Reviews
Jasper Rees
Recipe for Follett Without Finish, a popular broth. Ingredients as follows. One History of Medieval England. One crown, preferably tarnished. Axes, in abundance. Similar quantities of sword. Drawerful of knives. Much rope. A couple of dozen pieces of timber (human). Some French accents. One patch of Hungary. Goodly supply of Saturday night primetime.First, dress Hungarian patch to look like muddy, woody shire. Plant timber (human). Next, rip up History of Medieval England and replace with codswallop supplied by Follett. Wrongfoot audience by showing funeral of Edward II but tastefully Read more ...
David Nice
It was the kind of programme that great pianist Vladimir Horowitz used to pioneer, with the simple balm of Scarlatti offset by Scriabin’s flights of fancy, and a dash of virtuoso fireworks to conclude. Though he is an admirer of the master, and even featured Horowitz’s hyperintensification of an already extravagant Liszt transcription in this recital, Yevgeny Sudbin is very much his own man: a thinker verging on the visionary who always seems to know exactly where the more extreme fantasists among his chosen composers are heading.What a good idea to make a centred start with pensive Scarlatti Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Slavik Kryklyvyy was Jennifer Lopez's tush-shaking partner in Shall We Dance?, getting one over on Richard Gere. But that was 2004, and what happened then? Ballroom Dancer is a documentary feature about his year on the edge, 2010, when the former world number one Latin dancer tried to come back from a series of injuries and broken partnerships to mount his throne once more. This is Strictly Ballroom meets Black Swan, a film about a driven, spectacularly talented man for whom Latin dancing is a scarily obsessive vocation, a man who would give up almost anything, including his humanity, to be Read more ...
Helen K Parker
It’s been a rough couple of years for Capcom and their fandom. After the slating they received for rebooting their Resident Evil franchise, the storm has continued with their attempts to do the same with their much-loved Devil May Cry series. The fanboys were up in arms as usual, mostly concerning main character Dante’s hair, but Capcom were always prepared for a backlash, and Kudos to them for sticking to their guns, because they’ve rebooted DMC with a vengeance.Taking the story right back to its origins, the mantle has now been handed down to British developers Ninja Theory (of Enslaved: Read more ...
peter.quinn
On this debut album for Blue Note, Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter José James effortlessly blends the beat-driven mien of hip-hop, the surprising transitions of jazz and the raw emotion of classic R&B to produce his strongest statement to date. Following three critically acclaimed albums for the Brownswood and Verve labels, James seems to have discovered the key to making the simple resonate.With its oh-so-smooth foundation of bass, Fender Rhodes and tight horn stabs, the single “Trouble” sees him channelling the spirits of Marvin Gaye and Sam Cooke. The singer is blessed with the very Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Marianne Faithfull: Broken EnglishIn 1979, there was no obvious place for Marianne Faithfull. Identified with the Sixties and the baggage which came from her relationship with Mick Jagger, she had spent part of the decade living on a wall in Soho, a drug addict with few prospects, a period harrowingly detailed in her autobiography. There was an album in 1976, the humdrum, country flavoured Dreamin’ my Dreams, but punk, surprisingly, offered a life line. She appeared on stage with pop-punkers The Boys and, in 1979, issued the extraordinary Broken English, which sounded of its time yet Read more ...
fisun.guner
The first thing to say about Paul Elmsley’s portrait of the Duchess of Cambridge, which was unveiled yesterday at the National Portrait Gallery, is that it looks rather better in real life than it does in reproduction. That doesn’t make it a great painting, but nor is it a risible one. The soft-focused, Vaseline-smeared visage, framed by that undulating cascade of buoyant hair (it’s unfortunate how much this makes her look as if she's taking part in an ad campaign for shampoo) is more convincingly defined and skilfully modelled than it is when you see it on the screen.Certainly, there’s a Read more ...
David Nice
Elgar declared a “massive hope in the future” as the human programme behind his epic First Symphony’s final exultant sprint. That hope was sprinkled like gold dust around the featured artists of this all-English concert. There are good reasons to be optimistic about the effective, colourful scores of 32-year-old Anna Clyne; we know that Benjamin Grosvenor, her junior by 12 years, is already a pianist of mercurial assurance, a real front-runner. And the BBCSO stole a march on the other London orchestras in 2013 with abundant fighting spirit, rising to the special focus demanded of them by a Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Judging by those associated with Great Night Out, it looked like ITV had found the successor to acclaimed thirtysomething drama Cold Feet. It has the same production team behind The Worst Week of My Life - one of the funniest programmes in BBC Comedy's recent output - additional material by playwright Jonathan Harvey, who is responsible for some punchily witty scripts in Coronation Street, and a cast of talented actors.Mark Bussell and Justin Sbresni's series is about four blokes, friends since childhood, who go to footie together and meet once a week for a lads' night out. Hodge (Lee Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bartók, Eötvös, Ligeti – Violin Concertos Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin), Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Modern/Peter Eötvös (Naïve)An embarrassment of riches here - it’s hard to know where to start. The opening of Bartók’s Violin Concerto No 2, soft harp arpeggios underneath a pungent, folk-tinged melody, is gorgeous. With luck it will ensnare the open-minded casual listener before the accessibility becomes fused with this composer’s more cerebral mature style. It’s fabulous, spicy stuff – gritty in places but never losing its ability to sing. Only Bartók could make the Read more ...
Ismene Brown
If anyone who saw Matthew Bourne’s irreverent rewrite of The Sleeping Beauty currently at Sadler’s Wells is curious about the original classical ballet, they’ll find it in rousing glory and glinting style with English National Ballet at the Coliseum.Of all the so-called fairytale ballets, this is the most deceptive. Its story is perfunctory, a vehicle for a magnificent display of classicism at its height, essentially an exhibition of balletic jewellery, the romance and reverie all embedded within Tchaikovsky's greatest score. One can see why contemporary choreographers home in on bulking up Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Santa has returned home, but he wasn’t the season’s only visitor from the Nordic lands. The crop of recent music in from the region embraces genre-crossing jazz, vintage-style rock, the expected electropop, cross-border collaborations and a seven-year-old Finn. Exploring all corners of Scandinavia’s music, theartsdesk journeys where no one else does, landing in Norway first for some finely formed jazz.The debut album from Trondheim's Moskus ought to straightforward. And it is, to a point. A jazz piano trio, their line-up conforms to the known. Yet, as Salmesykkel unfolds, it’s increasingly Read more ...