sun 09/02/2025

theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews

Theartsdesk
Wednesday, 01 October 2025
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.It followed some hectic and intensive months when a disparate and eclectic...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 09 February 2025
On its own, the second session The Lurkers recorded for the BBC’s John Peel show on 18 April 1978 is arguably a curio, a footnote. Four tracks of bracingly straight-ahead Brit-...
Robert Beale
Saturday, 08 February 2025
When a piece of music is heard for the first time ever, there’s always the delicious hope that, just by being there, an audience might witness something special, to be remembered...
Stephen Walsh
Saturday, 08 February 2025
Drained as they are at present of crucial funds, WNO are managing to put on only two operas this spring, and spaced out to the point where it could hardly be called a season. For...
Graham Rickson
Saturday, 08 February 2025
 Michael Tilson Thomas: The Complete Columbia, Sony and RCA Recordings (Sony)Big box sets continue to arrive. This one’s a whopper: 80 discs celebrating Michael Tilson Thomas...
India Lewis
Saturday, 08 February 2025
Taking on some of the contingent, nebulous quality of its subject, Jacqueline Feldman’s Precarious Lease examines the beginning and the end – in 2013 – of the famous Parisian...
Thomas H Green
Saturday, 08 February 2025
Brighton band Squid are not in the business of straightforward. Combining jazz chops with a sensibility that’s at once post-...
Matt Wolf
Friday, 07 February 2025
We live in tragic times given over to cataclysmic events that require outsized emotions in return. That may be one reason to...
David Nice
Friday, 07 February 2025
Perhaps all great music counterpoints and comments on the times, but Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra have...
Markie Robson-Scott
Friday, 07 February 2025
“You know what they say: where there’s livestock, there’s dead stock,” says Jack (a brilliant Barry Keoghan). Never a truer...
Kieron Tyler
Friday, 07 February 2025
Deep Below’s first track is titled “Hibernation.” “A winter breeze blows through my mind,” intones a colourless, dispirited...
Lauren Mooney
Thursday, 06 February 2025
It started with a Guardian long-read. I’m ashamed to admit it since so many shows could say the same, but that was the...
Alexandra Coghlan
Thursday, 06 February 2025
Who’s in and who’s not – on the secret, the joke, the relationship, the family, the club? That’s the fulcrum of Joe Hill-...
Demetrios Matheou
Thursday, 06 February 2025
There’s a common understanding about journalists, especially ones at the top of their game, that they’re flying by the seat...
Helen Hawkins
Thursday, 06 February 2025
The opening scene of the Old Vic’s Oedipus is dominated by a giant backdrop of a skull-like face, eyes shut and rock-like....
Guy Oddy
Thursday, 06 February 2025
It was only six months ago that Hifi Sean and David McAlmont released their Daylight album. A fine disc of summery dance pop...
Gary Naylor
Wednesday, 05 February 2025
Your response to Barney Norris’s one-man play, based on David Foenkinos’s bestselling novel as translated by Megan Jones,...
Peter Culshaw
Wednesday, 05 February 2025
The latest in Peter Culshaw’s peripatetic radio shows is a conversation with Joe Boyd whose recent tome, published by Faber...
Gary Naylor
Wednesday, 05 February 2025
The phenomenal global success of Six began when two young writers decided to give voices to the wives of a powerful man,...

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WIDMANN, LSO, PAPPANO, BARBICAN Razor-sharp attack in adrenalin charges

OEDIPUS, OLD VIC Disappointing leads in a production of two halves

THEARTSDESK RADIO SHOW 36 Legendary producer Joe Boyd discusses his recent book on global music

★ SECOND BEST, RIVERSIDE STUDIOS First-class performance in a second-class play

SEPTEMBER 5 The ground-breaking, if flawed media coverage of the 1972 Munich massacre

★★★ THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO, ENGLISH NATIONAL OPERA Laugh-out-loud revival

disc of the day

Album: Squid - Cowards

South-coast five-piece continue their fitful journey into rock experimentalism

The future of Arts Journalism

 

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Subscribe to theartsdesk.com

Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.

To take a subscription now simply click here.

And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?

tv

Paradise, Disney+ review - enigmatic drama with an unknown destination

Dan Fogelman's new series has an excellent cast but a recycled premise

Brian and Maggie, Channel 4 review - Thatcherism's date with TV destiny

James Graham's dramatisation of Brian Walden's fateful 1989 interview

film

Bring Them Down review - ramming it home in the west of Ireland

Directorial debut features strong performances and too much violence

September 5 review - gripping real-life thriller

The ground-breaking, if flawed media coverage of the 1972 Munich massacre

Blu-ray: Stray Dog

Kurosawa's post-war Tokyo noir gleans societal guilt as a cop hunts his purloined pistol

new music

Music Reissues Weekly: Beggars Arkive - The Lurkers’ 1978 John Peel session

Vital components of British punk rock and what followed

Album: Squid - Cowards

South-coast five-piece continue their fitful journey into rock experimentalism

Album: Rats on Rafts - Deep Below

The spirit of The Cure rematerialises in the Netherlands

classical

Manchester Collective, RNCM review - something special in new music

Performers of extraordinary versatility fulfil their brief

Classical CDs: Elephants, bells and warm blankets

Two great conductors celebrated, plus medieval choral music and an eclectic vocal recital

Widmann, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - razor-sharp attack in adrenalin charges

A great conductor continues his scorching survey of British symphonies with a hard-hitter

theatre

Elektra, Duke of York's Theatre review - Brie Larson's London stage debut is angry but inert
Brie Larson makes a brave West End debut that, alas, misfires
First Person: writer Lauren Mooney on bringing bodies together in the new Royal Court play, 'More Life'
Kandinsky Theatre co-creator on a new play tethering technology to existence
Oedipus, Old Vic review - disappointing leads in a production of two halves
Is it a dance piece with added text, or a stripped down play with excess choreography?

dance

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Onegin, Royal Ballet review - a poignant lesson about the perils of youth

John Cranko was the greatest choreographer British ballet never had. His masterpiece is now 60 years old

Books

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Jacqueline Feldman: Precarious Lease review - living on the edge

The trials and triumphs of a city’s margins are observed by an outside eye

Catherine Airey: Confessions review - the crossroads we bear

Family trauma repeats in this deftly strange exploration of roads not taken

visual arts

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Best of 2024: Visual Arts

A great year for women artists

latest comments

In my opinion, after having read this book, Bad...

never ever make a critisim about an album no more...

This is by far the worst review i've seen this...

Yes, I aboslutely agree with this review, while...

very superficial review.

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