Reviews
Robert Beale
The opening concert of a new season often tends to be a statement of intent, and this was John Storgårds’ opener of the first full season since he was appointed chief conductor of the BBC Philharmonic. He’s hardly a newcomer to them, though, since he has been principal guest conductor (latterly chief guest) for nearly 12 years now. The mutual respect and trust are clear.This programme, however, began with a fanfare and continued with something rich and something rare (not in that order).The fanfare was in Janáček’s Sinfonietta, not unfamiliar as a piece to make an impression with (it’s coming Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
It was great to see Kings Place full on Saturday night for I Fagiolini’s take on the Monteverdi Vespers, added, rock’n’roll style, as an “additional date due to public demand” after the Friday show sold out. And it was superb. Hearing the Vespers, often sung by a large choir, here performed by small forces (including the period instruments of the English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble) in the clean acoustic of Hall One was completely engrossing, and I can’t remember when I last experienced time passing so fast in a concert.The Vespers were published in 1610, possibly a calling-card in a bid by Read more ...
mark.kidel
London’s Roundhouse is a very special venue. For decades the circular shed, with its elegant ironwork supporting structures has hosted a wonderful and varied series of performances. Like a great cathedral, the space has a hallowed feel about it. The culmination of a sold-out UK tour, PJ Harvey’s exquisitely paced and passionate set, as much pagan ritual as perfect entertainment, makes the most of this womb of a space.A womb, but also an alchemical vessel, in which this consummate artist works through a series of transformations, changes that reveal the many facets of her complex persona. She Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The acronym “HCA” in the title stands for Hornsey College of Art, the North London college which, in late May 1968, was occupied by its students and a few staff in a high-profile protest which went on into that July. What was wanted were changes in how student union funds were disbursed and how the college was run. Ultimately, barbed wire and dogs were employed to end the dispute.Earlier, future Kink and neighbourhood resident Ray Davies had been a student there. Seventies pop star Lynsey De Paul also studied at the college. In November 1966, Pink Floyd played there with lighting equipment Read more ...
Harry Thorfinn-George
James Blake’s sold-out show at Ally Pally is his only UK stop this tour and it feels like a homecoming of sorts – while Blake now lives in Los Angeles, he is from Enfield, only up the road. “I can’t explain how meaningful this is” he said half-way through, “I had my first kiss 25 metres over there.”Blake is currently touring his sixth album, Playing Robots Into Heaven, released earlier this month. Robots is a blockbuster of electronic music, with ambitious art direction and a track list that gleefully mixes four-to-the-floor house with trappy-dancehall and ambient experiments. This is James Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
The Biba dresses are way too colourful, the shop’s interior about 10 times too bright… and did anybody really say ”happening threads” in 1965?Taking Ben Elton to task for his portrayal of the Sixties, which feature in the first half of Close-Up, his new self-directed piece about the style icon and national treasure known as Twiggy, shouldn’t be the point. He’s written another jukebox musical, with all the colour-popping jollity that involves, the energetic chorines giving it their all and building an affectionate rapport with the audience. Except, what he’s written is more a hybrid: a musical Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
It has been seven years since Gareth Edwards directed, for me, the best of the new generation of Star Wars films, Rogue One. Having made Godzilla before that, it’s nice to see him return with a more personal project, a big, bold, beautiful, if flawed sci-fi epic. It’s still pretty derivative, in an open way, with nods to everything from Terminator, Blade Runner and District 9, to Apocalypse Now, among others, the connecting themes being the confrontation between humankind and technology, American militarism, fear of the other. Usefully, all of this Read more ...
Robert Beale
There’s a charmingly retro feel to Opera North’s new Falstaff, which comes from it being done as part of their new “green”, i.e. ecologically conscious, season.Leslie Travers’ set is made of bits from other productions and – most notably – shows Falstaff’s home as a worn-out little 1970s caravan, actually found unwanted in the grounds of a pub on the north side of Leeds by resourceful operatic bargain hunters.In Olivia Fuchs’ production of Verdi’s final masterpiece, the story’s been transported to the 1980s, and the bourgeoisie of Windsor, who make up most of the roles in the story, are first Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Ken Loach has occasionally invested his realist TV dramas and movies with moments of magical realism – football inspiring them in The Golden Vision (1968) and Looking for Eric (2009) – but magical spaces in them are rare. In The Old Oak, as affecting a movie as any the veteran director has made and his 14th with screenwriter Paul Laverty, three sacred spaces (but a single church) work on the characters in vital ways. One is the beach where the depressed Tommy Joe Ballantyne (Dave Turner), who runs a dying East Durham pit village’s surviving pub, encountered the stray dog that Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Unbelievable is a strange title for a slightly strange show, the brainchild of Derren Brown, Andrew O’Connor and Andy Nyman, a trio with an impeccable pedigree in creating successful magic-based events. It’s a strange title because suspension of disbelief lies at the heart of the bargain the performers make with the audience. Nobody wants to be sitting next to the unbelieving sceptic cynically informing us that it’s all done with mirrors or that she’s no longer in the box and that it's just a dummy hand in the glove. The thrill of believing it’s actually happening, however much cognitive Read more ...
Guy Oddy
These days Black Sabbath aren’t short of admirers in the arts and even further afield. Artists as disparate as veteran soul man, Charles Bradley and Scandi popsters the Cardigans have covered their songs – and then there’s Jazz Sabbath, who do exactly as their name suggests.However, it wasn’t always so and in fact, it isn’t so long ago that Ozzy and Co were pretty much treated with contempt outside heavy metal circles. Therefore, it must have come as a surprise to many, including the band themselves, when Carlos Acosta, Director of Birmingham Royal Ballet, suggested using tunes such as “War Read more ...
David Nice
You go to a concert, three-quarters of it popular classics – also great masterpieces – having been told you have to hear a brilliant young cellist, and into the bargain you also discover a remarkable conductor and an orchestra on top form shedding transcendental light on the familiar. So everybody’s happy.The finale of Stravinsky’s Firebird ballet tends to produce communal ecstasy, but like the recent London Philharmonic performance of Mahler’s Second Symphony under its principal conductor Edward Gardner, which brought an entire audience to its feet within seconds, the interpretation, in this Read more ...