Bel Canto Seattle Believes Opera is for Everyone

l-r: Emili Rice, Shayla Nelson, John Costello, Adrienne LaVey.

INTERVIEW: John Costello, Bel Canto Seattle

ERICA MINER

Bel Canto Seattle is kicking off the revolution in high gear. With recordings and live performances in 2026, they plan to transform, enchant and move audiences across the Seattle area. Establishing a new opera company is a special challenge in the current “attack on the arts” atmosphere, but Seattle-based tenor and impresario John Costello is making a brave effort to beat the odds. In a city that already boasts a major opera company, his small but intrepid Bel Canto Seattle is beginning to make a name for themselves: their initial performance on March 8, 2026, sold out months in advance.

“I wanted to create a project that I wished had existed when I started out singing,” Costello says. “A group that’s really focused on getting singers opportunities, and a community centered around accessible and affordable performances and timeless recordings.” The core ensemble of singers joining Costello in his efforts include Adrienne LaVey, Emili Rice, and Shayla Nelson (pictured above).

Among other things, Costello’s ambitious plan to revolutionize and transform the way opera is presented also includes paying singers fairly and on time and dispensing with gatekeepers and the worst aspects of auditions. In our interview below, the budding company director reveals details about his goals and his impressive leadership.

ERICA MINER: Not long ago, you were working as a program manager in tech. Your current project is quite the turnaround. Tell us about that journey.

JOHN COSTELLO: I never fully felt like being in tech really represented me, as a person and a human being. For me music has always been not only a passion and love, but a vehicle to create beauty and help foster a sense of community. Several folks on my dad’s side of the family were musicians or music teachers either at a professional or more casual level, which has influenced my own decision to keep pursuing music seriously. My path has been different and less formal than many of them. It’s my own journey. When we die, we will not be remembered by our occupation, but by the impact we have on others. At the end of the day, I am fully aware that this project is what I’ll be remembered for. And I embrace that.

EM: What was your initial inspiration for creating Bel Canto Seattle?

Adrienne LaVey, Shayla Nelson, John Costello.

JC: On a summer trip to southern California to visit family, I got a great chance to see an EDM (Electronic Dance Music) band called Rufus Du Sol at the Rose Bowl. It was an incredible experience: 95,000, a sold-out show. What really impressed me was how it not only was larger than life, but also very intimate. 

When I came home, I decided to start Bel Canto Seattle to bring that kind of experience to the opera world. Just the audience and the performers. No gatekeepers. No elites dictating who can participate, or enjoy the music. No auditions. No competitions. Just making music from the heart. Forming the group changed my life. I’m really working hard to spread word of mouth about what we're doing.

EM: Sounds like you are on a mission.

JC: My goal is to change things for the better and make sure there is more respect in the industry.

EM: This quote from @teatroallaflopera appears on your website: “The People who will ‘Save Opera’ probably aren’t the people that the system has already picked.” Can you comment?

JC: The same people who have been running opera companies and art orgs have been doing so for the last 20-30 years. Why not take a risk? What do we have to lose? They curate the experience for the audience to the point where it’s downright insulting. The audience that comes out to hear opera is interested and intelligent and deserve the full experience of performers who are passionate about singing the material and actually want to be there, not just phoning it in.

EM: You also mention “kicking off the dust, taking risks.” Can you elaborate?

JC: We’re trying to push the medium forward and embrace how people consume content and are informed about music today. Instagram, TikTok and other social media platforms are how our society largely communicates. Our goal is to make our music and our movement accessible to everyone. The art form also is stuck in the past and rigid with regards to certain tradition. 

For example: With classical music you see a high volume of headshots to market events. Who can actually relate to a headshot? It’s not artistic. It’s not human. That’s why we took the time to invest in actual photoshoots with a great artist like Priya Alahan that really capture our spirit as a group.

EM: Tell us about your fantastic event coming up May 9th, “Opera Rebels.”

JC: We are excited to sing at the great historic Sunset Hill Community Hall in Seattle, which is where we completed our first photoshoot! Eight different singers, including myself and the great Adrienne LaVey, who was a special guest at our last concert, will be singing with us. We will present a very diverse recital for new and seasoned opera fans featuring French and Italian opera with some musical theater, and some pieces from Russian, Czech and American operas as well! Plus, we will have a raffle giving away prizes created by local musicians, artists and authors. Being an Opera Rebel is taking fate into your own hands, and building your own community of outsiders. This is the second step in that journey for us.

EM: You’ve also been talking to folks in the jazz community and have met everyone from Opera on Tap. Can you give us some details?

JC: The jazz community is strong, and their mentality of just “get up there and play/sing!” has been a huge influence on our project. Their main goal is to bring Opera into the bar and other casual environments. They’ve been doing that here for 15 years! 

I saw one of their concerts, met the rest of the group and knew that in Bel Canto we had a sister group, a kindred spirit and ally in the fight to make Opera easier to access and bring it back to the audience. Robin Kallsen is a great jazz singer who also trained with my former voice coach in Seattle, the legendary Marianne Weltmann. Robin has been a great supporter of what we are trying to do with our project. Same with other great jazz singers like Kim Maguire and Angela Petrucci.

EM: On the subject of “a community centered around accessible and affordable performances and timeless recordings,” you’ve been gaining quite a presence in that regard. What are some highlights, and where can we find them?

