Reviews
David Nice
Strange world, isn’t it? Yesterday morning, buoyed up by the Royal Opera’s impressive Tristan und Isolde, I was listening on CD to Linda Esther Gray, a Wagnerian soprano for the ages, singing the best Liebstod I know. In the evening, I was watching Linda “Sue Ellen” Gray declaiming the traditional couplets of Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother, very musically – she always was a good actress, I reckon – if not as yet with immaculate timing (crikey, though, I've just found out she's 74).This was pantoland as only Wimbledon does it, and if my first return visit to the genre there since as a cub I Read more ...
geoff brown
Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Greed Tuesday: they all vanished from memory once the first notes of Siglo de Oro’s Christmas-themed concert started. This young British choir, now six years old, began with what’s already become a modern classic, Jan Sandström’s magical setting of Es ist ein Ros entsprungen, where the first staggered entries open like a fan and we drift thereafter in slow-motion bliss. Not for the first time, not for the last, I gave thanks to Spitalfields Music’s Winter Festival for offering balm in a whirling world. In terms of packaging, Patrick Allies’ choir, formed when Read more ...
philip radcliffe
With a bloodthirsty, corpse-devouring plant called Audrey at the centre of events, we can only be in the Little Shop of Horrors. It’s a far cry from Jack and the Beanstalk, but the Royal Exchange is known for providing alternative and, usually, zany seasonal entertainment. And they don’t come any zanier than this, especially under Derek Bond’s zippy direction.One of the longest-running off-Broadway shows, the grisly tale has been hanging around for more than 50 years in one form or another. Written by Howard Ashman, with music by Alan Menken, and based on the Roger Corman film with Charles Read more ...
Barney Harsent
BBC4’s The Life of Rock with Brian Pern introduced us to the former frontman of Thotch and creator of world music. With a promotion to BBC2 for Brian Pern: A Life in Rock, it seems that Pern, the comic creation of The Fast Show’s Simon Day and Rhys Thomas, has switched from object to subject. This is both a blessing and a (slight) curse for the character’s reprisal – familiarity hasn’t bred contempt, but it has made it slightly harder for the conceit to work.There were clear nods to 1984 film This Is Spinal Tap in the success of the first series, and the best parts of this spoof-documentary Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
I don’t think any of us will look at a museum in quite the same way after this dazzling documentary. For several years the Austrian film-maker Johannes Holzhausen and his team followed what seems to be scores of the working staff inhabiting Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum (KMH), as they physically cared for the remarkable objects in their care, worried about how best to put them on view for the public, and met continually to discuss museum matters.KMH is one of the world’s most important museums, repository of centuries of Habsburg imperial heritage, as well as myriad other Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Tamara Stefanovich and Colin Currie – a dream team for Birtwistle’s The Axe Manual. Both are new music specialists with a gift for grace and dexterity, even in the most complex works. The score sets up a range of sophisticated relationships between piano and percussion, from sympathetic resonances to complex interplays of stretto and hocket. Yet none of this fazes the two players, nor ever challenges their close ensemble, seemingly telepathic in its precision.The percussion setup is based around a large marimba, with a collection of mostly untuned instruments arranged at either side. Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Finding a clear narrative among the deadly uncertainties of the long-lasting stand-off between Israel and Palestine is a challenge. Israeli documentarist Nadav Schirman, drawing on a real-life story, has honed The Green Prince down into a bare story of the ongoing contact between Gonen Ben Yitzhak, an officer of Israel's Shin Bet intelligence service, and Mosab Hassan Yousef, a young man from the very centre of the Palestinian leadership who becomes his agent.It’s a remarkably unadorned film, concentrating on the direct testimonies of the two players. They tell their stories direct to camera Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
This was “Officium – the final concert.” The Hilliard Ensemble took their decision around three years ago to disband as a group, and – for three of them – to retire, rather than to re-launch with a new generation of voices. They are now on the road doing a series of farewells. Their final bow will be at the Wigmore Hall on December 20th, and between now and then, their victory lap takes in Taunton, Gdansk, Châlons-en-Champagne, Florence and Cologne. This one in Cambridge was the opportunity to bask, for one very last time, in the completely unforeseen level of success – around 1.5 million Read more ...
David Nice
Christopher Wheeldon’s hard-working mix of skewed classical ballet, vaudeville and Victorian theatrical magic achieved through state-of-the-art technique wasn’t much liked by theartsdesk’s critics on its first and second outings. Marvelling at it on DVD as I worked on the notes for that release, I wondered why. Now it’s clearer that many of the special effects and characterisations work best in close up. But for all that it’s an inventive if overlong entertainment, its occasional treacle quotient fine for seasonal cheer.You’ll get your money's worth simply from the wonders of Bob Crowley, a Read more ...
geoff brown
In words and music Harrison Birtwistle isn’t always as gruff as he’s been painted. Interviewed over the summer during one of his 80th birthday Prom concerts, the composer tossed off enough humorous remarks to suggest that a new career could almost beckon as a stand-up comedian touring the northern clubs. A lightness of touch, even bonhomie, was also apparent in the UK premiere of his wondrous Piano Concerto, unveiled last night in the course of the kind of head-expanding concert that regularly puts Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra ahead of its local competition. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
With just over two weeks to Christmas, thoughts might be turning to which of the deluge of 2014’s reissues might be suitable as a gift, worth putting on your own wish-list for Santa or even merit buying for yourself. So if help is needed, theartsdesk is happy to provide a one-stop guide to the essential reissues covered so far this year.Normal service will resume next week with a look at John Grant’s old band The Czars. The week after we will consider Millions Like Us, a box set dedicated to, as it is helpfully subtitled, “the Mod Revival 1977–89”. Following that will be a collection Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Sir Harrison Birtwistle has never sought to make life easy for his audiences, nor for interviewers, often giving short shrift to both. His music is as uncompromising as his carefully curated public persona. But fortunately last night we were treated to more notes and less chat than the printed programme threatened.In an awkward onstage exchange at the start, presenter Tom Service asked Birtwistle whether the first piece had a sense of danger about it. The answer: "I don’t know. I just wrote a piece of music". This bon mot, rewarded with a round of applause, is either refreshingly down to Read more ...