Notes on a Program

In his review of the L.A. Philharmonic’s season opening, Mark Swed apparently relied on the printed program when he shouldn’t have and didn’t when he should have (“A New Soundtrack for ‘The Wind,’ ” Oct. 11).

If he thought that the length of the movie “The Wind” was important enough to be criticized, he should have timed it himself instead of blindly trusting the program. He would have seen then that it was exactly 78 minutes long, just as is the currently available video version, and not seven minutes shorter as he stated.

Conversely, he should have read the titles of the works by Sibelius that accompanied the movie more carefully. The piece played at the end is called “Night Ride and Sunrise,” which certainly makes much more sense for the movie’s uplifting Hollywood ending than the chronologically impossible “Night Ride and Sunset,” as Swed misnamed it.

MARK KASHPER, Associate Principal Second Violinist, L.A. Philharmonic