JC: We're live on Spotify! Our website has links to our most recent EP, which features a studio version of the aria Vainement Ma Bien Aimée in a special arrangement by Connor Wier for cello and Piano. The track features myself, Robert Downey of Seattle Symphony fame on cello, and Karin Kajita, who has made quite a name for herself in the jazz scene, on piano. Our first concert from March 8th is up on YouTube in its entirety and can also be found on our website!

EM: You’ve come a long way since your low point, picking up momentum as you gain a foothold in your goals. What carries you through when things get tough?

JC: Sometimes it can get really hard juggling this project, while also working a 9-5 day job. What keeps me going are the singers I’ve helped so far, and everyone who’s reached out to me with their stories. When I first conceived this project, I wanted to create the type of opera company that existed when I was in my 20s and trying to find my way and gain experience. I know I’m not alone when I talk to other singers about their struggles. The fact that this has resonated so strongly is the best fuel anyone could ask for.

EM: Any final thoughts?

JC: This project was not founded for one singer, but as a movement for an entire community and beyond while at the same time bringing quality and timeless music, live, and streaming online. Not everyone is able to attend in person and it’s very important that this gorgeous music be able to thrive forever. Unless action is taken to make wholesale changes in the art form, stagnation will continue to dominate the genre.

We’re here to change that. And we’re here to stay. For me, this project came together naturally at the right time. I realized my vision was different and I needed to take action to make my dream a reality. If you have a dream, or a passion, don’t wait for permission. We are only given one life on this earth. Live your own life. Live your own dream. Keep going!

EM: Thank you, John, for sharing your unique project with us.

Photo credits: Priya Alahan (photos); Brooke Kunkel (logos)

 

All-American String Quartets at "Classical Interludes"

The Fiato String Quartet: l-r Carrie Kennedy, Joel Pargman, Aaron Oltman, Ryan Sweeney.

REVIEW

The Fiato String Quartet, Classical Interludes, First Lutheran Church, Torrance

BARBARA GLAZER

I always look forward to hearing a recital by the esteemed Fiato Quartet (with Carrie Kennedy and Joel Pargman on violins, Aaron Oltman on viola, and Ryan Sweeney on cello) and applaud another inspired performance—here, of some different and challenging compositions, in the April concert of Classical Crossroads’ Saturday afternoon “Classical Interludes” series. Carrie Kennedy introduced each of the program's selections with a well-spoken short resume of the composer's life and work that enhanced the listeners' appreciation and enjoyment of the music.

The recital began with the First String Quartet (1897-1900) by Charles Ives (1874-1954), written while still an undergraduate at Yale University, and entitled "From the Salvation Army." Ives described his music as "American,"reflecting his New England transcendental sensibility rather than adhering to European Classical traditions—a style that could be dubbed “collage composition," where multiple musical ideas exist simultaneously, creating a sound of “controlled cacophony.”

Ives' graduation photo, c.1898.

The First Quartet only achieved performance complete in 1957, after Ives’ death. It is a ground-breaking early example of his layering familiar tunes (here, hymns) into a dissonant soundscape evoking themes of memory and nostalgia, but with a modern, new sensibility.

He uses two or more tonal centers at the same time (polytonality), and different rhythms (polyrhythms) simultaneously, long before these techniques were incorporated into avant garde modernist compositions (think Ligeti (1923-2006) and his brilliant Apparitions (1958-59) and Atmosphères (1961), the latter used in 2001: A Space Odyssey).

A friend of mine once worked for the Salvation Army, and after driving her to many of their rehearsals I became familiar with much of the music quoted in the First Quartet. The first movement, Chorale: Andante con moto, is contrapuntal/fugal, using the "Missionary Hymn" (From Greenland's Icy Mountains) as a subject, and "Coronation" (All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name) as a counter-subject.

The second movement (in ABA form, as are all the following movements) headed Prelude: Allegro, has dance-like energy using Beulah Land and Shining Shore, interspersed with Bringing in the Sheaves. The third movement, Offertory: Adagio cantabile, paraphrases Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, and shifts from gentle waltz-like music to a passionate nature before returning to calm. The final Postlude: Allegro marziale combines a new theme, Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus, with tunes from earlier movements.

The Fiato ensemble gave a most masterful performance of this difficult, but fascinating composition. Only a quartet with great insight into the work could keep this “collage composition" technique—in which familiar tunes, sacred in this case, are set in a sophisticated and intellectual framework—heard as comprehensible music, rather than cacophony.

Max Mueller.

A switch in program order brought the contemporary LA-based Max Mueller's Scenes from My Parents’ Cocktail Party (2014), for string quartet, up next. Noted for his work for animated and other films, Mueller frequently collaborates with David Newman in reconstructing movie music for live entertainment, and also has his own YouTube video "Meet the Composer: Max Mueller.”

These four Scenes from My Parents' Cocktail Party are 1. Mango Salsa, 2. Two People Flirting, 3. Candles on the Porch, and 4. Bickering Couple. I think some lines from T. S. Eliot's verse drama The Cocktail Party (1940) give context for any outsider's reaction to the ubiquitous cocktail parties of that time: "Everyone alone, or so it seems to me; they make noises and think they are talking to each other; they make faces, and think they understand each other."

