiere of Icelandic composer Daniel Bjarnason's The isle is full of noises, a joint commission by AYS and LACC.  Information: www.laphil.com

The Colburn Orchestra is also scheduled for the 2012-2013 "SAT" series on Feb. 19, 2013 when LAPO Music Director Gustavo Dudamel will lead the ensemble. The orchestra's next concert at Ambassador Auditorium is March 3, when Bramwell Tovey (music director of the Vancouver Symphony) will be the guest conductor (LINK).

In addition to help to found and lead LACO, Marriner founded London's Academy of St. Martin in the Fields chamber orchestra in 1959, which he led from both the concertmaster's chair and the podium until the 1990s. He was also music director of the Minnesota Orchestra from 1979-1986. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1985.

This year marks the 100^th anniversary of the birth of Richard Colburn, a noted philanthropist whose donation in 1980 helped the then-30-year-old school grow into one of the nation's premiere music schools. The school moved to its present location atop Los Angeles' Bunker Hill (across the street from Disney Hall) in 1998.

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(c) Copyright 2012, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.

By Robert D. Thomas

Music Critic

Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News

On Monday I uploaded a long post on the 2012-2013 Los Angeles Philharmonic season at Walt Disney Concert Hall (HERE). In reading back over the schedule, one concert stood out -- but not, perhaps, for the reason you might expect. It's the program scheduled for Nov. 30-Dec. 2 when Esa-Pekka Salonen will lead the LAPO in a concert that includes Witold Lutoslawski's Symphony No. 4.

It was an "aha" moment not because Salonen will be conducting, although I always enjoy hearing what Esa-Pekka does with the Phil. Moreover, with Gustavo Dudamel conducting just 10 subscription weeks next season (barely more than a third of the schedule) the LAPO needs to have a very strong core of guest conductors, and Esa-Pekka is one of those (as noted yesterday, next season's guest conducting list is quite strong).

Nor did I zoom in on these concerts because I'm in love with Lutoslawski's music. I acknowledge that he's an important 20^th century composer but recordings of his music don't fill my CD shelves. What I appreciated was that Lutoslawski's Symphony No. 4 is coming back to the Phil's repertoire; the composer conducted the world premiere with the LAPO in 1994.

One reason that the L.A. Phil is a world-class orchestras is its commitment to new music, which began during the tenure of Zubin Mehta (1962-1978), really picked up steam during Salonen's reign as music director from 1992-2009, and has continued under Dudamel's leadership. Next season the Phil will present nine commissions, seven world premieres, three U.S. premieres and four West Coast first performances in its 29-week season, and those numbers are consistent with the past several seasons. Few, if any, orchestras in the world can match that level of commitment to contemporary compositions.

However, what's missing are second and third performances of these works. A little over two years ago, for example, the Phil commissioned John Adams' City Noir as part of Gustavo's opening gala concert as LAPO music director. They played it again a couple of months later on a subscription program and took it on the orchestra's cross-country tour the following May. I thought it was a terrific piece, but it hasn't shown up again on a Phil program (or anywhere else locally, for that matter).

Obviously everyone's tastes are different but as I think back over the past decade or so, I remember Naïve and Sentimental Music and Wing on Wing by Salonen as two examples of works that deserve multiple hearings (we did get to hear his LA Variations in 2009). Salonen's Violin Concerto just won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for new compositions and his piano concerto was equally stunning. Have we have heard them since their premieres? Don't think so. Readers are invited to add others to my list by commenting below.

AT&T once sponsored a program entitled the "American Encore" series, which was designed to provide "second" hearings to works that got premieres and then had languished in obscurity. One of those pieces was Symphony for Classical Orchestra, written in 1947 by Harold Shapero. André Previn and the Phil played it in 1986 and I remember the reaction being "where has this piece been all along?" Unfortunately, like the sunken cathedral that inspired one of Debussy's preludes, Shapero's work fell back beneath the waves of newer compositions. Let's hope that City Noir, Naïve and Sentimental Music and others listed above don't suffer the same fate.

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(c) Copyright 2012, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.

By Robert D. Thomas

Music Critic

Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News

With strains of "The Mahler Project" receding into the background and the Los Angeles Philharmonic heading to Caracas, Venezuela to repeat the cycle there, the Phil has announced its 2012-2013 Walt Disney Concert Hall season, a combination of continuing and new cycles that includes an expanded emphasis on opera, appearances by two of the Phil's former two music directors, and fewer concerts conducted by its current music director, Gustavo Dudamel.

The season begins with Dudamel leading a TBD gala concert on Sept. 27. He then leads the first subscription concerts on Sept. 28, 29 and 30 with a program that includes a world premiere by Steven Stucky, Ravel's Pavane pour une infante défunte, and Stravinsky's Le sacre du primtemps (which had its premiere on May 29, 2013). The Phil season runs through June 3, when Spanish conductor Juango Mena makes his Disney Hall debut.

