Tony Frankel

TRIFONOV MAKES DISNEY HALL DEBUT All it took was one performance from 23-year-old Daniil Trifonov to resoundingly validate why he is the current Big Thing of the piano world. The Liszt-like master’s rendition of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 at the Hollywood Bowl (followed by a jaw-dropping encore of Stravinsky’s Firebird for piano) convinced me…

THE GREATEST PIECE NEVER HEARD Missa Solemnis is one of Beethoven’s last works, and one of his greatest. He labored over it for four years (the most time he ever gave to composing), and then wrote on the completed score, “From the heart, may it go further to the heart!” While the epic Solemn Mass…

PACIFIC TRIO AND TWO U. S. PREMIERES Le Salon de Musiques’ fifth season’”the “Masters Rediscovered” series’”continues in the new year with the Pacific Trio. Having just returned from performances in Europe and Russia, Edith Orloff (piano), John Walz (cello), and Roger Wilkie (violin) will play two Léon Boëllmann U.S. premieres and Camille Saint-Saëns’ Piano Trio…

HERE’S YOUR NEW YEAR’S EVE COCKTAIL Last year, Pink Martini’”having brilliantly executed an extended song list covering at least a dozen styles of music sung in eight different languages’”turned the Hollywood Bowl into a festive party which involved the audience dancing in one giant conga line. With a clever, daring, delightful, masterful, and sophisticated concoction…

AN EXTRA CHANCE TO CHECK-IN With ticket sales hotter than the Great Chicago Fire, the even greater Robey Theatre Company has just announced an extension of their wildly popular, sold-out The Magnificent Dunbar Hotel  — but only  through Dec. 28, 2014, when it absolutely must close. Considering the logistics of compiling one of the biggest casts on…

JOY VEY A figurehead in the folk movement, Woody Guthrie wrote hundreds of political, traditional and children’s songs, as well as ballads and improvised works. Yet how many of you know that Woody Guthrie wrote Hanukkah songs? Indeed he did, and in a pairing as richly diverse as Guthrie’s life itself’”from the plains of tiny…

YOU’RE GOING TO LOVE, NOí‹L Noël Coward would have loved that his name appears twice in Love, Noël: The Letters and Songs of Noël Coward, which, having completely sold out its run at the swanky Wallis Annenberg Center in Beverly Hills, has just been extended. The entertainment interweaves his songs with personal letters sent between…

A HOT CHRISTMAS Under boughs of holly and multi-media of silver and gold, stars and snowflakes will glitter as Upright Cabaret combines the Best of Broadway with the Carols of Christmas for the  ninth annual A Broadway Christmas, which plays this Wednesday & Thursday, Dec. 17 & 18, at 8:30. Along with the extraordinary vocal talent…

COEURAGE, I COULD EAT YOU UP It is rare when a theater company lives up to its mission statement. Normally, the vision is so hifalutin as to be obscure. Luckily, Los Angeles has Coeurage Theatre Company, whose simple declaration blossomed into some of the best theater I have seen here. Formed in 2009 by Cal…

FLARE DONE WITH FLAIR Unlike Sherwood’s Idiot’s Delight (1936), Terence Rattigan’s Flare Path (1941) is not an anti-war play. Both take place in a hotel and have a rich variety of characters, but while Sherwood’s Pulitzer-winner is a clear commentary on mankind’s fear, idealism, self-indulgence, and foolishness, Flare Path is a slice-of-life period piece whose…

THIS WOODS DELIVERS THE GOODS Somewhere between “Once Upon a Time” and “Happily Ever After” there is a very adult world of tests, losses, disappointments, and grief. Despite this, we assert our agency; or as the baker’s wife sings in Into the Woods, “If you know what you want, then you go and you find…

CROSS OVER INTO IMPRO’S TWILIGHT ZONE After last year’s crop of run-of-the-mill Christmas plays, I swore off any theater that even alludes to the holidays. Now, I must eat my words. Opening tonight and running through Dec. 21, those daringly innovative  long-form improvisers, Impro Theatre, bring Twilight Zone UnScripted: Holiday Version to The Carrie Hamilton Theatre….

A REALLY GOOD LIFETIME MOVIE ON STAGE Chicago Theater comes to L.A. lock, stock and barrel with the Goodman production of Rebecca Gilman’s Luna Gale.   A winning cast’”led by the remarkable Mary Beth Fisher’”and Robert Falls’ taut direction validate how Chicago artists can turn a problematic (though certainly engaging) script into a likeable and at…

TESTED AND APPROVED Whether amateur or professional, containing sacred pieces or hummable traditionals, a cappella or accompanied by orchestra or just piano, the list of worthy chorale holiday concerts in the Los Angeles area numbers more than 40 this year. Allow me to whittle down your choice of choral affairs by offering the Stage and…