Mueller’s work is wonderful: I particularly enjoyed the humor of the flirting couple where the music is "heavier," evocative of a child being confused or bored by, or missing out on, the nuances of... what is this thing?—oh yes, called “flirting,” and the retreat, the escape to a porch by a couple or an individual for respite, beautifully rendered in Candles on the Porch; and the child no doubt “got” the Bickering Couple—perhaps from his parents' interactions. Again, a really delightful performance by the Fiato Quartet.

Florence Price.

The recital concluded with the String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor (1935) by Florence Price (1887-1953), which blends European chamber music forms with African-American idioms in a four-movement work of work of high energy, lyricism, and dance-like elements.

The first movement, which is marked Moderato, has a dramatic introduction, and includes a “minstrel's song" motto that returns throughout the work. The ensuing Andante Cantabile has a melancholy beauty that blends late-Romantic styles with a kind of bluesy emotion.

The high-energy third movement, Juba (Allegro), is inspired by the African-American Juba dance characterized by syncopated “hambone” rhythms (body slapping, foot stomping, and clapping), in a high-spirited interaction between the instruments. (The Juba dance can be seen on YouTube, and note how it evolved not only into American tap dancing but also is foundational to the modern breakdancing. Price’s Finale, Presto, is a fast-paced virtuosic rondo with great emotional breadth and a conversational, quasi-improvisatory feeling.

The Fiatos’ performance was simply marvelous—and well earned its standing ovation. As ever, thanks to Classical Crossroads’ Jim Eninger for the wonderful video—a best-seat-in-the-house view to enjoy this stellar recital again and again.

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Classical Interludes, First Lutheran Church and School, Torrance, Saturday, April 4, 2026, 3:00 p.m.

Images: The performers: Classical Crossroads, Inc.; Ives: Wikimedia Commons; Mueller: composer website; Price: Library of Congress.

Third Time’s a Charm for Pepe Romero at Long Beach

Guitarist Pepe Romero, Music Director Eckart Preu and members of the Long Beach Symphony
after their performance of Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez.

REVIEW

Long Beach Symphony, Terrace Theater, Beverly O'Neill Performing Arts Center, Long Beach

DAVID J BROWN

… Well, third time for this writer at least (reviews here and here of Pepe Romero’s most recent concerts with the Long Beach Symphony) but doubtless many more times for longer-standing patrons of the orchestra and indeed the countless fans who have been enjoying the Romeros’ music-making for decades, many of whom must have been in the Terrace Theater for the LBSO’s February concert in the 2025-2026 Classical season, to judge by the ovation that greeted the great Spanish guitarist when he came onto the platform with Music Director Eckart Preu for a pre-concert chat.

Whereas on those two previous occasions he had played relatively unfamiliar works by his father Celedonio Romero (1913-1996) and Manolo Sanlúcar (1943-2022), this time around it was to be that most familiar of guitar concertos, the Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-1999).

Pepe Romero talked about his own friendship with Rodrigo, and then related how the concerto’s slow movement is said to have been written in reaction to the miscarriage of the Rodrigos’ first child (it’s only fair to note that some documentary evidence seems to contradict this attribution but, to quote the famous final line from the movie The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend”).

Rodrigo in 1935.

The performance itself was notably spacious, taking some 27 minutes when the average for the work is 22-23 minutes, and I did feel that the exceptionally measured pace for the outer movements (marked Allegro con brio and Allegro gentile respectively) sought an expressive weight that their relatively simple and repetitive structures are not really up to handling. The celebrated Adagio, however, whatever its provenance, was hypnotic in its gradual unfolding, from Joseph Stone’s heart-tugging opening English horn solo to the grand final statement of the main theme by Rodrigo’s full (though modest) orchestral forces and into the poignant coda.

As for Romero’s account of the solo part, it combined a sense of complete identification and ownership with an improvisatory flexibility that must at times have challenged Maestro Preu’s accompanying skills, but which, particularly in the Adagio, induced an almost preternatural hush in the capacity audience. Preu’s (unmarked) attacca between it and the finale neutralized any mood-shattering applause, and this very special partnership between soloist, conductor, and orchestra was rewarded with an instant standing ovation, only stilled by Pepe Romero’s return to the platform to play his father’s Fantasia Cubana as encore.

Gabriela Lena Frank at the time of writing Elegía Andina.

The concert had opened, as so often in Eckart Preu’s programming, with a more-or-less contemporary piece that must have been unfamiliar to orchestra and audience alike. This was Elegía Andina (2000), the first orchestral work by Gabriela Lena Frank (b.1972)—Californian by birth but of very complex ethnic heritage. Composed for modest forces (double winds, horns and trumpets, timpani, percussion, and strings: 8-6-4-4-3 in this performance) but still conjuring some imposing sounds, Elegía Andina is a response to the sounds and influences from the Peruvian strand in Frank’s ancestry.

In some introductory words Maestro Preu likened it to a day in the jungle, with early on some passages for flute to imitate the zampoña, a traditional Andean pan flute, played with atmospheric spontaneity by Heather Clark against woodblock interjections (Brian Cannady single-handedly wielding a formidable array of percussion throughout the work’s 12 minutes). Overall, it reminded me a little of both Carlos Chávez’s Sinfonía india (played a few years ago at Long Beach) and some of Villa-Lobos’s native-inspired works—and there was definitely a strand of The Rite of Spring detectable in its DNA as Elegía Andina gathered force. Played with the LBSO’s customary skill and commitment under Preu’s expert direction, this was a thoroughly worthwhile introduction to Gabriela Lena Frank’s work.

