Mt Wilson’s view of LA & Pacific Ocean during Labor Day Sunday 2026’s rain, at the firebreak where wind shifted back down the mountain in early 2025, helping firefighters save the historic, still working site. (Photo – Elisabeth Rareshide)
Who would have suspected temperatures in the 60s and actual rain would have surrounded Mt. Wilson’s Concert in the Dome on Labor Day Sunday—especially when those tickets were booked during a bone-dry heat wave of 100°F?
By Melanie Hooks
Could Southern Californians manage pouring rain, rock slides, and air cold enough for coats? Could the music go on?
Go on, it did. Gloriously. In fact, both the soggy crowd and the Webern String Quartet themselves seemed to shine a little more under the pressure. No pictures or video were to be taken during the performance, per the musicians’ request, and the Dome itself remained closed to the sky due to precipitation, meaning every note stayed inside and resonated through the vaulted space instead.
The stage at Mt Wilson’s Concert in the Dome on a rainy Labor Day, shuttered to keep patrons dry. (Photo – Elisabeth Rareshide)
Webern’s program launched with new music: String Quartet No. 5 (2025) from Todd Mason, known as “The Phoenix,” a meditative layering of harmonies that follows the death and rebirth of the mythical bird to a final sense of overcoming. The smaller strings set the quiet, almost tenuous stage for the first sure and soaring notes of Stella Cho’s cello—the chords that settled over and into the crowd, the moment we were assured of a powerful, personal performance. The composition seemed especially appropriate for the stargazing venue, a great potential science-fiction film soundtrack, as well as for Mason’s own notes, in which he equated the bird with “the human spirit eternally exploring the sky for new meaning.”
Then came Beethoven’s *String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132*, two hundred years older. Written in a time of more straightforward structure, the opening and closing sections are bright and hopeful, with the ending Allegro appassionato being particularly quick, technically impressive, and uplifting. But the star of the piece—and the evening—was unquestionably the middle movement, the Molto adagio—Andante: expansive, thoughtful, encompassing. Benjamin Hoffman and Chiai Tajima’s violins took turns one-upping each other’s exquisite, full moments, designed to slow down human anxieties and concentrate on universal wonder. Alex Granger’s viola played between those melodies and the cello’s harmonies, with all ending on a long, drawn-out breath of possibility before diving back into the confident playfulness of the assai vivace, the fourth movement.
A perfect evening to remind audiences why a recording will never be sufficient, no matter its quality. The breaths in between the notes, the intakes of surprise, the sighs of delight, and the reverberations through floors and chairs—the collective delight of people experiencing beauty. That’s live performance.
It seemed an additional miracle, given how close the entire complex came to eradication last year. Just one change of wind away from yesterday’s magic never happening. The rainy day atop the mountain, where Hubble and Einstein, Carnegie and Caltech, Mason and Beethoven have all brought us closer to the stars.
Attendees explore historic wonders of Mt. Wilson at the indoor reception to avoid rain (Photo – Rachel Wann)
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