So I've Heard

"Alan Rich's first published music criticism appeared in Boston in 1944. Sixty years later, this Grammy nominee's still at it, not for a moment regretting the medical studies he abandoned to argue the cause of music - the very old chants of the medieval masters, the latest electronic outbursts from the sound studios, and anything in between that happens to capture his fancy. Gleaned from his four decades of concert-going, opera-going, and record-listening on both the East and West Coasts, this volume is a collection of his music criticism, or "journalistic adventures," as Mr. Rich, currently a music critic at LA Weekly, describes it." "Here you will find a not-so enthusiastic account of a Leonard Bernstein world premier at Lincoln Center (along with a tender reminiscence of the man), a remembrance of an indelible dinner cooked by composer John Cage, and a sizable sheaf of love letters to Wolfgang Mozart, along with reviews and essays on musicians, both well-known and obscure, who have shaped worldwide musical tastes throughout the past four decades. Conductors Zubin Mehta and Esa-Pekka Salonen, performers Glenn Gould and David Helfgott, composers - the baroque masters, Beethoven, Schubert, Schoenberg and contemporaries such as Boulez, Cage, Glass, and Adams - are just a few of the names that are found within these pages. Rich's probing essays also include lively insights on music criticism itself and on where music may (or may not) be heading in the new millennium."--BOOK JACKET.