After the interval, there was no expansion of the orchestra for some late-Romantic blockbuster, but rather a two-fold experiment. First, would the small forces of Baroque music lose impact hopelessly in the voluminous expanse of the Terrace Theater? Second, given that the chosen work was Handel’s Water Music, exactly what to play? Despite the fame of the recently enthroned King George I’s 1717 “booze cruise” on the Thames (as Maestro Preu entertainingly dubbed it in his pre-performance remarks), for which the 32-year-old Handel provided music at the express royal wish, exactly what was played, by what instruments, and in what order, is lost to history.

No manuscripts in Handel’s own hand have survived, and for most of the 18th century a multiplicity of copies, keyboard arrangements and part-publications circulated until what was presumably the entire then extant set of 22 pieces was published as three suites in full score in 1788. With a total playing time of around 50 minutes, clearly so many brief items one after the other in a concert setting would prove wearisome, so Maestro Preu decided on the opening few numbers of Suite No. 1 in F major, HWV 348, followed by all five movements of Suite No. 2 in D major, HWV 349. 

Painting by Edouard Hamman (1819–1888) depicting Handel (gesturing with his right arm at
the adjacent musicians) with George I on the royal barge, July 17, 1717.

From the moment the LBSO strings swung into the Ouverture to Suite No. 1 it was clear that any concern about lack of impact was a non-starter. Despite its Largo marking this combined all the necessary majesty and vigor, confirmed by the joyous contrapuntal duetting of the two concertino violins (Agnes Gottschewski and Chloé Tardif) in the movement’s main Allegro section. In the following Adagio e staccato the pair of oboes (Rong-Huey Liu and Joseph Stone) keened expressively, while the untitled third movement introduced the enthusiastically braying horns of Preston Shepard and Adrian Dunker.

And so it continued, with the two trumpets (David Pitel and David Scott) slicing through the orchestral texture from the outset of Suite No. 2. The famous Alla Hornpipe induced a quiet audience sigh of familiarity, and inter-movement applause throughout the performance testified to its success. Indeed, I wonder if some, having noted the program listing of Suites 1 & 2 (~47 minutes), might have felt a bit short-changed when Maestro Preu brought down his baton after about 25 minutes on the water. But if this erred on the side of caution regarding audience engagement over many short Baroque movements, reward came with, as encore, the eternally popular Air on the G String second movement from J. S. Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068.

The final concert of the Long Beach Symphony's 2025-2026 Classical season will take place on Saturday, June 6, when orchestral forces as large as the LBSO has ever mustered will play Mahler's mighty Fifth Symphony, preceded by Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik—not to be missed!

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Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, Terrace Theater, Beverly O'Neill Performing Arts Center, Long Beach, Saturday, February 28, 2026, 7.30 p.m.

Images: The performance: Sue Moylan for Long Beach Symphony; Rodrigo: joaquin-rodrigo.com; Gabriela Lena Frank: Sabina Frank, courtesy sfcv.org; Handel and George I: Wikimedia Commons.

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Five of LA’s Finest Play Brahms, et al, at Mason House

l-r: Ambroise Aubrun, Martin Chalifour, Todd Mason, Cécilia Tsan, David Kaplan, Jonah Sirota,
Dr. Kristi Brown.

REVIEW

Chalifour and Friends play Mason, Kreisler, Debussy, and Brahms at Mason House

DAVID J BROWN

I’m not usually a fan of playing isolated movements from integrated works like a sonata or a symphony, where the contrasts between the often widely differing movements add up to an expressive whole greater than the sum of its parts. But if anyone has the right to sanction such a selection then it’s the composer of the piece in question, and this was the case with host Todd Mason at the February concert in this year’s season (the 12th) at his Mar Vista home, when he chose to open the program with just the Andante tranquillo first movement of his own String Quartet No. 1 (2019).

The aim was to induce, at least for this evening, a sense of calm to counter the external turmoil and discord we’re all living with, and the performance by some of LA’s finest string players (Martin Chalifour and Ambroise Aubrun, violins; Jonah Sirota, viola; and Cécilia Tsan, cello) was as nuanced and responsive to the music’s ebb and flow as anyone could wish—though, a little ironically perhaps, the very acoustic clarity of Mason’s purpose-remodeled concert room revealed more clearly than would a larger space the music’s inner harmonic tensions as the instrumental lines wove together.

Fritz Kreisler.

Mason House regular Dr. Kristi Brown in her pre-concert talk made the most of the juicy back-story to the next two items on the program. After showing an early review of a concert by violinist Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962) including pieces by some 18th century composers, she segued to another later clipping in which he confessed (shock! horror!) that in fact they’d been pastiches by himself. Following the Mason quartet movement, the capacity audience was privileged to hear a couple of these from the virtuoso hands of Martin Chalifour, joined by pianist David Kaplan.

Both Tempo di Minuetto and Prélude et Allegro were originally attributed to Gaetano Pugnani (1731-1798), the former amiably stately in its outer sections, enclosing a jaunty little trio, but overall not particularly remarkable. The Prélude et Allegro was altogether more impressive, however, with its wide-leaping first half giving way to a really scorching account by Chalifour of the whirlwind, cadenza-like Allegro.

