fri 29/03/2024

Christmas

Bach Christmas Oratorio (Parts 1-3 & 6), Britten Sinfonia, Polyphony, Layton, Barbican review - glorious riposte to Arts Council axe

What do you do when your high-achieving ensemble has just been dealt a brutal, capricious blow, but you have the most joyfully festive work in the repertoire on your seasonal agenda? To say that the Britten Sinfonia came out with all trumpets (and...

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Album: Debbie Gibson - Winterlicious

Those old enough will recall Debbie Gibson as a squeaky clean, flash-in-the-pan teen pop star of the late 1980s. She was globe-trottingly huge for a couple of years – a peer of Tiffany “I Think We’re Alone Now” Darwish – but then her star waned....

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Album: Chris Isaak - Everybody Knows It's Christmas

There’s only one problem with this album, really – if you can call it a problem – and that’s Chris Isaak’s indelible hint of David Lynch. Thanks to his “Wicked Game” being an integral part of Wild at Heart and creating an ongoing...

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Album: Neil Diamond - A Neil Diamond Christmas

Oy vey. Where to start. This is essentially painful – and I write that knowing that Neil Diamond is a genuinely nice guy and that he is now stricken with Parkinson’s. But there is no way round it: A Neil Diamond Christmas is an auditory assault.I’m...

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Album: Backstreet Boys - A Very Backstreet Christmas

Good things don’t tend to come in slews. Slews seem to be reserved, pretty much exclusively, for the bad stuff: legal issues, school shootings, Christmas albums…  And so we come, with aching predictability, to this year’s festive releases....

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Classical CDs: Christmas discs 2022

 GoldMund, Anna Veit: Mehr Oder Weniger Lametta – arrangements of Tchaikovsky, Bach, Humperdinck, Martin Luther, John Rutter (Solo Musica)What works best here are the classy, and occasionally witty and wacky brass arrangements, plus some very...

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Elf, Dominion Theatre review - hit musical revival slays it again

Just about the three toughest tricks to pull off in the theatre are making a musical, making a family show and making characters so charming that even the most cynical in the house are pulling for the little guy (or not so little in this case). So...

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Messiah, Dunedin Consort, Butt, Queen's Hall, Edinburgh - period clarity infused with love

This time last year, the moment I knew things were really bad was when the Dunedin Consort cancelled Messiah. All performances since the summer of 2020 had been online films, but Dunedin cancelled even their online Messiah because it would involve...

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Album: Norah Jones - I Dream of Christmas

“I wanna hear the music play, I wanna dance and laugh and sway” sings Norah Jones on “Christmas Calling”, the opening track of this her first festive outing, “I wanna happy holiday for Christmas”. Doubtless when she recorded I Dream of Christmas,...

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theartsdesk on Vinyl 68: Patrik Fitzgerald, Oasis, Kathryn Williams, R.E.M., Bess Atwell and a seasonal load more

As we ride towards the holiday break on our magic reindeer, it’s time for one last theartsdesk on Vinyl, a seasonal special that, if you scroll down, contains all the usual up-to-date music reviews but, before that, takes a look at Yuletide-themed...

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L’Enfance du Christ, Monteverdi Choir, ORR, Gardiner, St Martin-in-the-Fields review – clear-cut Christmas story

Time, place and performers gave this performance of Berlioz’s typically original “Sacred Trilogy” a special significance. Nothing in it is more striking, in choice of text and the music to illustrate it, than the scene where Hebrew refugees Mary,...

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Album: Kathryn Williams & Carol Ann Duffy - Midnight Chorus

Liverpudlian singer-songwriter Kathryn Williams has always had a literary bent. This doesn’t just manifest in overt ways, like writing a concept album about Sylvia Plath in 2015’s Hypoxia, but in perfectly potted narratives, microscopically...

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