I'm back at Disney Hall for the first time since the hall opened in 2003. The image above is a severely underexposed shot of sunlight striking Disney's outer walls. A few seconds into Webern's Pieces Opus 10 — sharing a program with the Mahler Seventh, under Esa-Pekka Salonen's direction — the wonder of the place returned. No other hall in the world takes you so deep inside the sound. By "Kraft" I mean, of course, Magnus Lindberg's Kraft, one of Salonen's signature pieces as a conductor. In composer guise, the fantastic Finn unveils his Piano Concerto at the New York Philharmonic on February 1.
On Sunday, I'm talking at the forward-thinking Santa Monica series Jacaranda, which is presenting a concert-fundraiser. The topic will be, inevitably, the Twentieth Century.
