AROUND TOWN/MUSIC: March coming in like a lion

By Robert D. Thomas
Music Critic
Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News

Even with the Los Angeles Philharmonic on tour during the next three weeks, March is a very busy month for classical music lovers. Among the offerings are:

• To be accurate, the Phil is in town this weekend with Gustavo Dudamel conducting John Corigliano’s Symphony No. 1 and Brahms’ Symphony No. 2 at Walt Disney Concert Hall. My preview story is HERE.

• If meaty Brahms is your idea of a musical feast, then make a reservation for the Long Beach Symphony concerts tomorrow night at 8 in that city’s Terrace Theatre. Enrique Arturo Diemecke, who is completing his 14-year-tenure as the LBSO’s music director, will lead Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 and Piano Concerto No. 2; the latter features Mexican pianist Jorge Federico Osorio. (Hint: arrive early; no matter which piece gets played first, the initial movement is long and you don’t want to wait in the lobby for late seating.) INFO: www.lbso.org

Two organists are on the agenda this week.

Ann Elise Smoot, 1998 winner of the American Guild of Organists’ National Young Artists Competition in Organ Performance, makes her Disney Hall debut on Sunday at 7:30 p.m. with a program of music by J.S. Bach, Reger, Jehan Alain and others including the U.S. debut of Solomon’s Demos by Joanna Marsh, a British composer who has lived in Dubai since 2007. INFO: www.laphil.com

Timothy Howard will present a free recital at Pasadena Presbyterian Church on March 15 at 7:30 p.m. Playing on the church’s Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ, Howard will be assisted by organist Meaghan King and soprano Judith Siirila Paskowitz in a program of music by J.S. Bach, Marcel Dupré, Paul Halley, William Mathias, Giacomo Puccini and Louis Vierne. INFO: www.ppcmusic.org

On the choral front:

Pasadena Pro Musica continues its 50th anniversary season on Sunday at 4 p.m. at Pasadena’s Neighborhood Church as Artistic Director Stephen Grimm leads a program of music by Flemish Renaissance composer Orlando di Lasso: De profundis clamavi, Primi diei from Hieremiae Prophetae Lamentationes, and Prophetiae Sibyllarum. INFO: www.pasadenapromusica.org

• Janet Harms will lead the combined forces of the Windsong Southland Chorale and the United Methodist Church of La Verne Choir, in “Sacred Utterances” on March 15 at 7 p.m. at the UMLV, 3205 “D” Street, La Verne. The program will include O, Gracious Light (Phos hilaron) by Timothy Sharp, The Lord is My Light by Hank Beebe, True Light by Keith Hampton, I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light by Kathleen Thomerson, Magnificat by Charles Villiers Stanford and others.

This concert will be a reprise of the same program Windsong sang when it participated in an annual choral festival on February 16 at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles.

Hollywood Master Chorale will present an afternoon of Dvorak’s Mass in D Major, Op. 86 and Te Deum on March 16 at 4 p.m. at Hollywood Lutheran Church. Artistic Director Lauren Buckley will conduct. The Te Deum was written in 1892 on the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus landing on the American shore. Mass in D Major was composed two years before. INFO: www.hollywoodmasterchorale.org

_______________________

(c) Copyright 2014, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.

Facebook Twitter Plusone Pinterest Reddit Tumblr Email