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David Nice
Monday, 23 April 2018
Why would any conductor resist Mahler's last great symphonic adventure? By which I mean the vast finale of his Tenth Symphony, realised in full by Deryck Cooke, and not the first-...
Katherine Waters
Monday, 23 April 2018
The BBC excels at a very particular kind of drama, namely one where production values overawe dramatic content. Its version of The Woman in White (BBC One) proves no exception....
Veronica Lee
Monday, 23 April 2018
Ed Byrne is a worried parent. Thankfully his two young sons are hale and hearty, but he is concerned he may be bringing up a pair of pampered, Lord Fauntleroy youngsters, and in...
Miranda Heggie
Monday, 23 April 2018
Featuring two Russian composers, the two halves of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s programme could hardly have been more different. In the first, pianist Xiayin Wang...
Thomas H Green
Monday, 23 April 2018
There’s a regular problem with techno albums. The DJ-producers who make them are usually so deeply embedded in club techno that when it comes to making a long-form collection,...
Katherine Waters
Sunday, 22 April 2018
Back in the early Sixties Lucian Freud was living in Clarendon Crescent, a condemned row of houses in Paddington which were gradually being demolished around him. The...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 22 April 2018
Playing Vancouver’s Commodore Ballroom on 8 September 1974, the New York Dolls opened their first set of the evening with...
Gavin Dixon
Saturday, 21 April 2018
The Brahms violin sonatas make a perfect spring evening recital. The Second and Third were inspired by a summer retreat, but...
Tom Birchenough
Saturday, 21 April 2018
Conflict and comedy can be unpredictable bedfellows, and Chicago playwright Joel Drake Johnson’s 2014 play occasionally...
Graham Rickson
Saturday, 21 April 2018
Hans Abrahamsen String Quartets No. 1-4 Arditti String Quartet (Winter & Winter)The opening section of Danish composer...
Veronica Lee
Saturday, 21 April 2018
Home From Home, written by newcomers Chris Fewtrell and Simon Crowther, first saw life as a pilot in the BBC’s Landmark...
Tim Cumming
Saturday, 21 April 2018
Willie Nelson turned 85 at the end of April, a few days after releasing his latest album and a rare set of self-penned new...
Thomas H Green
Friday, 20 April 2018
Record Store Day 2018 – Saturday April 21 – is upon us. It should really be Record Shop Day 2018 as this is the UK but let’s...
Matthew Wright
Friday, 20 April 2018
Over 30 years after he made his debut as a solo artist, woodwind multi-instrumentalist Courtney Pine is still Britain’s most...
Jasper Rees
Friday, 20 April 2018
There’s a serious film to be made about the German occupation of the Channel Islands. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel...
Marianka Swain
Friday, 20 April 2018
Back by feverishly popular demand, Jim Steinman’s mega-musical is no longer in danger of alarming unsuspecting opera-goers....
Owen Richards
Friday, 20 April 2018
As if the real world wasn’t scary enough... Ghost stories are en vogue at the moment, and after the BBC’s hit-and-miss...
Russ Coffey
Friday, 20 April 2018
On Wednesday night, the music world took a small step closer to the realms of science fiction. Roy Orbison, 30 years dead,...
David Nice
Friday, 20 April 2018
Opera on film's most magical offering, better by some way than Joseph Losey's cinematically tricksy Don Giovanni, at last...
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tv
The Woman in White, BBC One review - camp Victoriana
Wilkie Collins's Gothic whodunnit gets a florid treatment for telly
True Horror, Channel 4 review - a Ronseal approach to ghost stories
New anthology based on real accounts provides the scares and not much else
film
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society review - artery-furring whimsy
Lily James seeks postwar secrets in a Channel Islands weepie
DVD/Blu-ray: Bergman's The Magic Flute
Pretty start, heart of darkness: the greatest of all opera films now available to UK viewers
Juliette Binoche: ‘Repetition feels like near death’
The star of Let the Sunshine In talks about love, psychics, her first collaboration with Claire Denis and calling Depardieu on his bad manners
new music
Reissue CDs Weekly: New York Dolls
'Personality Crisis' is a frequently wonderful collection of what New York’s finest did not originally release
classical
LSO, Rattle, Barbican review - incandescent swansongs by Mahler and Tippett
The London Symphony Orchestra's supreme soundsmith on top form
Wang, RSNO, Oundjian, Usher Hall, Edinburgh review - percussion sets Shostakovich's 'Leningrad' ablaze
Music Director pairs two very different Russian works in his final season
Ibragimova, Tiberghien, Wigmore Hall review – light, bright and melodic Brahms
Sensitive but dynamic playing perfectly conveys the music’s carefree spirit
opera
DVD/Blu-ray: Bergman's The Magic Flute
Pretty start, heart of darkness: the greatest of all opera films now available to UK viewers
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Royal Opera review - bleak rigour and black comedy still cast a spell
Eva-Maria Westbroek returns on top form as Shostakovich's lethally bored housewife
Bernstein's MASS, RFH review - polymorphousness in excelsis
Vibrant diversity in this ever-topical 'theatre piece for singers, players and dancers'
theatre
Rasheeda Speaking, Trafalgar Studios review - unsettling comedy, thorny racism
Bravura performance from Tanya Moodie in sharp new American drama of racial discord
Bat Out of Hell, Dominion Theatre review - the Meat Loaf musical returns, batty as ever
The booming behemoth is right at home in We Will Rock You’s old digs
Tina, Aldwych Theatre review - new Tina Turner bio-musical is simply OK
Powerhouse Adrienne Warren is the saving grace of a show that plays it safe
dance
Obsidian Tear / Marguerite and Armand / Elite Syncopations, Royal Opera House review - an evening of high-performance mismatch
Fine dancing, but these three ballets have nothing to say to each other
Voices of America, English National Ballet review - a punchy programme of contemporary ballet
Forsythe commission is a romping, swaggering joy of a piece
Classical CDs Weekly: Lūcija Garūta, Dag Wirén, Ruby Hughes
20th century discoveries from Latvia and Sweden, plus a tribute to Handel's favourite soprano
comedy
Daliso Chaponda, Touring review - uneven but entertaining
Britain's Got Talent finalist on first UK tour
gaming
Metal Gear Survive review - staying alive shouldn't be such a slog
Bring out your wild side in this strange survivalist simulation
EA Sports UFC 3 review - the art of fighting has never looked so good
Why bob and weave when you can ground and pound?
visual arts
Monet and Architecture, National Gallery review - a revelation in paint
The king of the blockbuster seen in a new light
Helaine Blumenfeld: Britain’s most successful sculptor you’ve never heard of
The director of a new Sky Arts documentary profile of the sculptor explores her work
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