Reviews
Adam Sweeting
Meet the new Dragon, slightly different from the old Dragons. Or is she? For series nine, the squad of rich, grumpy bastards is joined by “formidable businesswoman and self-made multimillionaire Hilary Devey”, as presenter Evan Davis introduced her.Power-dressed like a Barbara Taylor Bradford heroine, or possibly the new landlady of the Rover's Return, Miss Devey (that’s De-Vay) began by beguiling us with a display of down-to-earth motherliness, as she calmed the panic attack being suffered by Georgette Hewitt, would-be internet entrepreneuse. Trying to get the Dragons fired up about her Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
A blackout, a snowstorm, a scream, and there you have it – the longest-running play of all time. The mystery of The Mousetrap is legendary, preserved by a code of silence that bonds all those who have performed and watched this classic whodunnit. Yet greater even than this is surely the enigma of how so generic, so unassuming a play should come to endure so persistently. Is it merely tradition that keeps Agatha Christie’s Mousetrap in business, or can this period piece really still have something fresh to say in its resolutely RP tones?Approaching its 25,000th performance, The Mousetrap is Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Jealousy of people who live in Birmingham is not (I venture to hazard) so widespread a phenomenon as to merit a name all its own. After last night’s Prom from the CBSO and music director Andris Nelsons however, a term may well have to be coined for all of us Londoners whose green-eared envy seems unlikely to abate any time soon. We’ve heard the recordings and the rumours of greatness trickling down from the West Midlands, but the opportunity to see this partnership in action further south is rare. Conquering the Royal Albert Hall with an evening of generous, emotive music-making, the CBSO Read more ...
David Nice
All aboard the chrome locomotive for composer-conductor Oliver Knussen’s annual magical mystery tour. You may notice rather few fellow passengers in the Albert Hall; that’s a given with this event (though the Proms could have thrown in and advertised one of Olly’s Top 10 OTT Favourites – I’ve heard him proclaim them - to drum up more trade). You may also find rather too many stops for change of crew. But so long as you sit forward to catch the results of his famously acute hearing, second only to Boulez’s, you’ll get something out of a long, unsexy ride.Part of the pleasure of multi-work Read more ...
judith.flanders
Mikhail Fokine, choreographer to both West and East, looked forward and back, too. He studied in the old Imperial Theatre School when the tsars ruled Russia, and he was also Diaghilev’s creative genius at the Ballets Russes, moving dance into the 20th century before and after the Revolution. The Mariinsky, once his home, is a premier exponent of his multifaceted styles. Chopiniana, his 1907 “white” ballet (known in the West as Les Sylphides) (pictured right, photo V Baranovsky), can be inert, shapeless, lifeless. Indeed, it all too frequently is. Saddled with an unappealing score (Chopin Read more ...
graham.rickson
We go out of this column's comfort zone for this week’s releases which include orchestrated versions of songs by the Fab Four, and an Italian pianist’s imaginative response to jazz god Thelonious Monk. And there’s also some Led Zeppelin played by a string quartet.The Beatles for Orchestra: Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/Davis (Carl Davis Collection)New York-born composer and conductor Carl Davis has been working in the UK since 1960. He’s best known for his film and television music – notably the BBC’s 1996 Pride and Prejudice, for which he provided a near-perfect pastiche classical Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Forget almost everything you thought you knew about classical music. Forget the regulations and the rigmarole, the politeness and the prissiness. Forget the preening institutions. Forget the vocal doom-sayers. Classical music is in the throes of an extremely welcome revolution. The entrepreneurial spirit that seized and transformed British art in the 1980s is finally animating and unshackling this most stubborn of art forms. Operas are springing up in warehouses, concerts in bars. Last weekend, I witnessed one of the great Rites of Spring in a Peckham car park.Ironic jumpers stood in for Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
In a recent article, David Hare complained about “a national festival of reaction” in the arts, exemplified by such supposedly Establishment-leaning works as The King’s Speech and Downton Abbey. His real target was Terence Rattigan, currently being hailed in many quarters as a national theatrical treasure enjoying a renaissance in this centenary year of his birth.Far from being neglected, argued Hare, Rattigan has rarely been out of the limelight, but his work now chimes with the “wheedling tone of self-righteous privilege” which he detects as a hallmark of the David Cameron era. I don’t know Read more ...
David Nice
Older pianomanes may lament the passing of the great Russian schooling that gave us the likes of Sofronitsky, Yudina and Richter. I'm not so sure. The younger generations may have dropped the mystic torch, but their more even-tempered approach can beguile. Yevgeny Sudbin forms the current holy trinity with Boris Berezovsky and Nikolai Lugansky. His latest Wigmore recital was revelatory, not always in a good way; that broad beam needn't have swept every corner of the broad Russian church he so singularly constructed in the programme's second half. But anyone who can make Liszt sound as lucid Read more ...
Jasper Rees
You don’t tend to get many films from the breakaway republics of the former Soviet Union. And certainly not from Kyrgyzstan. The Light Thief is the kind of work which schleps respectably around the festival circuit harvesting nods of approval from film aficionados but not, more importantly, the support of distributors. So the fact that, as of this week, the film has made it past Go is worth cracking open the orange juice (its titular main character does not drink). And it more than repays a look. The Light Thief is light on its feet at only 75 minutes, and it melds gentle lyricism with a very Read more ...
charlotte.gardner
Vignette Productions is a bit of a one-off in the operatic world. It was established three years ago by the rising young British tenor Andrew Staples, his mission to create operas that were more exciting and told better stories than those generally on offer. Staples directs rather than sings; his casts are made up of young unknown singers, and the productions to date certainly fulfil the original aim. Last year, their summer production of Cosi fan tutte had the audience sitting in deckchairs atop of six tons of sand and ended with a beach party. With that in mind, a bit of youthful wackiness Read more ...
fisun.guner
Dalí may have the edge on Magritte for instant recognition and popularity, but how easily the Belgian beats the Spaniard as the more interesting Surrealist. Armed with his small repertoire of images – the nude, the shrouded head, the bowler hat, the apple and the pipe, to name a few – and painted in that precise, pictogram way of his, Magritte is an artist who holds back more than he gives away. Next to his restrained, meticulously tidy offerings, Dalí appears decidedly overcooked.In paintings such as The Treachery of Images (Cesi n’est pas une pipe), 1929, in which a representation Read more ...