Mark Swed

2 days ago | latimes.com | Mark Swed

K-pop. Oscar-celebrated cinema. Samsung in the living room. Political urgency in the press. However prominent Korean culture seems to be, there is surprising lack of coverage of the classical scene at large. Already at 21, Yunchan Lim, winner of the 2018 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, has reached superstar status.

4 days ago | latimes.com | Mark Swed

Though mean-spirited, the jester Rigoletto — Verdi’s hapless, vengeful hunchback — wins our hearts as the outsider whom a heartless world so often abuses. “Rigoletto” remains an opera reminding us where to direct our sympathies when authoritarianism remains the alternative. That is not as straightforward as it sounds. Los Angeles Opera has struggled with one insufficient “Rigoletto” production after another, imported or homegrown.

1 week ago | latimes.com | Mark Swed

After triumphantly bringing the Los Angeles Philharmonic to Coachella, Gustavo Dudamel is taking his biggest bite so far out of the Big Apple. He is in town for a three-week New York Philharmonic residency. He has devised two ambitious programs to close the orchestra’s season in David Geffen Hall and will then be the big attraction for thousands of New York picnickers at free New York Philharmonic parks concerts throughout the boroughs.

2 weeks ago | latimes.com | Mark Swed

There is a small and intriguingly personal sub-genre of operas about composers. Something is always up when one composer deals with another composer’s life and music. Subjects have included Carlo Gesualdo, the 16th century madrigalist who murdered his wife and her lover. César Franck and others got a kick out of Alessandro Stradella, the Baroque opera composer who attempted to embezzle the Roman Catholic Church. Rimsky-Korsakov turned to Mozart and Salieri.

3 weeks ago | latimes.com | Mark Swed

The composer and critic Virgil Thomson once defined American music as music written by Americans. There is no arguing with that. Less obvious, however, is figuring out what, if anything, describes L.A. music. Los Angeles is the home of film music. The two most influential classical composers of the first half of the 20th century, Stravinsky and Schoenberg, lived here.