Reviews
David Nice
Everyone in the BBCSO is a potential soloist. I know this because the course I run at the City Literary Institute linked to the orchestra has welcomed principals, duos, two string quartets and three viola foursomes (proving that department the most individual, not the dense deserving butt of many a joke). I adore these players, but I love Erwin Stein's chamber arrangement of Mahler's Fourth Symphony even more, so this was bound to be a gem. Spitalfields' UK premiere of a recent song cycle by favoured Dutch composer Michel van der Aa could only come as an enterprising bonus.Not a bad one at Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
The Barbican committed a grave sin last night. It forgot that people matter more than art. That their responsibility to the families of those who Jack Unterweger (the subject of John Malkovich's music drama, The Infernal Comedy) murdered trumps any interest in the dramatic potential of Unterweger's bizarre life. However constraining to the autonomy of creativity this may be, these are the rules of common decency. A portrait of Ratko Mladić that did little to show the horror of his crimes and much to convey what a loveable rogue he was would be a disgrace. And so, Malkovich's Read more ...
graham.rickson
This week we’ve a brilliant, budget-priced box of Beethoven symphonies played on authentic instruments. It’ll remind you of how much fun there is to be had with this most iconic of composers. A historical recording of a famous cellist reappears, but the best reason to listen to the disc is to hear a famous Czech conductor achieving miracles. And there’s an entertaining, educative DVD featuring a conductor who’s in his element when addressing an audience.Beethoven: Complete Symphonies La Chambre Philharmonique/Krivine (Naïve)
Beethoven symphonies played on modern instruments feel more and more Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The Royal Ballet says it is inviting a new audience to experience the thrill of live ballet by taking Romeo and Juliet to the gigantic O2. Beware what you wish for. It’s the thrill of the live audience I’m starting with before I get onto the splendid show. Sweet packets rustled behind my ear, fish and chips were wolfed nearby, pizza shared, drinks slurped. People were still entering in droves 30 minutes after the start, obstructing the view of Juliet’s first scene. People were late back for Act II, triumphantly bringing the beers and crisps in, better late than never.Almost as bad as all of Read more ...
bruce.dessau
Sir Paul McCartney recently suggested that Ringo Starr missed out on a knighthood because the Queen was too busy dealing with Bruce Forsyth. At least Ringo got to go to the Palace though. Albeit the one in Hampton Court, where last night, as if by magic, a torrential downpour stopped just as he stepped on stage. At one point during the day it looked as if a Yellow Submarine would be needed to get this critic home. In the end my purple Volkswagen sufficed.Starr certainly looked in fine fettle. The trim, neat, black-clad 70-year-old has outlived his doppelgänger Yasser Arafat as well as two ex- Read more ...
aleks.sierz
They say that moving home is always traumatic. So the Bush Theatre in west London must be feeling a wee bit fragile because it has recently upped sticks and taken up residence in the Old Shepherds Bush Library building just around the corner from its historic but rather leaky former home. Yet it’s typical of this spunky venue that it celebrates the first stages of the move with not only a trilogy of short plays, but also with an invitation to the audience to comment on its new space.As an event, Where’s My Seat? is like a housewarming party with the builders still in. Artistic director Josie Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
I see there are still a few brave souls trying to peddle the "searing televisual masterpiece" line, often in high-profile BBC publications, but I suspect rather more of us may have been veering towards an ever-healthier scepticism as Hugo Blick's wilfully obtuse noirathon ran around in increasingly demented circles. I wouldn't go as far as theartsdesk commenter "Gengis Cohen", who characterises The Shadow Line as "dreadful plotless, sub-Pinteresque nonsense" before really warming to his theme... but after a couple of drinks, y'know, you start thinking maybe he's not all that wrong.Having Read more ...
fisun.guner
This is a play that begins after the end of an affair, and threads its precise, forensic way back to the very beginning of it. As the lovers are awkwardly reunited after two years, the theme of deceit as a web of competing and ambiguous claims is firmly established. Jerry, a literary agent, has learned that Emma, the wife of his oldest and dearest friend, with whom he had an affair for seven years, may now be having an adulterous relationship with one of his writers. Emma, played superbly by the mistress of sexy sang-froid Kristin Scott Thomas, casually but unconvincingly dismisses his Read more ...
stephen.walsh
The extraordinary Longborough Opera Festival is with us again and for the next six weeks, in Martin and Lizzie Graham’s Palladian barn theatre near Stow-on-the-Wold. This year the world’s unlikeliest Ring cycle reaches Siegfried. But the improbability doesn’t end with Wagner; there is also Verdi (Falstaff) and Mozart – also, typically, a cyclic project, which has arrived at Così fan tutte. The whole set-up is so amazing that one longs to be enthusiastic about everything. But that can sometimes be difficult.What is it about Così fan tutte? In Cardiff, Benjamin Davis set it on Clacton pier Read more ...
bruce.dessau
The Meltdown Festival's tribute to Tony Wilson was a lot like the charismatic post-punk legend himself: funny, eccentric, obscure, populist; all over the place but never dull. Wilson died in August 2007 and this event was a reminder of his reputation as one of music's most fascinating post-punk provocateurs, giving the world Joy Division, Happy Mondays and more. It was also a reminder of his reputation, as poet Mike Garry put it, as a "knobhead". As someone who appeared on regional news programmes quoting Wordsworth while hang-gliding, Wilson could be spectacularly uncool.Proceedings, hosted Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
"I used to be able to run down these," whispered a wobbly 77-year-old Harrison Birtwistle to friends as he stumbled down the stairs to the Queen Elizabeth Hall stage to take his bow at last night's London Sinfonietta concert (for some inexplicable reason part of Ray Davies's Meltdown series at the Southbank). Birtwistle and his former partner-in-crime Peter Maxwell Davies - and their feral musical creations - used also to be very good at running foul of the musical establishment. For some reason, Sirs, Harrison Birtwistle, CH, and Peter Maxwell Davies, CBE, Master of the Queen's Music, don't Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It doesn’t augur well when the first comment you hear as the credits roll is, “Well, it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting.” That’s really not a great place to begin a review either, but let’s anyway. Or rather with a fnar, fnar moment - did nobody point out the other meaning of "beaver" to the film's makers?The story - for what it is - is about a depressed toy-company executive, Walter Black (Mel Gibson), whose wife, Meredith (Jodie Foster, who also directs), kicks him out because she can no longer cope with his long-standing self-obsessed depressive state, which no amount of medication or Read more ...