theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
David Nice
Sunday, 26 September 2021
British opera’s attempted answer to The Magic Flute, and its presentation as the opening gambit of Edward Gardner’s eminent position as principal conductor of the London...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 26 September 2021
Looking for answers to what qualifies an album for a makeover and its attendant return to record shop racks can cause heads to spin. Multiple variables are at play but, still, it...
Gary Naylor
Saturday, 25 September 2021
Much has happened in the five years since your reviewer braved the steep rake at The Other Palace and saw The Last Five Years (not least my now getting its “Nobody needs to know”...
Markie Robson-Scott
Saturday, 25 September 2021
This is the story of a boy and a building. Sixteen-year-old Youri (newcomer Alseni Bathily) lives, with his telescope, in Cité Gagarine, a vast red-brick Sixties apartment complex...
Graham Rickson
Saturday, 25 September 2021
Anthony Collins: Complete Decca Recordings (Decca Eloquence)Born in 1893, Anthony Collins began his musical career as a 17-year-old violist in the Hastings Municipal...
Joe Muggs
Saturday, 25 September 2021
There’s a strand of music that a friend of mine once referred to as “Caveman Electronics”, which snakes through the decades, never quite becoming a genre. It’s surfaced in scenes...
Boyd Tonkin
Friday, 24 September 2021
If a standard-sized recital hall can be a lonely place for a solo violinist, playing an auditorium of Barbican dimensions...
Jenny Gilbert
Friday, 24 September 2021
If a new ballet can be doomed by the weight of expectation, then Creature didn’t stand a chance. First scheduled to appear...
Theartsdesk
Friday, 24 September 2021
Few singers really change your life. Norman Bailey did that for me [writes David Nice of theartsdesk]. The occasion wasn't...
Guy Oddy
Friday, 24 September 2021
For those not familiar with the murkier corners of British rock music history, Barry Adamson was a significant player in...
Graham Fuller
Friday, 24 September 2021
An entertaining but undernourished industrial-domestic neo-noir set in South Wales,The Ballad of Billy McCrae depicts the...
Thomas H Green
Friday, 24 September 2021
Amon Tobin is hard to pin down. His music has mutated over the years. He initially fitted in with Ninja Tune’s late-Nineties...
Harry Thorfinn-George
Thursday, 23 September 2021
Neo Jessica Joshua, better known as Nao, has been consistently putting out good – often excellent – music since...
Gary Naylor
Wednesday, 22 September 2021
We’re in an agreeable drawing room with an author, Charles Condomine, who is looking forward to having a bit of fun with a...
Jessica Duchen
Wednesday, 22 September 2021
75 years after Sir Thomas Beecham founded the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, it’s sobering to reflect that without this one...
Harriet Thompson
Wednesday, 22 September 2021
Born in 1840, Thomas Hardy lived a life of in-betweens. Modern yet traditional, the son of a builder who went on to become a...
Sarah Kent
Wednesday, 22 September 2021
The 31 artists in Mixing it Up all live in this country, but a third of them were born elsewhere – in countries including...
Bernard Hughes
Wednesday, 22 September 2021
The Wigmore Hall is a bastion of white musicians playing the music of white composers to a largely white audience and it is...
Nick Hasted
Wednesday, 22 September 2021
Lindsey Buckingham was last in and first out of Fleetwood Mac’s classic line-up (quitting in 1987, and forced out by long...
