Los Angeles

Thomas Adès’ Dante—a ballet score in three parts based on Dante Alighieri’s La Divina Commedia—was recorded by the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Music & Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel at a concert performance last spring at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Nonesuch Records releases the album, the work’s premiere audio recording, on April 21, 2023. Dante was first performed at the Royal Opera House as part of Wayne McGregor’s The Dante Project for the Royal Ballet, with the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House and with designs by visual artist Tacita Dean.

Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s revelatory interpretation of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, recorded live at Walt Disney Concert Hall (30/31 May & 2 June 2019) will be released in June 2021. Their new album documents a landmark performance that brought the LA Philharmonic’s centennial season to a triumphant conclusion in 2019. Mahler’s extraordinary ‘Symphony of a Thousand’ spans a universe of emotions, channeled through everything from passages of intimate reflection to overwhelming outbursts of choral and orchestral sound.

The Sacred Veil – a project led by Eric Whitacre and Charles Anthony Silvestri – was created following the passing of Charles’ wife, Julia in 2005. It represents a journey towards the answer for many questions, including whether departed loved ones are truly gone, and how can we mourn those we have lost whilst still moving forward? In Charles’ own words, the project became “a significant part of my journey toward healing and wholeness after great loss.”

Gustavo Dudamel's historic Mahler Project was a highlight of music-making in early 2012, for he led the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela in Gustav Mahler's nine completed symphonies, in a series of critically acclaimed concerts. The first CD to be issued from the marathon event is Deutsche Grammophon's 2013 release of the Symphony No. 9 in D major, one of the most challenging of Mahler's works to interpret and one of the most satisfying to hear when it is played with insight and originality.

John Adams' The Gospel According to the Other Mary, first performed in 2012 in Los Angeles, is something of an expansion on the composer's El Niño, a Passion story adorned with a variety of contemporary themes and musical materials. Like the earlier work, it features a libretto by longtime Adams collaborator Peter Sellars, and it may be sung on-stage as an oratorio or presented as an opera.

Dedicated to the memory of Australian composer Phillip Houghton, it features his piece “Opals”, as well as works by Tilman Hoppstock, Robert Beaser, Kevin Callahan, Frederic Hand, and Michael Hedges. It opens with “Hidden Realm of Light” by former LAGQ member Andrew York.

Nothing could be more appropriate in celebrating Victoria de los Angeles’s 75th birthday than this extensive conspectus of her recordings of Spanish song over 40 years. It’s hardly possible in a brief review to do justice to such an astonishing achievement on the part of the Spanish soprano; indeed had she sung nothing else her place in recorded history would be assured.