Concert Review: When Dinosaurs Attack

The American Symphony Orchestra plays Max Reger.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Please keep your arms and legs inside the blog at all times.
Photo alteration by the author, a parody of Jurassic Park © 1994 Amblin Entertainment.

Max Reger belongs to a shadowy period at the turn of the 20th century, a sort of missing link between the Romantic harmonic complexity of Brahms and the atonal revolution led by Arnold Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School. Yet his major works stand largely ignored, dismissed as difficult dinosaurs that are ignored by most pianists and orchestras. They're long. They're complicated. And they translate 18th century ideas of polyphony and counterpoint to the modern orchestra, offering solid musicianship that, in the wrong hands can be sober and heavy-handed.