Reviews
David Nice
It was a Disney theme-park of Russian music, and in an entirely good way: none of the usual rides, but plenty of heroes and villains, sad spirits and whistling witches, orientalia from the fringes of empire, pagan processionals and apocalyptic Orthodox chants. Soundwise, it would seem that Vladimir Jurowski had worked as carefully with the difficult Albert Hall acoustics as Stokowski had on an early form of stereo for Disney's Fantasia, for no orchestra has ever sounded better here than the London Philharmonic for this packed Saturday night Prom.Rimsky-Korsakov's Mlada has come to us Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
To celebrate the 60th birthday of Sir James MacMillan, the Edinburgh International Festival has programmed his music over five concerts, including the Nash Ensemble with Fourteen Little Pictures, the National Youth Choir of Scotland with All the Hills and Vales Along, and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the Festival Chorus with the cantata Quickening. But the festival’s most unequivocal endorsement of Scotland’s leading composer came on Saturday evening in the Usher Hall, with four large-scale works, including a major world premiere, performed over two concerts in the late afternoon Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
The trend-hopping taste-makers who run British literary publishing have lately decided that “working-class” writing merits a small dole of their precious time and cash. To assess how long this latest patronising fad may last, check out the availability of James Kelman’s fiction: three decades of ground-breaking modernist work by a scrupulous innovator, now all but buried by Penguin, and largely consigned (a couple of titles apart) to second-hand limbo. Born in Liverpool, long settled in his homeland of Wales, Niall Griffiths has, like Kelman, crafted a sophisticated literary voice for the Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
Returning to Edinburgh International Festival, Berlin's Komische Oper brought Barrie Kosky’s sumptuous production of Eugene Onegin to the Edinburgh Festival Theatre. It’s a production that isn’t trying to do anything overly clever or convey a layered meaning; it’s simple in its grandeur in that it looks beautiful, sounds beautiful, and is faithful to Tchaikovsky’s music and Pushkin’s story.The curtain comes up to reveal a lush green stage, complete with grassy carpet and a rich forest behind, designed by Rebecca Ringst. It is the garden of sisters Olga and Tatyana’s house, and the two girls, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Diamond Head was Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera’s first solo album. Released in May 1975 and recorded the previous December and January during a lull in his parent band’s activities, it hit shops between Roxy’s Country Life and Siren albums. Singer Bryan Ferry had done a short solo tour in December 1974 which culminated with a show at The Royal Albert Hall where he was backed by an orchestra. Manzanera took a different tack.Playing alongside him on Diamond Head were Eddie Jobson, Andy Mackay, Paul Thompson and John Wetton – sans Ferry, Manzanera assembled the whole of the then-current Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Foo Fighters are an unlikely candidate for one of the biggest bands in the world. There’s nothing workmanlike about the sheer joy with which Dave Grohl and drummer Taylor Hawkins approach playing live. They’ll play the hits, sure, but they’ll stick a 10-minute long jam session on the end of each one, and they’ll also play the 22-year-old deep cut that you used to sing 'Pat Smear backing vocals' along to with your first boyfriend. And you, the audience, will love every minute of it.Here’s what a two-and-a-half hour open-air headline set from the Foo Fighters gets you: a selection of songs from Read more ...
David Nice
There it gleamed, the pearl in the massive oyster of Albert's colosseum: the gilded, decorated piano supplied to his Queen by Érard in 1856. Pearly in sound it was not, though often harp-like; the programme was of mostly silver works, with a gold scherzo and some wooden songs. It was the task of Proms favourite Stephen Hough, the very glowing sound of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and a febrile grand master, Ádám Fischer, to bring them all to life in this lavish concert marking 200 years since Victoria's birth.Which they did with bags of character, though not much could be done Read more ...
Guy Oddy
While Pram could hardly be described as representative of the UK psychedelic scene, it would be hard to imagine South Birmingham’s favourites being birthed by any other sub-culture. Sixties film and television soundtracks collide with dreamlike soundscapes, 30s jazz, trippy pop and more than a dash of the almost mythic BBC Stereophonic Workshop to create music that somehow feels particularly rooted in the British mindset. Especially once it finds itself under the influence of a couple of stiff gins or something perhaps a little stronger. Strange, yet half-recognised grooves power this eerie Read more ...
Saskia Baron
If you’re looking for escapism from anxieties about Brexit, the worldwide refugee crisis and rising authoritarianism, Christian Petzold’s Transit is not going to provide comfort. Adapted from Anna Segher’s 1944 novel about a Jewish writer fleeing incarceration in Germany and trying to get passage to Mexico, this is a wholly original take on the Holocaust genre.Eschewing period costumes and art direction, Transit is an existential thriller filmed in present day France with Nazi uniforms replaced by police body armour. Georg (a mesmeric Franz Rogowski) sees a way to flee by taking on the Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
Performing as part of Edinburgh International Festival’s Queen’s Hall series, American tenor Lawrence Brownlee, with Scottish pianist Iain Burnside, performed collections of songs by Schumann, Liszt, Poulenc and Ginastera. Opening with Schumann’s Dichterliebe – 16 songs set to the poetry of German poet Heinrich Heine – Brownlee at once had the audience rapt with his rich, full voice. He wonderfully conveyed the many moods of Schubert’s music and Heine’s words. Though the poetry was written with a heavy dose of irony, the music is for the most part deeply lyrical and romantic, and Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The Red Pleasance Dome ★★★★Comic Marcus Brigstocke has spoken in the past about his addictions and now he has written this two-hander, which he directs, that goes some way to explain the constant internal dialogue he and others like him experience.Benedict has been sober for 20-odd years but faces a big emotional challenge when his father dies. On the day of his dad's funeral we see him in John's extensive cellar, where a bottle of Château Lafite Rothschild 1978, the year of his birth, awaits him, as he reads a letter from John gifting it to him.As Benedict confronts his emotions about Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Quentin Tarantino’s made a big deal of this being his ninth film, while heralding his retirement after number 10 with the sort of nostalgic fandom he’s always ladled over his favourite directors and stars. Such self-consciousness (if not self-aggrandisement) is risky, because you’ve really got to deliver. Once Upon A Time… in Hollywood isn’t the masterpiece that some are claiming; it’s too rambling, self-indulgent and – despite a typically grand guignol ending – anti-climactic for that. But it is an evocative and entertaining paean to the Los Angeles of the filmmaker’s youth, Read more ...