Reviews
Marina Vaizey
Virtuoso Violinists was an hour of unalloyed informative pleasure that toured televised highlights of great violinists playing great music. Its painless excursion into the western classical canon reminded us why the BBC is the NHS of culture, and we delighted here in a guide who proved as accomplished a presenter as she is a performer of genius.Nicola Benedetti has an Italian name, a Scottish accent, and an utterly charming manner as she enthused, with immense knowledge, over a series of clips from 60 years of television broadcasts of the leading violinists of the day. She made no attempt to Read more ...
Florence Hallett
Much is made of the mystery surrounding Giorgione, a painter of pivotal influence, about whom, paradoxically, we know almost nothing beyond the manner of his death. He died in a Venetian plague colony in 1510 aged about 33, and was as elusive in the 16th century as he is today, his paintings highly sought after but hard to come by, and by the time of his death already invested with mythic status. Today, there are about 40 paintings attributed to Giorgione, and of those, only a handful are secure in their attribution: this is an exhibition about an artist who exists as a ghostly trace in Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
It’s always heartening to see a full house for a debut recital, though when expectations run so high, the stakes for the pianist can be dangerously raised. No worries at St John’s Smith Square, though, for Seong-Jin Cho. The diminutive, young South Korean musician who took the platform in front of a capacity crowd last night made waves last autumn upon winning the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, and his first recording (on DG) likewise whetted appetites for his first visit to the Southbank Centre’s International Piano Series, which is currently being held at St John’s while the Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bach: The French Suites Peter Hill (piano) (Delphian)Start trying to explain exactly why this latest instalment in Peter Hill’s Bach series is so good and it might seem as if you’re dismissing the very things which make it great. This is pianism completely devoid of ego and flash; Hill is a superb technician but never draws undue attention to himself. You forget he’s even there: what we’re hearing is Bach. In all his guises – the earlier, minor key French Suites typically open with introspective Allemandes before the mood lifts. Hill’s way with the opening of Suite No. 1 is typical: Bach’s Read more ...
Matt Wolf
"Girls just wanna have fun," or so we're told in the exuberant signature song from Cyndi Lauper making a surprise appearance midway through Anomalisa. But try telling that to the sad-eyed folk who move through Charlie Kaufman's dazzlingly sorrowful 2016 Oscar nominee, as if in a sort of hushed-voiced haze.Funny in parts but dead serious in its view of that deadening thing we call life, Anomalisa offers up so singularly eccentric a world of blankness and despair that it has a contradictory effect on the viewer, sending one back out onto the streets ready to embrace their shapes, sounds and Read more ...
David Kettle
Seldom can the suggestion of a post-show discussion have seemed so… well, unappealing is probably the polite way of putting it. Because discussion is precisely what Glasgow-based theatre company Vanishing Point’s devastating new show The Destroyed Room is all about – an hour of middle-class, liberal hand-wringing, of batting issues back and forth, weighing, challenging and rejecting opinions. And of showing up our delight at observing and our eagerness to express views, but also our inability to act on them. And, of course, of never arriving at a solution. Because, director Matthew Lenton is Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Home can be the most horrifying place, especially when you’re pregnant. Kate (Clemence Poesy) isn’t even sure she wants the kid that’s on the way to disrupt life with fellow arty professional Justin (Stephen Campbell Moore). That is, until a couple move in below their Islington flat, and she’s befriended by Theresa (Laura Birn), an exotically glamorous Finn evangelical about her own pregnancy, who Kate finds herself fascinated by. The sounds drifting through the floor of Theresa’s vigorous sex life with Jon (David Morrissey), the banker husband she’s happily kept by, add to Kate’s suspicion Read more ...
David Kettle
It was to have been the culmination of principal conductor Robin Ticciati’s Brahms symphony cycle with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. But with Ticciati laid up with a herniated disc, we’re told, it fell to the SCO’s principal guest conductor Emmanuel Krivine to step in at the last minute. What Ticciati would have made of the concert, and of the concluding Brahms Fourth, of course, we’ll never know – and it would be churlish to speculate. What Krivine did make of the evening, however, was something really rather remarkable.Remarkable in his passion and energy, his boundless enthusiasm for the Read more ...
Gary Raymond
Kaite O’Reilly’s new play is a dark dark comedy, a Chekhovian family saga on a mainly bare stage that handles its subjects of aging, death and family with a rich and grounded intellectualism to be expected of the playwright’s work. The production itself skips lightly along the thin line that separates reality from a discomfiting dreamscape, the waiting room: everyone is waiting, for death, for life, for family members to arrive. It is an ominous comedy.We are meant to believe that this is a family reunion – and the interaction of aged, unlikeable matriach Rose, her three grown-up daughters, Read more ...
Richard Bratby
Funny thing, musical fashion. Most listeners would call Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances a popular classic – yet before tonight, I doubt they’d had a professional performance in Birmingham this century. Then there’s the case of Osvaldo Golijov. Remember him? The very fact that it’s taken 10 years for a work as substantial and appealing as his cello concerto Azul to receive this UK premiere tells you all you need to know about how far his stock has fallen – at least for now.It owed this performance to the CBSO’s assistant conductor Alpesh Chauhan and principal cello Eduardo Vassallo (pictured below Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Perhaps if you are in a sufficiently patient state, this slowburn of a Swedish art house film will suit your mood, but if fast cutting and rapid crossfire dialogue is your thing, it may be best to steer clear of The Here After. The debut feature of writer-director Magnus van Horn has done well at overseas film festivals, but may be a harder sell as a night out in a UK cinema on a chilly March evening. We first meet John (played by heart-throb pop star Ulrik Munther) as he’s packing up to leave the young offenders’ detention centre where he’s been for an undisclosed time, for an Read more ...
Veronica Lee
For anyone living in the UK at the time, the Dunblane massacre on 13 March 1996 was an event so seared into their minds that they can remember exactly where they were when the shocking news came through.I was working on The Daily Telegraph's arts pages when, by a horrible coincidence, a film review was accompanied by a picture with a handgun in it; the page was quickly redesigned – as indeed was most of the paper as the awful story unfolded and the enormity of it became clear. In the small town of Dunblane, near Stirling, Thomas Hamilton had walked into Dunblane Primary School, and shot dead Read more ...