Claude Debussy, c.1910.

By late 1914 Claude Debussy was already seriously ill and, as a patriotic Frenchman and particularly a Parisian, was angered and depressed by, and personally feeling the effects of, the war with Germany. His impulse to compose had diminished severely, but was reawakened when his publisher encouraged him to embark on a set of sonatas, each for a different combination of instruments. The first half’s final item was thus the first of these, Debussy’s Cello Sonata L.144, with Tsan replacing Chalifour up front, and Kaplan remaining at the piano.

In some hands these late chamber works of Debussy can feel a bit like disjointed fragments from a sensibility so refined it can barely be articulated, but this performance was anything but reticent. As played by Kaplan—and joined by Tsan from the fourth measure—the first movement’s slow start, tellingly marked Sostenuto e molto risoluto, felt like a portentous opening onto the new expressive world where this sonata and the two following would unfold, as well as the never-to-be-realized plan for the three more that Debussy’s death in 1918 at only 55 would cancel.

The Cello Sonata’s three movements cover a remarkable range of dynamic, pace, timbre, and style of instrumental attack across their total duration of under 12 minutes, and Kaplan and Tsan, faithfully following as many of Debussy’s myriad expressive markings as seemed humanly possible, delivered a performance of visceral impact and intensity.

Brahms in 1866. 

The single big piece after the interval was arguably the one amongst Brahms’s chamber works that went through the most reworking before it reached its final form, and—pretty inarguably—is the most dramatic of them all. Privy to its evolution, Clara Schumann is said to have suggested that the work which eventually reached its final form in 1864 as the Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34 could equally be for orchestra (indeed the English composer Robin Holloway has very successfully orchestrated it as “Symphony in F minor”), and Chalifour and friends duly treated the Mason House audience to a performance which combined visceral impact in the great unison passages and sensitive interplay, as at the violinists’ duetting in the opening movement’s second subject group.

With the overall duration at a very trim 38 minutes or so (not entirely due to the omission of the first movement exposition repeat, which gave that movement even more of an arrow-like momentum than usual), the arrival of Brahms’ astonishing concluding cadence to the finale, like a lead-weighted drop-curtain plunging down, had the proper effect of a stunned silence before the applause erupted. Yet another memorable evening at Mason House, enhanced as ever by Ethel Phipps' wonderful catering, and three concerts still to come in this season—may there be many more!

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Mason Home Concert, 3484 Redwood Ave., Mar Vista, CA 90066, 6:00 p.m., Saturday, February 21, 2026.

Images: The performance: Todd Mason; Kreisler, Debussy, Brahms: Wikimedia Commons.

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Schubert Sings Schubert (and Others) at Mason House

REVIEW

Anna Schubert, soprano & Milena Gligić, piano, Mason Home Concerts, Mar Vista

RODNEY PUNT

A snug living-room full of music lovers was treated to a terrific song recital on the fourth Saturday in January, delivered by soprano Anna Schubert and collaborative pianist Milena Gligiċ. As LA Opus readers will know well, the venue was the private house in LA’s Mar Vista neighborhood where owner/impresario/composer Todd Mason has presented his home concerts for the last 12 years. While instrumental music has predominated, vocal music is increasingly popular.

Anna Schubert.

Anna Schubert is well known to this writer from her performances at the Long Beach Opera (reviews here and here), where her tall presence (almost six feet in heels) projected authority in two strong Handelian character roles. Nonetheless, the two most important art-music forms for the human voice couldn’t be more different in form and function.

While opera is grand, with big emotions, and often bigger performers who go at each other fiercely, art song is small in scale, its universe of emotions delivered by a single singer. Opera productions are easy to follow, with evocative sets, and plenty of physical action between the singer-actors. Nowadays printed lyrics are either festooned above the proscenium or on the backs of seats facing the viewer, vastly improving comprehension of the opera’s action.

Debussy by Marcel Baschet, 1884.

Song recitals are an entirely different experience because each song is its own encapsulated story-world in miniature. The challenge for the singer is to articulate lyrics clearly while conveying varied emotions in each story. Given the lack of physical action, the singer must convey a song’s emotional meaning by face and voice only. Further complicating matters, most art songs in the repertory are sung in languages other than English.

This evening’s 14 songs were divided, eight and six, between French and German settings. The French first half opened with three of the Ariettes oubliées L. 60, a song-cycle written between 1886 and 1887 by Claude Debussy (1862-1918). Schubert and Gligić gave us Nos. 3, L'ombre des arbres, 5 Green, and 6 Spleen (both the latter designated as Aquarelles), all three of which shared a mood of romantic nostalgia and resignation, eloquently projected by Anna Schubert.

Henri Duparc, 1880.

The Gallic ennui continued with Elégie (1874), Extase (1874), and L'invitation au voyage (1870) by Debussy’s older countryman Henri Duparc (1848-1933), and was thoroughly maintained with the final pair from Debussy, Beau Soir L. 84 (1890-91) and Apparition L. 57 (1884). If I have a criticism it’s that there was no break in this first set, which made for a long string of songs that might have been better grouped in two sets of the two composers. The audience did not know when or if they should clap, so they didn’t.

