Reviews
Marina Vaizey
The individual colleges of the University of Cambridge can call, when needed, on an astonishing international network of alumni for expert advice, consultation and financial support. Such is the backing for an exquisite new public gallery on the site of Edwardian stables in the grounds of Downing College there.Now open to the public, the Heong Gallery is, as far as this reviewer can tell, unique in the university’s rich provision of arts and sciences museums. There are nine major such public institutions at Cambridge, among them the Botanic Gardens, museums of zoology, classical archaeology, Read more ...
David Nice
What fun it must have been to attend any of the St Petersburg Free Music School concerts during the second half of the 19th century. Balakirev, idiosyncratic mentor of the group briefly together as the "Mighty Handful", and his acolytes – Borodin, Musorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and the one we usually don't mention, César Cui – would have had orchestral works and sometimes the odd aria from an opera-in-progress on the programme, often alongside music by their western idols Berlioz, Liszt and Schumann. If something wasn't ready, which was often the case, colleagues would help out or offer a Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
It’s 2016, and The X-Files is the most popular TV show in the world. The very idea that over 20 million people in the US would tune in to a new episode of the pioneering sci-fi drama 14 years after the last one might seem as preposterous as the conspiracy theories the show put forward in its later years, but it was probably more likely than fans in the UK hanging on for the fortnight it took for the new episodes to show up on Channel 5.The problem, though, is how to re-introduce a show that managed to combine being a genuine pop culture phenomenon with the sort of convoluted mythology that, Read more ...
David Nice
At the end of Episode Five, Brian Cox's savvy old Field-Marshal Kutuzov gave the order to retreat and abandon Moscow, with hardly a hint of Tolstoy's council of war. That left the final hour and 20 minutes to wrap up the burning of Russia's sacred capital, Pierre's capture by the French and his best shot at the meaning of life through the peasant Platon Karatayev, Natasha's reconciliation with the wounded Andrei, the French retreat dogged by partisan attacks and then all the other loose ends. A mere 350 pages of novel, in short, not counting Tolstoy's final disquisition on the nature of war Read more ...
Florence Hallett
Now that Renaissance altarpieces live for the most part in museums and not churches, our experience of them is, quite literally, flat. Once, the winged altarpieces so popular in northern Europe, comprising a central panel flanked by two moveable “doors”, would have changed appearance according to the Church calendar, the wings left closed during Lent to be opened again at Easter when the glorious colours of its central image would once again be revealed.To create maximum theatrical effect, the reverse sides of the panels were often decorated in grisaille – as black and white painting was Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
For its 6 April 1985 issue, the NME chose The Long Ryders as its cover stars. The colour picture of the band was emblazoned “A Shotgun Wedding of Country and Punk.” The Los Angeles outfit attracted attention as part of a wave of California bands overtly drawing from the past. Local peers included The Bangles, The Dream Syndicate and The Three O’Clock.Competition was tough. Bands from elsewhere in the States were also voguish during the pivotal years of 1983 to 1986: Green on Red, Let’s Active, R E.M. and The Replacements amongst them. The directly punk-rooted Black Flag and Hüsker Dü were on Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Legendary director Peter Brook makes theatre that teaches audiences to be human. Now 90 years old, he brings his latest project to London from Paris, where he has been based at the Bouffes du Nord since quitting the UK more than 40 years ago. Called Battlefield, it is a 65-minute distillation of part of his 1985 11-hour epic, The Mahabharata, and revisits the ancient Sanskrit myth of the Kurukshetra War, and the struggle between the two warring families of the Kauravas and the Pandavas.Co-created with his long-term collaborators Jean-Claude Carrière and Marie-Hélène Estienne, Battlefield is Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
“We are at a time of present crisis.” When Sarastro addressed his boardroom of business-suited acolytes last night, there can’t have been many in the Coliseum whose thoughts didn’t turn to English National Opera. Even by the standards of a company that has spent most of its history fighting for survival, 2015 was a year of unprecedented difficulty. Whether crisis becomes catastrophe remains to be seen, but there couldn’t be a more emphatic portent of success, a better-timed metaphor, than this Magic Flute. Frankly a bit of a dud on its first outing back in 2013, it has been transformed by ENO Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Renée Fleming recently announced her imminent retirement from the opera stage. But she has no plans to stop performing, and will instead devote her time to recitals and concerts. Yesterday’s excellent performance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra bodes well for her new career focus. And she’s not one to rest on her laurels, here giving UK premieres of two new works written for her voice, ever the adventurous artist, always playing to her strengths.Now in her late 50s, Fleming can hardly be said to sound young. She has lost some of the flexibility in her tone, and no longer projects as freely or Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Trumbo depicts the 13-year struggle by the screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) to break the blacklist imposed on him and the other members of the Hollywood Ten in 1947. By continuing to get his scripts produced throughout the Fifties, Trumbo made a heroic, if morally complex stand against rabid Red Scare-mongers like the gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren) and John Wayne (David James Elliott). It’s disappointing that his courage and brinkmanship should grace a movie with no attitude of its own – that has the narrow sensibility of a 1980s or 1990s telefilm.Cranston nails the Read more ...
Stuart Houghton
The Room 3 is the latest in Fireproof Games' series of tactile puzzle games that invite you to twist, prod and rotate on-screen objects to reveal hidden secrets and activate devious mechanisms. It presents you with intriguing objects and devices that have concealed switches, hidden panels and features that you must find and manipulate in order to progress. Think a Fabergé egg, but with a superhuman level of detail and cunning in its construction.A typical room (don't let the title fool you, there are several) might contain an antique radio that must be tuned in a certain way, using a tool you Read more ...
graham.rickson
Dutilleux: Le Loup, and other early works Vincent Le Texier (baritone), Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire/Pascal Rophé (BIS)Henri Dutilleux's mature orchestral output can be squeezed onto a handful of CDs, so this anthology of early works plugs a useful gap. Extracts from the 1953 ballet Le Loup have been recorded before, but Pascal Rophé's Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire give us the complete score. It's wonderful stuff, beautifully orchestrated and full of delicious things, my favourite being the plaintive, howling bassoon solo in the second scene. Sections of the work recall Read more ...