The schedule also sees the orchestra making its second European tour under Dudamel, this one in mid-March, 2013 with performances in London, Paris and Lucerne before a final stop at New York City's Lincoln Center.

Dudamel will be leading just 10 weeks of subscription concerts next season, down from 14 this season (an unusually high number these days for music directors) and 12 the season before. (Ten is also the number of subscription weeks that Riccardo Muti is leading the Chicago Symphony next season). With Dudamel, even 10 comes with an asterisk; the concerts on Oct. 4 and 5 include Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, who begins a three-year-cycle of Beethoven's music for piano and orchestra, by playing Beethoven's first piano concerto, while the Oct. 6 and 7 concerts have him playing the third concerto. However, both concerts conclude with Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 (Eroica). Andsnes' appearances are part of a three-year cycle when he is scheduled to play all of Beethoven's music for piano and orchestra.

In addition to the Phil subscription concerts, Dudamel will also lead a "Green Umbrella" concert and a performance by The Colburn Orchestra on the Phil's "Sounds About Town" series. As usual, Dudamel's concerts will be wide-ranging. They include:

• The Marriage of Figaro, the second installment of a three-year cycle of Mozart/DaPonte operas (the initial offering, Don Giovanni, takes place in May -- LINK);

• a multi-media version of Oliver Knussen's one-act opera, Where the Wild Things Are, that will fuse live images of performers with Maurice Sendak's iconic artwork;

• a staged version of John Adams' new work, The Gospel According to the Other Mary. The oratorio version will be given its world premiere May 31, June 1 and 2 to close the current LAPO Disney Hall season. The staged version (directed by Peter Sellars, who assembled the libretto) will be performed for the first times at Disney Hall March 7, 8 and 10 and then taken on tour to Europe and New York City.

The quite-strong list of 19 guest conductors includes appearances by Zubin Mehta, who was LAPO music director from 1962-1978, and Esa-Pekka Salonen, who was at the helm from 1992-2009.

Mehta's concerts December 13-16 will duplicate his inaugural LAPO concerts as music director when he was age 26: Mozart's Overture to Don Giovanni, Hindemith's Symphony: Mathis de Maler, and Dvorak's Symphony No. 7. Mehta will also lead the Israel Philharmonic (of which is "Conductor for Life") on October 30 in a program of Brahms' Symphony No. 1 and Richard Strauss' Burleske with Yuja Wang as soloist.

Salonen will bring his Philharmonia Orchestra of London to town on Nov. 13 for a concert performance of Berg's opera Wozzeck (they will play a different program the next night at Segerstrom Concert Hall in Orange County). Salonen will celebrate the 100^th anniversary of the birth of Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski (which actually takes place on Jan. 25, 2013) by leading LAPO concerts on Nov. 30-Dec. 2 that include the composer's Symphony No. 4 (which the LAPO premiered in 1993). The concerts on Dec. 7, 8 and 9 will feature Salonen conducting the first West Coast performances of his Nyx.

Lionel Bringuier, now the Phil's resident conductor, will lead a subscription week and a "Green Umbrella" concert. Other guest conductors on the schedule are Marin Alsop, Charles Dutoit, Christoph Eschenbach, Rafael Frübeck de Burgos (the only guest besides Salonen to lead more than one week), Daniel Harding, Pablo Heras-Casado, Susanna Mälkki, Ludovic Morlot, Gianandrea Noseda (making his Phil debut), Vasily Pretrenko, David Robertson, Vassily Sinaisky and Joshua Weilerstein.

The season includes nine commissions, seven world premieres, three U.S. premieres and four West Coast first performances. Among the world premieres will be a piece by Brooklyn composer Ted Hearne that will be part of an effort sponsored jointly by the Phil and Brooklyn Philharmonic. Also on the agenda for those programs is Aaron Copland's Organ Concerto, with Cameron Carpenter as soloist. Joshua Weilerstein, a former Dudamel Fellow and now associate conductor of the New York Philharmonic, will lead the performance. Carpenter will also play a recital on the Phil's organ series.

In addition to concerts by the Phil and other orchestras and the "Green Umbrella series of five concerts, the season includes solo recitals, chamber music, organ recitals, Baroque music (including a complete performance of Handel's Jeptha by the Handel and Haydn Society, led by Harry Christophers), jazz, world music, "Songbook," and Christmas music offerings.

• The complete 2012-2013 schedule (minus a few TBD's) is HERE. (There's a print button at the top of the page).

• If you want oodles of details, you can download the entire media kit HERE. Make sure you have plenty of paper in your printer if you want hard copies.

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(c) Copyright 2012, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.