Reviews
alexandra.coghlan
Purcell’s The Fairy Queen is a riddle to which directors must find an answer. The problems posed by a work whose theatrical characters have no foothold in the musical interludes, whose text is an awkward composite of almost-Shakespeare and not-at-all-Shakespeare, whose unedited action can easily swell to a will-sapping four hours are not to be underestimated, but to address them by adding further narrative layers, further dramatic frames and meta-theatrical flummery is at best questionable and at worst wilful.Faced with the challenge of Purcell’s semi-opera, Daisy Evans empties her director’s Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Autumn arrives and theartsdesk on Vinyl is ready at the turntables with a vital selection to kick out the drizzle and seasonal blues. Now in a more toned, slimmed down form, we offer 30 reviews that pinpoint the very best new vinyl available, regardless of genre. Lovers of music, from gentle jazz to detonating death metal will find something worth trying.Various DJ Amir Presents Buena Musica Y Cultura (BBE)The BBE label continue to ceaselessly spoil us with collections of obscure wonders from their stable of crate-diggers and experts. Through a series of reissues a decade ago I became aware Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Paul Verhoeven directing Isabelle Huppert as a woman seemingly unfazed by a violent rape sounds a recipe for outrage. Elle (★★★★) , though, provokes in subtle, lingering, sometimes comic ways. The rape of Michele (Huppert) mostly happens off-screen during the opening credits, though the ski-masked intruder’s violence in her plush, gated Paris house will be replayed as memory and fantasy. It’s what happens next that lurches right off the rails from the leering salaciousness, traumatised horror or rape revenge cinema usually gives us. Michele cleans up, and gets on with her day. She isn’t the Read more ...
Jasper Rees
One down, eight childbirths to go. The young Queen Victoria was delivered of her first child at the climax of this moreish opening series, and the bells of Windsor tolled for joy. ITV, debutant scriptwriter Daisy Goodwin and biographical consultant AN Wilson will be feeling parental pride that between them they have given birth to a healthy 10-pound whopper that looks very much like the natural heir to Downton.Victoria took its cue from dynastic romance to tell the story of a proto-feminist teen thrust into the limelight like a 19th-century pop starlet forced to grow up on the job. The story Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
With a trio of easy-on-the-ear 20th-century works, Thomas Søndergård marked his debut with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. A pleasingly full crowd took the opportunity to hear the work of a conductor rarely glimpsed in these parts outside the BBC Proms. His appearances there in charge of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales have given the impression of a contented, highly competent musician, at ease both with the players before him and the scores on the music stand.Whatever that summary leaves out was also missing on this occasion. However new, unfamiliar or classic the repertoire, a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“The Shaggs are real, pure, unaffected by outside influences. Their music is different, it is theirs alone.” So began the liner notes to Philosophy of the World, The Shaggs' sole album. Not many people read the words or heard the music when it was pressed in 1969. Only 100 copies were made. It was meant to be 1000, but a murky business deal meant the balance of 900 never showed up.The Shaggs were Betty, Dorothy and Helen Wiggin, three sisters from Fremont, New Hampshire. Their father, Austin Wiggin Jr., was their champion and took them into Revere, Massachusetts’ Fleetwood Recording Studio in Read more ...
mark.kidel
Wells Cathedral, masterpiece of Gothic architecture, is distinguished by relatively intimate scale: a perfect place to present Carl Dreyer’s 1928 classic and visually arresting account of the trial and burning of Joan of Arc. The screen was hung in front of the massive “St Andrew’s Cross”, the almost modernist bracing arches – a backdrop of immense presence that complemented the compellingly architectural look of the film.The event was presented by Hauser and Wirth, the London gallery who extended their activities to Somerset a couple of years ago. In some ways, an Anglican cathedral filled Read more ...
Richard Bratby
Bruckner’s Third Symphony doesn’t so much begin as become audible. A steady heartbeat in the bass, oscillating violas lit from within by clarinets, and in the middle, slowly pulling clear of the texture, the proud, sombre trumpet motif to which Wagner himself agreed to attach his name. Not the least of Alpesh Chauhan’s achievements in this performance with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra was that he established all of this with his very first gesture – not just the subtle, unmistakably Brucknerian layering of the music’s textures but that whole vast, mysterious sense of the music Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The cinema trailer for A Monster Calls ★★★★ looks faintly ludicrous, with its scenes of a giant tree stomping around the landscape, but don't be deceived. In conjunction with screenwriter Patrick Ness, who also wrote the original novel, director J A Bayona has conjured a bittersweet and often painfully moving account of bereavement and growing up, in which the grim burden of terminal illness is alleviated by the healing power of art and fantasy. In the lead role of 12-year-old Conor O'Malley, trying to cope with being bullied at school while his mother Lizzie (Felicity Jones) fades inexorably Read more ...
graham.rickson
Brahms: Double Concerto, Piano Trio No. 1 (1854 version) Joshua Bell (violin and director), Steven Isserlis (cello), Jeremy Denk (piano), Academy of St Martin in the Fields (Sony)Brahms’s Double Concerto can be unfairly maligned as a dull, downbeat coda to a long compositional career, but it’s much better than that. Written partly as a peace offering to the violinist Joseph Joachim, this is a piece which takes time to work its magic. It gets a warmly affirmative reading from Joshua Bell and Steven Isserlis. They’ve been playing together for years, so it’s little surprise that this performance Read more ...
Alison Cole
The fifth edition of the highly popular Frieze Masters – the quieter sibling of the boisterous contemporary Frieze Art Fair London – is underway in Regent's Park, London. This year, the fair features 133 leading galleries from around the world. Their various displays include curated and created sections as well as solo exhibitions devoted to the works of artists such as Paula Rego (Malborough Fine Art, London), Robert Motherwell (Bernard Jacobsen Gallery, London), Lynn Chadwick (BlainSouthern, London) and Eduardo Paolozzi (Jonathan Clark Fine Art, London). As usual, there is a gorgeous feast Read more ...
Steve O'Rourke
Football can be a soap opera at times, filled with pantomime villains, character drama, broken hearts and unfulfilled ambition. And that’s before kick-off. With these theatrics in mind it makes sense that EA introduces the new headline feature for the annual instalment of the very long-running, highly profitable FIFA franchise.No, we’re not talking about managers taking bungs or even corruption at the heart of the titular namesake; but instead The Journey, a single player campaign that takes an 11-year-old Alex Hunter and tracks his progress through the murky maze of a professional football Read more ...