After the break, as ever enriched by refreshments including a hot dish from the skilled hands of Ethel Phipps, we had, first, Schubert singing Schubert, with Anna charmingly acknowledging that she just might have a distant family connection to the great Austrian master. The selections were Suleika I, D. 720 (1821), Du bist die Ruh, Op. 59, No. 3, D. 776 (1823), Nacht und Träume, Op. 43, No. 2, D. 827 (1823), and finally the early but astonishingly original Gretchen am Spinnrade, Op. 2, D. 118 (1814), its passion transfixing in Anna’s performance.

Schubert as imaged by
Gustav Klimt, 1890.

Two widely differing items completed the program. The first was Ich scheide, S. 319 (1860), by Franz Liszt (1811-1886), the haunting tenderness of which might have come as a big surprise to anyone used only to the barnstorming virtuosity of much of his solo piano music.

Then, to close an evening that had progressed in an approximately reverse chronological order, came the ineffably beautiful soprano aria Bete aber auch dabei, the fourth number in J. S. Bach’s church cantata No. 115, Mache dich, mein Geist, bereit, BWV 115 (1724).

Milena Gligić.

Needless to say, this shortish but memorable recital had a rapturous reception from Mason House’s capacity audience, its success owing much to Anna Schubert’s collaboration with Milena Gligić, a last-minute substitute for another indisposed pianist, and a singer herself.

She played Mason’s 1986 Yamaha C7 with German hammers, which really help to give the instrument the softer tone so welcome in chamber music, as well as when accompanying a voice, as here. In addition, the acoustic design of this small concert room magnifies the low end so it sounds a lot better than if it were in a typical home or even a big stage.

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Mason Home Concerts, 3484 Redwood Ave., Mar Vista, CA 90066, Saturday, January 24, 6:00 p.m.

Images: The performance: Todd Mason; Debussy, Duparc, Schubert: Wikimedia Commons.

Strauss's Don Quixote and Tchaikovsky at Long Beach

Cécilia Tsan (cello), Music Director Eckart Preu, and the Long Beach Symphony acknowledge the heartfelt reception for their performance of Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote.

REVIEW

Long Beach Symphony, Terrace Theater, Beverly O'Neill Performing Arts Center, Long Beach

DAVID J BROWN

The first half of the January concert in the Long Beach Symphony’s 2025-2026 season was devoted to Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35 (1878), played by the American violinist Tai Murray with the LBSO as ever under the baton of its Music Director Eckart Preu. As is well known, Tchaikovsky wrote it, on the rebound from his brief and disastrous marriage, while staying in Switzerland with his composition pupil, the violinist Iosif Kotek. Composition was rapid, and in close collaboration with Kotek, who was also probably his lover.

Tchaikovsky with Iosef Kotek (left).

The performance was sumptuously romantic from the outset, with exquisite intonation from Ms. Murray and the customary attentive skill with which Maestro Preu managed the orchestra’s interaction with her. However, to these ears their expansive account of the long first movement to some extent lacked urgency and the emotional tension that’s surely behind the work’s genesis and is indeed never far beneath the surface of Tchaikovsky’s music, and thus made the movement seem more like a meditative rhapsody than a dynamically evolving structure.

Nonetheless the audience was on its collective feet and cheering even after that first movement, and following an inarguably inward and tender account of the Canzonetta, with some deliciously pointed woodwind contributions, Tchaikovsky’s attacca subito before the Finale fortunately neutered the impulse to any more inter-movement applause. This Finale certainly lived up to its initial Allegro vivacissimo marking, and Preu’s control through what seemed more extreme tempo contrasts than usual in this movement held it together securely.

Tai Murray speaking at the
 post-concert reception.

The rapturous reaction from the near-capacity audience was redoubled at the concerto’s whiplash conclusion, and Ms Murray rewarded them with, as encore, a poised and haunting performance of the Largo third movement from J. S. Bach’s Sonata No. 3 in C major, BWV 1005, for solo violin.

Near the end of his long life Richard Strauss (1864-1949) is said to have remarked "I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer." We cannot know how much genuine self-deprecation or irony there was in that statement, but if there is one at least amongst his orchestral works that justifies him being elevated to the top level of the pantheon it is Don Quixote: Phantastische Variationen über ein Thema ritterlichen Charakters, Op. 34 (1897), with the clever double meaning buried within that subtitle.

Richard Strauss around the time of
Don Quixote's composition.

The work is indeed an extraordinarily virtuosic set of variations on a musical theme “of knightly character,” but equally “theme” in this context can be taken to mean the personality of its titular hero, with those “variations” being aspects of both his character and his actions. Strauss’s balancing of this double meaning, with genius-level musical craft bringing to life a profoundly human subject, is the central factor that elevates this seventh of Strauss's 10 tone-poems to true greatness.

The 10 numbered and titled variations that form the main body of Don Quixote have two preceding sections, the first of them an extensive Introduction, so complex and varied in mood, texture and dynamic that it could stand as a miniature symphonic poem all by itself. Not only does the Introduction adumbrate the very distinctive themes that represent the Don and his squire Sancho Panza— who are “officially” introduced in the second of those preceding sections by the solo cello and viola that represent them—but it also foreshadows the dramatic events that unfold in the variations themselves.

To include Don Quixote in an LBSO concert had been an ambition cherished alike by Maestro Preu, Principal Cello Cécilia Tsan, and President Kelly Ruggirello for several years but, caught first between the Scylla of Covid and then the Charybdis of budgetary restrictions, only in this season was it at last possible to mount the work, given Strauss’s very large orchestral specification. And it was clear from the outset that this promised to be an exceptional account of the piece.

