Classical Review

John Cale brought an amalgam of rock, musical theater and classical methods to the Coach House on Monday night. A classically trained composer and one-time member of minimalist La Monte Young's Theater of Eternal Music, he perhaps is best known as co-founder of the Velvet Underground, the rock band that traveled with Andy Warhol as part of his mid-'60s mixed-media show, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable. However, before a moderate audience here, he brought only glimmers of an experimental bent.

It's a new year, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic celebrated with a new concerto, or at least a nearly new one. Tan Dun's "The Tears of Nature," which features a whiz-bang percussionist and orchestra, is an L.A. Phil co-commission involving four orchestras. A radio orchestra in Lübeck, Germany, gave the world premiere last month. But though the concerto's U.S. premiere Friday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall by percussionist Martin Grubinger and guest conductor Christoph Eschenbach was but a deuxième , the L.A. Phil's very first notes of 2013 were still fresh and wondrous.

Musically, Venezuela is like no other place on Earth. Along with baseball and beauty pageants, classical music is one of the country's greatest passions. In the capital, Caracas, superstar Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel is mobbed wherever he goes. Classical music teeny-boppers run up to him for autographs when he walks off the podium at concerts. The state-run music education program, which is known as El Sistema and from which Dudamel emerged, is the most extensive, admired and increasingly imitated in the world.

'La Bohème' Where: Pacific Symphony, Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, Costa Mesa When: 8 p.m. Thursday, Saturday and April 24. Tickets: $30-$110 Information: (714) 755-5799 or http://www.pacificsymphony.org Where: Los Angeles Opera, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, downtown L.A. When: May 12-June 2 Tickets: $20-$230 Information: (213) 972-8001 or http://www.laopera.com

When Emmanuelle Haïm conducts an ensemble, it looks like a sensual experience, as though the Baroque music she directs is passing through her. Like a modern dancer, Haïm's body wavers and swirls in lithe, graceful gesticulations as she drives the music. At moments, she might bore in on a singer's solo, using two precise fingers pinched together to draw out a singular note, as if drawing it out on a fragile string. "I try to feel the music, but it also consumes me, even when I don't try," Haïm said recently in her home in the northwestern Parisian suburb of Asnières-sur-Seine.

On a cool autumn afternoon, Bryn Terfel was sitting in the plaza outside the Metropolitan Opera House, talking golf. He was wearing black running pants and a jersey emblazoned with the logo of the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team. One of opera's marquee stars is a huge sports fan ? and bears a remarkable resemblance to the late Rams great Merlin Olsen. Terfel is 6-foot-4 and has the demeanor of a genial country pastor. With a slice of regret in his voice, Terfel was lamenting that he couldn't attend the Ryder Cup golf tournament, which had concluded two days before in his beloved homeland, Wales.

Jennifer Higdon, who won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2010, says her desire to write classical music as hospitable as a Southern dinner stems from a childhood trauma: seeing performance art in the 1960s. She blames her father, a "hippie before the hippie movement," who took her and her younger brother to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta when they were kids. One "art happening," Higdon says, featured an artist, dressed in black, covered with rubber cement, strapped to a black canvas.

The score for Oscar Bettison's chamber concerto "Livre des Sauvages" ("The Book of Savages") should come with an IKEA-like warning: Some Assembly Required. The half-hour work, which will be given its premiere Tuesday at Walt Disney Concert Hall as part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Green Umbrella new music series, employs a toy piano, hotel desk bells, melodicas (with foot pumps), tuned cowbells, tuning forks, conch shells and a "wrenchophone. " The concert, to be conducted by Jeffrey Milarsky, also will feature works by Stockhausen and Cage.

