Reviews
Bernard Hughes
In 1917, in the face of the Bolshevik revolution closing in on his country estate, Rachmaninoff fled Russia, never to return. He was 44, at his peak as composer, pianist and conductor, but spent the rest of his life in exile in the US and Switzerland, amassing a fortune and worldwide reputation as the biggest draw in classical music – but never reconciling himself to being separated from his homeland. As he lay dying, he insisted on a Russian nurse, his wife reading Pushkin to him.The story of Rachmaninoff’s quarter century of exile is well told by Fiona Maddocks in Goodbye Russia, which Read more ...
mark.kidel
The artist Brian Clarke, surely one of the leading British artists of our time, has been all too readily dismissed as a mere craftsman. So much for being an outstanding and highly original painter who’s also done more for contemporary stained glass than any other artist in the world.His ability to transcend boundaries and follow his own path rather than court marketable fashion and fame, has led to him being side-lined and ignored when he should be celebrated as vigorously as David Hockney and other art world giants of his generation.He is now the subject of a large exhibition, “A Great Light Read more ...
Sarah Kent
It’s impossible not to fall in love with Matthew Tannenbaum, the man at the centre of this delightful film. Reading books and chatting to people about books are two of his favourite occupations, so running a bookstore is his idea of paradise. His pleasure is so infectious that the independent bookstore he’s run in Lenox, Massachusetts for over 40 years has become a hub of bonhomie.“My favourite thing to do,” says his daughter, “is to sit in one of the pink armchairs and watch his interactions with people. Everything is informed by kindness, patience, and generosity. He’s got time for everyone Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Not to be confused with the matchless French policier Spiral, Spiral of Lies (or J’ai Menti in its native tongue) is a twisty tale of murder, guilt and deceit, playing out over a 16-year time period. Camille Lou pulls off the quite impressive feat of playing the main protagonist, Audrey Barreyre, as both a reckless 19-year-old and a lawyer in her mid-thirties, who finds herself forced to confront the fallout from the mistakes made by her younger self.The series doesn’t score too highly on the plausible-ometer, being somewhat reliant on the kindness of strangers who might overlook some of its Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
A joint venture between Dunedin Consort, Mahogany Opera and intersectional feminist opera company Hera, Out of Her Mouth is a semi-staged version of three short baroque cantatas. Written by French composer Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, each is based on a different woman from the Old Testament.With an updated English libretto from Hera’s co-founder Toria Banks and a quirky staging from director Matthilde Lopez, these timeless tales of women’s experiences are not so much given a fresh relevance as revealed to contain age-old truths which are always pertinent, whether they be Read more ...
stephen.walsh
If you read the synopsis of Candide - which I strongly advise if you plan a visit to this new WNO production - you may well wonder how it will be possible to get through so much in so short a time. Voltaire’s novella is itself fairly short, but opera takes more time and songs are songs, not action.It can’t be said that everything in James Bonas’s staging of Leonard Bernstein’s operetta is ideally clear; but somehow it manages to chart the eponymous hero’s progress from his Westphalian birthplace, via Lisbon at the time of the 1755 earthquake, Spain of the Inquisition, Montevideo, Eldorado, Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Carrie Mae Weems is the first live black artist to have a solo show at New York’s Guggenheim Museum, yet she is hardly known here at all. So the Barbican’s retrospective is timely, especially since, at 70, Weems is making her best work yet.The climax of the show is The Shape of Things: a Video in 7 Parts 2021(main picture). This vast, multi-screen experience enfolds you in a panoramic take on American society. Sitting enthroned at the centre is performer, Okwui Okpokwasili. Sheets of paper drift around her like snow flakes – documents, perhaps, recording life in America. And her role is to Read more ...
David Nice
To give the first performance of a dazzling fantasia in the context of a rangy sunny-evening-to-night concert, as pianists Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy did in glorious Blythburgh Church, merits a gold medal in piano-duo enterprise. To premiere 15 new works in a single programme and adapt perfectly to the various styles, the Ligeti Quartet’s crowning glory of three events celebrating their namesake’s centenary, is simply superhuman."That must have been very atmospheric." commented a fellow audience member at the Ligeti experience who'd not been able to get to the Kolesnikov/Tsoy special (I Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Grange Park Opera has been setting a high standard in French opera ever since the company's first proper season in 1999. This Werther is the company's third by Jules Massenet. The first two were rarities, pioneering efforts: a fascinating tussle between lubriciousness and piety in Thais in 2006, and then a poignant and deeply felt portrayal of old age in a splendid Don Quichotte in 2014.Unlike these two rarities. Werther – although initially rejected by the director of the Opera Comique in Paris as too sad - has claimed its rightful place in mainstream operatic repertoire. It is powerful Read more ...
Gary Naylor
After the pantos, the movies (epic, camp and animated) and the television series, is there anything new to be mined in the story of Robin Hood? Probably not, as this messy, misjudged show takes that hope and fires an arrow through its heart.We’re in an Albion of misty woods, mighty castles and feudal exploitation, the King weakened by poison administered by his right hand man, Sheriff Baldwyn, whose day job is brutally extracting taxes from the peasants to build a new road for the barons (Shaun Yusuf McKee, Simon Oskarsson and TJ Holmes pictured below). He doesn’t have it all his own way: Read more ...
David Nice
When tears well up during stretches of Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s curious hybrid which you never expected to move you, something special's going on. The magic happened last night in an evening which I didn't anticipate equalling “the Carmelites experience” at Glyndebourne. But, in its very different way, it did, in terms of casting, conducting and a production (by Bruno Ravella) that wasn’t too interventionist but had some powerful ideas of its own.Any country-house production of this “let’s make an opera” charmer would seem to promise pure pleasure – what Brecht called “culinary opera”. But Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Had Blossom Dearie overtly embraced pop, her vocal style could be characterised as along the lines of Priscilla Paris, Jane Birkin or Saint Etienne’s Sarah Cracknell – intimate, a little breathy, oxygenated. However, jazz was her bag and June Christy, Peggy Lee and Norway’s Karin Krog are the closest reference points.After listening to the live material collected on the six-CD box set Discover Who I Am: The Fontana Years London 1966-70 another, incongruous, marker comes to mind. When she speaks between songs – and sometimes while singing – her inflection is similar to that of the New York Read more ...