Musical High Notes

Last Saturday night I saw the Los Angeles Opera’s Mass in B minor--and my mind still resonates with both the music and the stage performance. Achim Freyer’s production was wonderful, inspiring and more than a little humbling. Please, let’s welcome him back any time. I have never seen such a brilliant use of lighting, music and production design. I cannot stop thinking of what I saw and heard. Congratulations, Los Angeles Opera, for your courage.

DAVID LEWIS

Studio City

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It occurred to me after reading Richard Ginell’s review of the L.A. Philharmonic (“Philharmonic’s Sure-Fire Mahler,” Feb. 4) that perhaps he heard the Mahler Fifth and the Mozart concerto over the closed-circuit TV in the second-floor bar of the Dorothy Chandler.

He tells us in a deliberately condescending fashion that the Mahler was “expertly performed,” the orchestral accompaniment for the Mozart “lush,” the soloist’s playing “searching.” None of this was adequate to Ginell’s high-flown demands.

He should have been sitting fifth row center of the front balcony. I found new depths in the Mahler and, in the first movement particularly, I could say that I plunged into those depths, happy that such glorious music so beautifully played offered some compensation for the ills that we all must suffer in our time.

My advice is that you all trade in your more expensive tickets (or leave the bar) and come up where the acoustics for most music are the best in the house.

RICHARD ENGDAHL

Los Angeles