Andrew Duckles and Eckart Preu.

In an illuminating pre-concert chat with Maestro Preu, LBSO Principal Viola Andrew Duckles (the evening’s Sancho Panza) opined that Don Quixote is really the first “concerto for orchestra,” given how Strauss exploits each instrument and tests every player to the utmost, and already in the Introduction alone Preu’s spacious and skillful direction, and the LBSO’s devoted following of him, demonstrated the truth of this in translucent detail, as individual players and sections, from solo flute down to the tubas (one tenor, one bass)—notably via an important thematic statement from the viola section alone—each had their moment in the spotlight.

And then, after this resplendent and tumultuous preparation, we met the Don himself in the person of Ms. Tsan, celebrating 25 years as the LBSO’s Principal Cello. In yet another demonstration of Strauss’s mastery, he carefully conceives the cello part as a “first amongst equals” rather than with concerto solo prominence, and Ms. Tsan’s assumption of the role was a consummate embodiment of this. Her opening solo certainly projected the bold challenge of the Don’s first appearance—where Strauss’s theme embraces imperiousness, grace, and underlying disturbance—but immediately there was the first of many generous collaborations with other players, this being the duet with solo violin (Concertmaster Roger Wilkie) that elaborates contrapuntally on the theme.

Sancho Panza first arrives (Maggiore in the score) in a huffing, rumbling duet between tenor tuba and bass clarinet (Arisa Makita and Michael Yoshimi respectively) but the viola soon takes center stage in the story’s second important characterization. Mr Duckles conveyed all of the part’s various confidences and hesitancies, cheerfulness and questionings—and in this opening relished another of Strauss’s “concerto for orchestra” inspirations, duetting with the piccolo (Diane Alancraig).

In brief comments before the start Maestro Preu confessed that his favorites amongst the 10 variations were #II, where Quixote mistakes a herd of sheep for an emperor’s army and engages them, and #VII, the “ride through the air.”

The former is probably the most extreme example of scoring innovation in the entire work, and the LBSO brass duly bleated pianissimo against witterings from multi-divided violas ppp, and then along with all the winds fortissimo as they were attacked. Strauss’s sense of proportion in this work is unfailing, however. Each of these most virtuoso of the variations—in #VII grand brass cadences are borne aloft by swirling woodwind and strings and energetically cranked wind machine—lasts barely a minute. Nothing outstays its welcome.

Indeed, all the variations proceed one to the next without pause, so that any successful performance must neither minimize nor stumble over the many abrupt changes of instrumental texture, speed, dynamic, meter, and key, where Strauss’s musical narrative turns on a dime from humor to grandeur, from heroic tragedy to bucolic musing. Preu’s masterly handling of the score and the LBSO’s response managed to combine all the sudden vividness of contrast needed with overall conviction and coherence.

Cécilia Tsan at the post-concert reception.

Ms. Tsan carried the Finale, where Quixote at lasts returns to sanity, with playing of radiant tenderness than never threatened to slip into exaggeration or sentimentality, and Preu and the orchestra maintained their eloquent support.

The Finale’s moments of renewed agitation and, latterly, near-exact repetition of the orchestra’s first statements of the principal themes in the Introduction, show Strauss’s mastery in perfectly closing the work’s expressive circle, and the performers’ unerring nailing of these aspects as well as the rich eloquence that pervades the movement and the gentle quietude of its end set the seal on one of the finest accounts of this masterpiece that I have ever heard.

Two concerts remain in the LBSO’s 2025-2026 Classical season. On February 28 Pepe Romero returns to play Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez in a program that opens with Gabriela Lena Frank’s Elegia Andina for Orchestra and concludes with the first two of Handel’s Water Music suites. Then to close the season, on June 6 the orchestra musters even larger forces than the Strauss for Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, with Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik as the amuse-bouche. 

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Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, Terrace Theater, Beverly O'Neill Performing Arts Center, Long Beach, Saturday, January 31, 2026, 7.30 p.m.

Images: The performance: Todd Mason and David de Santiago; Tchaikovsky and Kotek: tchaikovsky-research.net; Richard Strauss: Wikimedia Commons.

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Fiery Magic and Gold at the Segerstrom Concert Hall

Aubree Oliverson plays Korngold’s Violin Concerto with the Pacific Symphony under its Artistic and Music Director Designate, Alexander Shelley.

REVIEW

Pacific Symphony Orchestra, Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, Costa Mesa

DAVID J BROWN

From the distance of what is now well over a century, it’s easy to bracket together Stravinsky’s three early ballets, Firebird (1909-1910), Petrushka (1910-1911), and The Rite of Spring (1911-1913), and indeed they were collectively the launchpad for his subsequent 50-year-long compositional career, whose unpredictably mercurial metamorphoses formed a key thread in the development of 20th century “classical” music, and a legacy for and influence on many composers that continues to this day.

Stravinsky by Jacques-Émile Blanche, 1915.

Nonetheless, the concert-hall fates of the three ballets have been rather different. The Rite of Spring has become a favorite for orchestras to show off their virtuoso chops if they can muster its huge forces (perhaps the one piece of “modern music” as guaranteed to fill a hall as a Brahms or Beethoven symphony), and Petrushka turns up fairly frequently, usually in Stravinsky’s more modestly scored 1946 revision. Firebird, however—half as long in duration as either—is much more often represented by one or other of the suites that he drew from it.

