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disc of the day
Album: Trevor Horn - Echoes: Ancient & Modern
Horn's second album of downtempo cover versions runs the gamut from the bland to the excruciating
tv

New Williams brothers thriller is violent, far-fetched and extremely watchable

It looks like news photos coming to life, but the dialogue and concept still jar

Inside story of Jenson Button's amazing championship year
film

The class war rears its ugly head on the Western Front in Joseph Losey's bleak classic

Tilda Swinton (and her dog) excel in Joanna Hogg's latest
The music's well chosen, but Carey Mulligan shines brightest as Bernstein's wife Felicia
new music

The Dublin singer's tales of a toxic relationship were transformed into a party
classical

Thoughtful programming puts quirky novelty alongside big beasts

Conductor is his own violin soloist in one of two UK premieres

Scottish premiere of a recent masterwork
opera

Good young singers get more opportunities than the actual work offers

Sobriety and darkness eclipse Handel's dramatic vividness, despite strong performances

Youth takes the comedy award in fringe delights alongside a well-done schlocky rarity
theatre

Five heroic women and two instrumentalists go Hellenic, with panache

Christopher Eccleston is a Scrooge for the ages

Roald Dahl adaptation is busy to a fault but lacks emotion
dance

Hell and Purgatory get vivid if diffuse music from Thomas Adès, but Heaven is pallid

An attempt to amplify a playscript with dance suggests the play should be left to speak for itself

Rachmaninov and Elgar take the laurels in a brace of prize-winning one-act ballets
comedy

Back on tour, the former TV host has lost none of his charisma and charm

Jovial comic's first tour in five years
Books

Fragments span the genration gap in this daring family saga of inheritance and trauma

A vivid eulogy for the Jamaican soldiers of the British West Indies Regiment

A Turner Prize-nominee turns their hand to poetry with this visceral first collection
visual arts

Abstraction with emotion and soul in a landmark retrospective

Women protesting with all their might in both art and life

Thirty-six African artists reconnect with their heritage in dramatic and moving images
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