'Lohengrin' Where: L.A. Opera, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, downtown L.A. When: 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 1, 4 and 9; 2 p.m. Nov. 28 and Dec. 12 Tickets: $20 to $270 Information: (213) 972-8001 or http://www.laopera.com Running time: 4 hours, 10 minutes

Pasadena Symphony Who: Mei-Ann Chen, conductor and James Ehnes, violin Where: Ambassador Auditorium, 131 S. St. John Ave., Pasadena When: 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday Tickets: $35 to $100 Information: (626) 793-7172; PasadenaSymphony-Pops.org

The perfect "first opera" for a newcomer to the art form? Puccini's "La Bohème," of course. It is funny, it is sad. It is directly emotive, it is highly sophisticated. It is full of good tunes and doesn't go on too long. "La Bohème" appeals to young people who see themselves in the characters and to older audiences for whom it calls back the shadows of soirees past. We recognize its heroes and heroines: Didn't we just see poet Rodolfo in a Silver Lake cafe? Or philosopher Colline, buried in the stacks of the library?

The public doesn't warm to every instrument it hears. Every winter audiences are enchanted by the celesta, a kind of keyboard glockenspiel, because Tchaikovsky made its sweet sound famous in "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" from "Nutcracker. " The jury is out on the siren. Edgard Varèse shocked listeners in 1930 when they heard its high-pitched wailings in his all-percussion "Ionization. " The siren will get another hearing when percussionist Steven Schick joins 47 other percussionists in a performance of John Luther Adams' outdoor piece, "Inuksuit," at the Ojai Music Festival in June.

The score for Oscar Bettison's chamber concerto "Livre des Sauvages" ("The Book of Savages") should come with an IKEA-like warning: Some Assembly Required. The half-hour work, which will be given its premiere Tuesday at Walt Disney Concert Hall as part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Green Umbrella new music series, employs a toy piano, hotel desk bells, melodicas (with foot pumps), tuned cowbells, tuning forks, conch shells and a "wrenchophone. " The concert, to be conducted by Jeffrey Milarsky, also will feature works by Stockhausen and Cage.

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Where: Renée & Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, Costa Mesa When: 8 p.m. Wednesday Tickets: $30 to $250 Information: (949) 553-2422 or http://www.philharmonicsociety.org

Jennifer Higdon, who won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2010, says her desire to write classical music as hospitable as a Southern dinner stems from a childhood trauma: seeing performance art in the 1960s. She blames her father, a "hippie before the hippie movement," who took her and her younger brother to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta when they were kids. One "art happening," Higdon says, featured an artist, dressed in black, covered with rubber cement, strapped to a black canvas.

Sometimes soprano Ani Maldjian gets going so fast she forgets to breathe. She searched for a bracelet with the word "breathe" on it to wear as a reminder but could not find one on the Internet. So she decided to make her own, using beads. In the process, "I fell in love with bead shops, it's like an addiction," she says. She made her bracelet — but instead of leading to relaxation, the effort led Maldjian to launch Solo, an online business selling her own music-inspired jewelry designs.

'La Bohème' Where: Pacific Symphony, Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, Costa Mesa When: 8 p.m. Thursday, Saturday and April 24. Tickets: $30-$110 Information: (714) 755-5799 or http://www.pacificsymphony.org Where: Los Angeles Opera, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, downtown L.A. When: May 12-June 2 Tickets: $20-$230 Information: (213) 972-8001 or http://www.laopera.com

Green Umbrella: George Crumb Focus Who: Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group with conductor Jean-Michaël Lavoie Where: Walt Disney Concert Hall, downtown L.A. When: 8 p.m. Tuesday Tickets: $42.75 to $61.25 Information: (323) 850-2000 or http://www.laphil.com

Musically, Venezuela is like no other place on Earth. Along with baseball and beauty pageants, classical music is one of the country's greatest passions. In the capital, Caracas, superstar Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel is mobbed wherever he goes. Classical music teeny-boppers run up to him for autographs when he walks off the podium at concerts. The state-run music education program, which is known as El Sistema and from which Dudamel emerged, is the most extensive, admired and increasingly imitated in the world.

Ringing arias? Definitely. Acting chops? Absolutely. Stage presence? Unquestionably. But where on a tenor checklist do you find the box to mark for "effortlessly scales 8-foot fences"? Currently generating critical raves and audible audience gasps at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Vittorio Grigolo, in his local debut starring in L.A. Opera's "Romeo and Juliet," is not your average earthbound Italian tenor. Excessive carb-loading is out, Cirque-like skills are in. The 34-year-old's physicality powers a vital Romeo rare in theater or ballet, much less in French Grand Opera's take on the tale.