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Review: LACO Sets the Standard with Impressive Season Debut

September 15, 2025, 7:24 PM · Beethoven's Fifth Symphony - eye roll. How many times have I heard this piece? Played it? Written about it?

Enough times to wonder if I really need to hear it again.

Yet on Saturday night the music crept into my bones had me on the edge of my seat. Anticipation, wonder, triumph, exuberance - why was I feeling it so strongly? Why was I smiling anew at the brilliance of it all?

A simple answer: the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.

Yes, I went to LACO's season-opening concert on Saturday night at the Colburn School's Zipper Hall, and I found musical excellence aplenty. The program featured cellist Nicolas Altstaedt, who played Schumann's Cello Concerto in A minor, as well as Haydn's Symphony No. 82 and - as mentioned - Beethoven's Symphony No. 5.

There is plenty of spark from inside this orchestra, from their longtime principals like concertmaster Margaret Batjer and cellist Andrew Shulman to the newer additions such as the dynamic Yura Lee as principal violist. And within the sections are reliably familiar faces - veteran musicians playing together with unified purpose. No one here is asleep at the music stand.

Director Jaime Martín, who has served as Music Director since 2019, is both showman and musician's musician, conducting with joy, precision and the ease of someone intimately familiar with his work - someone who clearly loves it.

LACO also is where you are likely to discover a gem of a soloist who somehow is known to the rest of the world but who has seldom or never played in the giant metropolis of Los Angeles. Such was the case with the French-German cellist Nicolas Altstaedt, who was making his Los Angeles debut with this performance. What's more, this season LACO will bring to town a number of other such soloists, including German violinist Anthony Marwood - as well as the pianist/composer Fazil Say and others. (See their full season here.)

Saturday's concert opened with Haydn's Symphony No. 83 in G minor "The Hen," not a piece played every day, but it was quite dramatic right from the beginning, with fabulous energy interrupted by tidy silences. Keep reading...

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V.com weekend vote: Do you like your local symphony hall?

Laurie Niles

September 14, 2025, 1:13 PM · Acoustics, aesthetics, accessibility - a great concert hall can make all the difference, when it comes to experiencing symphonic music. Based on everything you've ever experienced in a concert hall, what would you want, in the ideal concert hall?

One of the reasons this is on my mind is that the Colburn School is in the process of building a new concert hall (Terri and Jerry Kohl Hall) which will be the new home for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, which has been a bit of a roving band, playing at halls throughout the city.

Imagine, a new concert hall!

I thought this would make a good idea for a vote - are you happy with your symphony's current hall? Do you like its acoustics? The way it looks, inside and out? The way it feels to be there? The parking and/or transportation situation? Do you like its location, and is it close to restaurants or other amenities? If you play there, do you like the backstage areas?

For the vote, just choose the hall that is closest to your life - it can be where you play, or where you most frequently attend concerts, etc. And after voting, please tell us in the comments all about your local symphony hall, what you like and what you would change to make it the "ideal."

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For the Record, Op. 350: Joshua Brown, Karisa Chiu, The Kanneh-Masons, Ember

Laurie Niles

September 11, 2025, 5:41 PM · Welcome to "For the Record," Violinist.com's weekly roundup of new releases of recordings by violinists, violists, cellists and other classical musicians. We hope it helps you keep track of your favorite artists, as well as find some new ones to add to your listening! Click on the highlighted links to obtain each album or learn more about the artists.

Schumann: Violin Sonatas & Fantasy
Joshua Brown, violin
Paolo Giacometti, piano

"The struggle that Schumann so openly expresses through his music continues to bring me solace and companionship in difficult times," said violinist Joshua Brown, who presents his first recording after winning Second Prize at the 2024 Queen Elizabeth Competition. Brown also is a 2025 Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient. "I hope that you can find similar comfort in it, and enjoy the perspective that Paolo and I have brought to this music that we both love." BELOW: Schumann Violin Sonata No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 105: I. Mit leidenschaftlichem Ausdruck.

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Breathing and Internal Support for the Aging Musician

Stephen Brivati

September 10, 2025, 4:43 PM · This blog is the follow-up to the one entitled Physical Fitness for the Aging Violinist, which discussed how violinists rarely activate their muscle fascia efficiently. This makes violinists not only more injury-prone than necessary, but also unable to realize their true potential. This can happen even at the highest level of player, in many cases.

The question of breathing goes hand-in-hand with this rethink of total body integration.

But before discussing breathing technique itself, I would like to respectfully note of a serious error that even some absolutely top teachers on YouTube make when they are talking about how to play injury-free. It is not unusual, in this kind of video, to hear the player advised to "pay attention to the core/keep a good posture using stomach muscles," and so on. Unfortunately, tensing the stomach muscles immediately disconnects the muscle fascia from lower and upper body, thereby significantly reducing playing efficiency.

Furthermore, there are not many people who can keep constantly checking their posture and making sure their abs are tightened while they perform - that’s just annoying. This is not to say that our abs should not be exercised along with other body parts throughout our lives. This is a necessity. How you do it is up to you.

The key to keeping "stable" and injury-free while allowing full use of muscle fascia is actually the diaphragm. Sadly, it is quite hard to find direct references to this in the technical literature on violin playing. I did stumble across one teacher who talks about relaxing the diaphragm in an article on bowing in one of those Strad books containing interviews on technique, but I am not going to reference it a) because there is no further explanation and b) because I am fundamentally lazy. Keep reading...

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