Stravinsky well knew what he was doing when, first in 1911, then 1919, and finally 1945, he extracted the immediately memorable “plums” from the score, and the contrast between these set-pieces and the many, often purely textural, passages that link them tasks any conductor to present the complete Firebird as a compelling and integrated whole in concert, divorced from any representation of the scenario it was originally written to accompany. 

This was the challenge for the Pacific Symphony’s Artistic and Music Director Designate, Alexander Shelley, in the February concert of the Orchestra’s 2025-26 season, and from the very start he got it right. The muted pianissimo cello and bass undulations that begin the Introduction can feel static and even aimless if taken too slowly and without tight rhythmic control; here their steady forward motion was all ominous purpose, enhanced by the (for once) clearly audible bass drum roll that underpins them.

Alexander Shelley.

From here on the ballet’s many linking sections flowed seamlessly together so that nowhere was there any sense of waiting for the movements so well known in Stravinsky’s suites, from the Firebird’s Dance through to the simply thrilling account of the Finale (which, oddly, he omitted from the 1911 suite).

The performance of course benefited from the Segerstrom Hall’s acoustic, so that the myriad threads and colors of the young composer’s astonishingly imaginative scoring came across with almost hallucinatory vividness in the Pacific Symphony’s deployment of Firebird’s full and “wastefully large” (as the composer described it in old age) orchestra, including quadruple woodwind, multiple percussion, three harps, and briefly deployed but clearly audible offstage brass.

It was perhaps ironic that for a performance so convinced and cogent that it could well have stood without any visual element—other than perhaps supertitles of the 22 sections—Mr. Shelley and the Pacific Symphony chose to accompany it with a full-length animation commissioned from the small Californian studio Fowler Amusement Co., who averred that "… for the look of the Firebird projected media, we drew inspiration from theater, dance, and classic illustrations of NC Wyeth, Arthur Rackham, and Howard Pyle…” 

In contrast to Disney's invented scenario for the Firebird Suite in the final segment of its Fantasia 2000 follow-up to the celebrated 1940 original, Fowler's animation followed the ballet’s narrative fairly faithfully. At its best it was spot-on, as with the Firebird itself (above) and the gorgeously swirling semi-abstractions into which the realistic main action devolved from time to time. And it wasn’t at all a bad thing that the rather jerky movement of the human figures had a marionette-like feel, nor was the way Koschei’s castle sometimes recalled Sauron’s realm from Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings. Altogether it was a highly successful experiment and the capacity audience loved it.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold in 1940.

Before the interval the main work was Korngold’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35, the enthusiastic championing of which the young American violinist Aubree Oliverson made clear in her pre-concert chat with KUSC host Alan Chapman.

That her technique was also well up to both the work’s passionate lyricism and its rapid-fire intricacies was made clear by her collaboration with Shelley and the Pacific Symphony in a performance that demonstrated how skillfully Korngold built a large-scale and entirely convincing concerto from movie music elements across all three of its movements.

Though the work is notably economical in woodwind and brass (only one trombone!), the score includes all the untuned and tuned percussion and lavishly elaborate string writing that make Korngold’s sound world so memorable. From the outset the Segerstrom’s wonderful acoustic projected all the exquisite pointillism of celesta, harp, glockenspiel, and vibraphone that clothe the violin’s rhapsodic flights.

Aubree Oliverson.

Ms. Oliverson’s absolute security, including some thrillingly attenuated phrase-ends at the edge of audibility, worked as one with the plentiful rubato of Shelley’s conducting, which managed at once to feel freely spontaneous yet have sure goal-centered purpose. It was a marvelous performance of a great concerto that has, thank goodness, thoroughly establshed itself in the repertoire. For an encore, Aubree Oliverson gave us her own arrangement of Menuhin Caprice (2021) by Mark O'Connor.

John Adams in 1982.

The concert opener was John Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine (1986), written when he was a leading proponent in the backlash of minimalism against musical modernism and before he grew to seniority in the established American musical scene. It has remained one of his most-performed works. With some recordings in mind, I thought the opening wood-block ticking too loud, but no, forte is the marking, and under Mr. Shelley’s urgent baton its pervading presence (I wonder if maintaining that rhythmic constancy is as taxing for a player as the side-drum in Ravel’s Bolero?) drove Adams’ very large forces through four minutes of ear-pounding unanimity.

To someone who has never been much of an Adams fan nor of minimalism in general—all that repetitiveness sounding like preparation for something that never quite happens—the key word in the work’s title is “short.” Nonetheless the aspiring trumpet phrase that emerges around three minutes in was certainly frisson-inducing, and this exhilarating account signaled the magnificent playing to come. Short Ride in a Fast Machine was written originally as the second of Two Fanfares for Orchestra and, if preceded in concert by its slower companion, Tromba Lontana, the diptych would be more than the sum of its parts and still not outstay its welcome as a concert opener.

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Pacific Symphony Orchestra, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, Costa Mesa, Thursday, January 15, 2026, 8 p.m.

Images: The performance: Doug Gifford; Stravinsky, Korngold: Wikimedia Commons; Firebird animation: Fowler Animation; Adams: LA Philharmonic archives.

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