disc of the day
Album: Black Dice - Mod Prog Sic
Twenty-three years into their career, the raw electronic trio get to the hub of things
tv
Thomas Hardy: Fate, Exclusion and Tragedy, Sky Arts review – too much and not enough
Programme does its best to shine a light on the bleak Wessex writer
Schumacher, Netflix review - authorised version of the life of an F1 legend
Portrait of German race ace doesn't dig deep enough
The North Water, BBC Two review - a terrible voyage into the great beyond
Director Andrew Haigh brings cinematic heft to this bloody whaling odyssey
film
Gagarine review - hazy cosmic jive in a Paris banlieue
Cité of dreams: Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh's glowing debut feature
The Ballad of Billy McCrae review - beware the quarryman's beautiful daughter
Welsh neo-noir packs a nasty punch but falls short
new music
Reissue CDs Weekly: Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentleman We Are Floating in Space; Super Furry Animals - Rings Around the World
Wallet-friendly new editions deliver an alternative to £250 original pressings
Album: Black Dice - Mod Prog Sic
Twenty-three years into their career, the raw electronic trio get to the hub of things
Album: Amon Tobin - How Do You Live
Perennial electronic wizard pushes yet further into unexplored, sometimes loud, always compulsive terrain
classical
Classical CDs: Lieder, folk song and a neglected conductor receiving his due
Box sets of German songs and vintage orchestral treats, plus ethnomusicology, lively piano duets and lots of foxtrots
Nicola Benedetti, Barbican Hall review – from Bach to the Highlands via New Orleans
A bold solo voyage through three centuries of violin virtuosity
Kanneh-Mason, Terfel, RPO, Philharmonia Chorus, Petrenko, RAH review - an anniversary feast
Full chorus and giant orchestra reunite at last to celebrate 75 years and counting
opera
The Midsummer Marriage, LPO. Gardner, RFH review – Tippett’s cornucopia shines in fits and starts
The central act is pure genius, but undramatic flaws glare in a naked concert performance
'Rest now, you God': remembering bass-baritone Norman Bailey (1933-2021)
Greatest of Wagnerians remembered by four fellow-singers and two conductors
The Magic Flute, Royal Opera review - all but a guarantee of a great night out
Opera's classiest pantomime looks better than ever in this handsome revival
theatre
The Last Five Years, Garrick Theatre review - bittersweet musical treat gets West End upgrade
Flaws remain, but audiences will lap up the melodies, singing and storyline
Blithe Spirit, Harold Pinter Theatre review - an amusing, if dated, revival of the Coward classic
Jennifer Saunders delivers a fine turn as the celebrated Madame Arcati
Black British Musical Theatre 1900-1950, Wigmore Hall review – a disappointing missed opportunity
Lecture-recital leaves more questions than answers about an interesting subject
dance
Creature, English National Ballet, Sadler's Wells review - bombastic and unreadable
Akram Khan over-reaches in his latest big project for ENB
Hofesh Shechter Company, Double Murder, Sadler's Wells review - a well-intentioned but misjudged double bill
After the killing spree, a warm group hug. How to send an audience home feeling numb
Beauty Mixed Programme, Royal Ballet review - no dancers? No problem
The company's 90th anniversary celebration triumphs over setbacks
comedy
Blithe Spirit, Harold Pinter Theatre review - an amusing, if dated, revival of the Coward classic
Jennifer Saunders delivers a fine turn as the celebrated Madame Arcati
Anuvab Pal, Soho Theatre review - Empire and Bollywood collide
Shaggy dog story with some history thrown in
Olga Koch, Soho Theatre review - personal, political and playful
What nationality and belonging mean
Books
Barry Adamson: Up Above the City, Down Beneath the Stars review - the post-punk colossus spills his guts in a raw style
The tale of a Manchester childhood, Magazine, the Bad Seeds and surviving heroin
Thomas Hardy: Fate, Exclusion and Tragedy, Sky Arts review – too much and not enough
Programme does its best to shine a light on the bleak Wessex writer
Colson Whitehead: Harlem Shuffle review - period piece speaks to the present
The 'Underground Railroad' novelist lets his hair down with a hardboiled crime piece devoted to 60s Harlem
visual arts
Mixing it Up, Hayward Gallery review - a glorious celebration of diversity
Anything goes, from paint on canvas to toothpaste and hair gel under plexiglass
Helen Frankenthaler: Radical Beauty, Dulwich Picture Gallery review - adventures in print
A fresh look at the American painter's reimagining of woodcut
The Lost Leonardo review - an incredible tale as gripping as any thriller
The machinations of the art market laid bare
latest comments
Erda is of course an influence on Sosostris (as...
I left after 45 minutes because i simply could...
It was certainly a book that stayed with me. Had...
Thanks for taking the trouble to write, and for...
Reviews are in their nature subjective, so I will...
You would think the producers of this so-called...
Great gig, to be fair there was no room for...
Dave Greenfield didn't play on "If Something’s...