Reviews
Sebastian Scotney
The duo partnership between violinist Esther Yoo and pianist Yekwon Sunwoo is still at a very early stage. The announcements which both musicians made to the audience from the Wigmore Hall platform were almost completely inaudible, but it did sound as though this recital could actually have been their first public performance together. Both have Korean heritage, both have had major successes in international competitions, and during the pandemic they have spent time back with their respective families in Seoul. There is clearly an affinity between them which will, if circumstances allow, Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
The Coronet Theatre is a beautiful space – it’s a listed Victorian building, and the bar’s like something out of a film about Oscar Wilde. Unfortunately, Robert Holman’s The Lodger, a new play about family and trauma, doesn’t live up to its surroundings. Director Geraldine Alexander, last seen as the Bridgertons’ arch-yet-kindly housekeeper, salvages a clumsy script that smacks more of a debut than the work of an established writer.It’s unclear whether The Lodger wants to be a family drama, or a comedy, or something in between. Esther (Penny Downie) and Dolly (Sylvestra Le Touzel) are sisters Read more ...
Daniel Lewis
More than once, reading Colson Whitehead’s latest novel Harlem Shuffle, the brilliant Josh and Benny Safdie movie Uncut Gems from 2019 came to mind, which was unexpected. For one, Whitehead’s book takes place on the other side of Central Park, far uptown from the film’s downtown Diamond District setting. It also unfolds in a meticulously recreated 1960s era Harlem rather than the early 2010s. But like the film, Harlem Shuffle has more than its fair share of precious stones and dollar-stuffed envelopes passing hands and, as its name promises, more than a touch of that film’s hectic energy; a Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
For most Bruckner fans, the multiple editions and revisions of his symphonies are a problem. But Simon Rattle sees it differently; for him every edition offers more music to explore. That was the thinking behind this programme, presenting the Fourth Symphony in one and a half versions, a “discarded” scherzo and finale in the first half, and a complete version in the second. That layout might seem pedagogical or pedantic, but Rattle is also able to demonstrate exactly why these differences matter. His Bruckner is always compelling, and there is a rigour about it that only comes of deep Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Anuvab Pal may be a new name to some UK audiences (although many will know him from the global satirical podcast The Bugle), but he is well known in his native India. And it is with a wry look at Indian history – and the British role within it – that he begins his show Democracy and Disco Dancing, a version of which he previously brought to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2019.Pal introduces himself, saying he looks like “I work for HSBC in risk management” but in reality he's has some thought-provoking and funny gags about the India-Great Britain relationship. He takes us through Partition (“the Read more ...
Lizzie Hibbert
Historical fiction – perhaps all fiction – presents its authors with the problem of how to convey contextual information that is external to the plot but necessary to the reader’s understanding of it.Some authors supply an omniscient third-person narrator to plug possible gaps in historical knowledge, as in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (1928), where Orlando sends a letter to “Mr Nicholas Greene of Clifford’s Inn” and helpful parentheses explain that “(Nick Greene was a very famous writer at that time).” Others have first-person narrators do the same job as they reflect retrospectively upon their Read more ...
graham.rickson
It’s easy to forget that what you see in a competition final isn’t always the full story, the jury members’ votes in this case based on what had gone on in the earlier rounds. The 20th Leeds International Piano Competition began its final stages in the city two weeks ago, the 63 competitors in the first round filmed earlier this year in 17 separate locations across the globe, the films streamed via Vimeo to the UK. 27 pianists were selected to come to Leeds, and it’s interesting to learn that this process, unimaginable a decade ago, was reportedly less stressful to all concerned and resulted Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
As the summer folds away on itself, theartsdesk on Vinyl returns. Beset by backlogs at pressing plants and delayed by COVID, it's finally here, jammed to the gunwales with commentary on a grand cross section of the finest music on plastic. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHGod Damn Raw Coward (One Little Independent)Let’s start with some NOISE! With their fourth album Wolverhampton band God Damn continue the reinvigoration that began with their eponymous 2020 Album. There’s metal in there somewhere but mostly it’s a roaring rage of punk rock, with singer Thomas Edwards howling his indignancy at, well Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Reaffirmation” is the sound of a San Francisco ballroom in 1968. The 12-minute long track opens mysteriously with what might be a Mellotron on the flute setting. A bubbling bass guitar arrives, along with jazzy piano. At 02.50, the tempo picks up and the guitar, which until then has delicately picked its way through the arrangement, begins to soar. There’s a vaguely funky section and, just over half-way in, a dive into an almost free-form spiralling section. This is top-notch psychedelia. Dungen have passed through similar territory.Other parallels include the first-album Steve Miller Band Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Mark Cousins, the multi-award winning director of this strange film, is lying in bed watching Ray Charles speaking on the Dick Cavett Show in 1972. The singer went blind in childhood; how would he respond if offered the chance to see again? “I might turn it down,” says Charles. “I’m not all that hung up about seeing things … and with some of the news I hear about today, I mean there are some things I absolutely don’t wanna see, man !”“For somebody like me who has always loved looking,” remarks Cousins, “what he says is unbelievable… Looking has been my joy, my world.” He is trying to decide Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
Rose (Ann Skelly; The Nevers) is adopted. The name on her birth certificate is Julie and the possibility of a different identity – different clothes, different hair, different accent - beckons. If she could embrace this second life, she thinks, she could be the person she was meant to be. “I’d be the real me.”In their third feature, directors Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor, both originally from Dublin, continue the themes of identity, role-playing and moments of transformation that they explored in the unsettling, meditative Helen (2008) and Mister John (2013). Rose Plays Julie is also an Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Rarely has the revolving door of opera twirled so efficiently. David McVicar’s venerable production of Rigoletto may have exited the Royal Opera on Monday (presumably with one final squeak of protest from that pesky revolve), replaced by a shiny new incumbent, but by Wednesday the director was back on the stage with another of his long-lived classics: The Magic Flute.We may be approaching the show’s 20th anniversary, but visually it’s still serving up the goods. After a year of digital screens and chamber restrictions, black-box sets and two-handers, John Macfarlane’s lavish designs and the Read more ...