Music Notes

“Senior Discount”? (by Mark Swed, Jan. 17). A most quick, slick and demeaning headline for a beautiful, passionately sung and acted performance by a mature artist, Hildegard Behrens.

The opera “Salome” was certainly not conceived and composed to be sung by a 16-year-old. How about a little in-depth thinking? There are enough sound bites on TV.

FREDA MADDOW

Los Angeles

Re Mark Swed’s Jan. 12 article “Big-Time Opener for Little Festival”:

Portamento is not from string to string, but from note to note on the same string. Swed is obviously not a string player or he would have known this.

GLORIA STRASSNER

Palm Desert

Last month Mark Swed, in his review of Nielsen’s Symphony No. 4, had World War I ending in 1916. On Jan. 11, Swed’s review of Mahler’s “Das Lied von der Erde” had Esa-Pekka Salonen demonstrating “his continual maturity as a Mahlerian.”

Continual maturity? Maturity is the state or quality of being mature, i.e., of having achieved that state of grace. Maturation, on the other hand, is the ongoing process of ripening or maturing.

One hopes that Swed’s continual maturation will become more evident in his future reviews.

HARRY PARKER

Venice

In his Jan. 10 review of the Israel Philharmonic, Kenneth Herman erroneously attributes the phrase “an army of generals” to composer Franz Josef Haydn in describing a London orchestra.

The famous tribute originated with English music historian Charles Burney, who thus characterized the outstanding orchestra at the German court of Mannheim, which he visited in 1772.

J.S. KLEINSASSER

Professor of Music

Cal State Bakersfield