Reviews
igor.toronyilalic
Janine Jansen had every right to be nervous. The last time most of us saw the London Symphony Orchestra the audience spent the whole time laughing at their star soloist. But then Mr Bean has a very different skill set to Jansen. She's able to journey with silken smoothness across the musical stratosphere for what seems like eternity. He's able to blow his nose while playing the piano with the end of an umbrella. That said, one could have imagined Jansen's performance of Szymanowski's First Violin Concerto provoking laughter, but only from a sense of awe and astonishment.The concerto was the Read more ...
stephen.walsh
Reviewing the Buxton Festival production of Handel’s Jephtha on theartsdesk a couple of months ago, Philip Radcliffe complained that the director, Frederic Wake-Walker, had done too little to justify the staging of this, the composer’s last oratorio: had made it, that is, too static and unstagey. I wonder what Radcliffe would say about Katie Mitchell’s production for Welsh National Opera, revived this weekend by Robin Tebbutt, and a classic case of a director’s reluctance to allow an essentially statuesque, slow-moving work its natural space and pace.Unlike Wake-Walker, who virtually Read more ...
theartsdesk
R.E.M.: Document 25th Anniversary EditionKieron TylerAlthough the band themselves have not lasted out the 25 years since the release of their fifth album Document, R.E.M. haven’t dropped off the face of the earth. The memory will live, fed by reissues. Document built on the more straightforward approach of its predecessor, Lifes Rich Pageant, and was issued in the wake of their breakthrough hit “The One I Love”. A re-promoted “It’s the End of the World as we Know it (and I Feel Fine)” gave them another hit in early 1988. Both singles were included on the album. At this point R.E.M. were Read more ...
Emma Dibdin
"There used to be among families...a position, a certain...call it 'parade'." So stammered Benedict Cumberbatch's rigidly principled, increasingly broken Christopher Tietjens at the climax of last week's penultimate Parade's End, echoing his own line from the series' first episode as he struggled to justify his fidelity to adulterous wife Sylvia (Rebecca Hall).In the kind of verbally shrewd reversal that has defined Tom Stoppard's meticulous, occasionally magnificent script, a frustrated General Campion told him "there are no more parades for that regiment". Tietjens was the last Read more ...
Glyn Môn Hughes
The prospect of a new concerto from a largely unknown composer who, it’s safe to say, had never been performed previously in Liverpool may have seemed a little daunting. By the end of the 22-minute world premiere, however, rapturous applause greeted this approachable, tuneful, understated and, above all, gentle work. This was so much the case that it will no doubt be heard again soon.Soloist Cormac Henry, the principal flute of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, continued the long-established tradition of commissioning major works which showcase the RLPO's principals. So it was that Read more ...
graham.rickson
Kalkadungu: Music for didjeridu and orchestra William Barton (didjeridu) (ABC Classics)We all think that we know what a didjeridu sounds like. Mere words can’t begin to describe the noise made by William Barton in full flow. It’s a sonorous, low roar that sets your stomach wobbling, made more startling by the array of harmonics and overtones which buzz around over the top. There’s also Barton’s sheer technique, circular breathing allowing him to sustain notes for improbable lengths. Martin Buzacott’s notes refer to the didgeridu as “the sound of the Australian earth, the ochre-coloured Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The popular image of the state-of-the-nation play is that of a large-scale, big-cast drama that has an epic time span and lots of highly articulate speeches that analyse the way we are. But sometimes a small-cast play with a much more modest range can be equally successful in saying something worth hearing not only about a handful of characters, but also about contemporary Britain. Such a play is Vickie Donoghue’s powerful debut, which was first seen at the HighTide Festival in May.Set on a tidal Thames wasteland, a secluded stretch wryly called “The Beach”, the story ebbs and flows around Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction saw Harvey Keitel play Winston "The Wolf" Wolfe, a snappily attired, coolly menacing clean-up guy, brought in to mop up blood and brains and save Jules and Vincent’s bacon. In Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly Brad Pitt play a more obviously lethal kind of fixer - an enforcer brought in to realign a criminal faction in disarray. The film takes its name from a piece of dialogue uttered by Pitt: “I like to kill them softly - from a distance.” Dominik turns the machinations of the criminal element into a blackly comic microcosm of American society – a Read more ...
fisun.guner
Let one visual artist and one fashion designer loose on a theatre production and you may find both set and costumes upstaging the actors. Laurent P. Berger has designed a Miers Van der Rohe-type modernist glass box, with luxurious white surfaces and Dan Flavin-esque tube lighting, while Lanvin designer Alber Elbaz has dressed the star, Juliette Binoche, in a show-stopping full-length gold-sequinned number slashed to the thigh. Binoche certainly shines as a rather physically languorous Mademoiselle Julie, but not in the way one might have hoped for the Oscar-winning actress. Part of the Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Where next for Gareth Malone, who would ardently like to teach the entire planet to sing in perfect harmony? He began all those series ago with the ruffians and rapscallions who make up the average sixth form, most recently took his outreach work to tone-deaf soldiers’ spouses and for his next stop he’s boarding a plane to export The Choir Stateside. Other constituencies who could use a healing stint singing under Malone's pastoral wing would include politicians, football supporters and anyone to do with The X Factor. But for the moment, it’s back to the office for Gareth.In ep one of The Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Alonso Berruguete, Vicente Carducho, Juan Antonio Conchillos y Falco and Pedro Machuca are hardly familiar names in the Anglophone art world, but their drawings are on view in a revelatory exhibition. The British Museum is showing nearly all its Spanish drawings and a fine, succinct collection of prints, in an anthology called From the Renaissance to Goya. It makes for a particularly piquant sequel – or rather, prequel - to the high art of that temperamental genius, the Spaniard Picasso, whose Vollard Suite has just been on view. The milestones it encompasses are various. There was the Read more ...
Helen K Parker
It’s all about the smash and grab in Runic Games’ new adventure Torchlight II, which offers up more booty than you can shake a rune-encrusted staff at. Forget story and character, the aim of this slickly designed action RPG is quests, exploration, and killing copious amounts of enemies with a plethora of weaponry.Accompanied by Matt Uelmen’s beautiful soundtrack, your character gallivants through the game’s levels collecting so much stuff that it becomes frequently necessary to load your critter companion up like a pack mule and send them back to town to flog your unwanted gear. And get some Read more ...