theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
Mark Kidel
Sunday, 17 January 2021
Volker Schlöndorff’s brilliant adaptation of Günter Grass’s 1959 novel The Tin Drum hasn’t aged one bit: as with the book and film’s main character Oskar Matzerath, who decides...
Kieron Tyler
Sunday, 17 January 2021
The First Generation 1965–1974 is a 35-CD box set dedicated to the blues maven and propagator John Mayall. As well as the discs, there are three books: one a hardback, another...
Graham Rickson
Saturday, 16 January 2021
Janáček: The Cunning Little Vixen, Sinfonietta Lucy Crowe, Gerald Finley, Sophia Burgos London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus/Sir Simon Rattle (LSO Live) You know this is...
Kathryn Reilly
Saturday, 16 January 2021
What’s all this? Female voices, guitars, a song lasting over four minutes… harmonies? Have Britain’s savviest social commentators gone soft? Fear not, their sixth album is wall-to...
Sebastian Scotney
Friday, 15 January 2021
Cerys Matthews is a best-selling author, award winning DJ and multi-million selling musician, singer, reciter... and broadcaster, originally from Wales. Her wide-ranging Sunday...
Matt Wolf
Friday, 15 January 2021
Noel Coward's 1941 comedy was one of the theatrical casualties of the first lockdown last March in a Richard Eyre-directed West End revival that aimed to mine the pain beneath...
Robert Beale
Friday, 15 January 2021
Jonathan Bloxham makes his debut as conductor with the Hallé Orchestra in the third of the Hallé’s Winter Season concerts on...
Thomas H Green
Friday, 15 January 2021
When the concept album first properly took flight, in the late 1960s, before it became slave to the bloated artifice of prog...
Tom Birchenough
Thursday, 14 January 2021
Veteran Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky has gone back to his beginnings for his latest film. The real-life events on...
Graham Fuller
Thursday, 14 January 2021
The Night Porter depicts the consuming sadomasochistic love affair of an SS officer, Max (Dirk Bogarde), and the Catholic...
Joseph Walsh
Wednesday, 13 January 2021
In 1964, Cassius Clay, NFL superstar Jim Nathaniel Brown, soul legend Sam Cooke and political firebrand Malcolm X gathered...
Tim Cumming
Wednesday, 13 January 2021
Back in 2013, the London-based singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist launched the first of a trilogy of albums...
David Nice
Tuesday, 12 January 2021
Born in exigency at the end of the First World War and soon kiboshed by the Spanish flu, The Soldier’s Tale as originally...
Laura De Lisle
Tuesday, 12 January 2021
The blurb for Peter Pan: The Audio Adventure, Shaun McKenna’s new adaptation of JM Barrie’s classic, tells us, with a hint...
Daniel Baksi
Tuesday, 12 January 2021
Postcapitalist Desire: The Final Lectures is a collection of transcripts, recording weekly group lectures delivered by Mark...
Guy Oddy
Tuesday, 12 January 2021
theartsdesk eases into 2021 with a Disc of the Day title, Himalayan Dream Techno, that will be hard to beat over the next 12...
Lydia Bunt
Monday, 11 January 2021
You go out for a walk and leave your devices at home; your head feels a little bit clearer. But when you get back and plonk...
Veronica Lee
Monday, 11 January 2021
In a much-depleted and truncated pantomime season that withered on the vine, the National Theatre's debut production of Dick...
Kieron Tyler
Monday, 11 January 2021
The key tracks on Every Mover are “Play 'til Evening” and “Earthborne”. The first shimmeringly fuses anthemic, gospel-edged...
tv
Spiral, Series 8, BBC Four review - dark days in the City of Light
Final series of the show that's more than just a 'policier'
Steve McQueen: The Lost Movie, Sky Documentaries review - the classic motor racing film that never was
How fate conspired against the car-crazy star's Formula One movie
The Great, Channel 4 review - Russian history gets a whirl in the fictional blender
Screenwriter Tony McNamara refuses to let the facts stand in his way
film
Dear Comrades! review - Andrei Konchalovsky exposes the Soviet past
The tragic June 1962 events in Novocherkassk are the backbone of retro drama
new music
Reissue CDs Weekly: John Mayall - The First Generation
Massive box-set tribute to the important British musical visionary
Album: Sleaford Mods - Spare Ribs
A searing scream in the face of Boris, the virus and the shit show that is 2020s Britain
10 Questions for Musician and Broadcaster Cerys Matthews
Thoughts on an album which places poets centre-stage
classical
Classical CDs: Janáček, Myaskovsky, Prokofiev, John Wilson
An arboreal opera, two Soviet symphonies and some rarely heard English string music
Gillam, Hallé, Bloxham, Hallé online review - music of poetry
Turbulence, calm, and long, slow melodies in a concert commemorating 2020
The Soldier's Tale, Scottish Chamber Orchestra online review - top performers master a baggy mini-monster
Actor and violinist excel in this Stravinsky-Ramuz confection
opera
Best of 2020: Opera
With no touching from mid-March onwards, this art-form was hard hit - but ingenuity ruled
Royal Opera Christmas Concert online review – pajama party around the Nutcracker tree
Vivacious opera and cheesy carols under the lively baton of Mark Wigglesworth
Pagliacci, Opera Ensemble, Longborough review - stripped down but live
Finding the essence of a minor masterpiece
theatre
Peter Pan: The Audio Adventure review - the perfect bedtime story
Sharon D Clarke and Olivia Colman sparkle in delightful radio play in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital
Dick Whittington, National Theatre at Home review - colourful and amiable entertainment
Free stream of the NT's Covid-affected pantomime
Best of 2020: Theatre
Out of pandemic-driven chaos and confusion came moments of clarity - and "Blindness"
dance
The Nutcracker: an end-of-year obituary
It's been a rough ride for the seasonal cash cow. Here's how ballet companies coped
The Seven Deadly Sins, Opera North online review - viscerally thrilling
Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's indictment of capitalism in a vibrant new production
comedy
Comedy podcasts round-up 2: from home and abroad
Lively chat, masterful spoofing and behind-the-scenes fun
Books
Mark Fisher: Postcapitalist Desire - The Final Lectures review - imagining the alternative
An eye-opening exploration of the relationship between capitalism and desire
Julia Bell: Radical Attention review - a clear rendering of our withering attention spans
Bell’s essay is timely and insightful, but how radical can small acts really be?
George Saunders: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain review – Russian lessons in literature and life
A visionary engineer gets under the bonnet of great fiction
visual arts
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Tate Britain review - enigmatic figures full of life
When is a painting not a portrait?
Tracey Emin / Edvard Munch, Royal Academy review - juxtapositions that confuse rather than clarify
Similar themes, different sensibilities
latest comments
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Agree. So very beautiful