Reviews
Sebastian Scotney
Can it happen? That one comes away from a concert with the sense that all of the truth, the shape, the beauty and the urgency of some great works from the classical repertoire has been conveyed as well as is humanly possible? That the programme itself has been a completely satisfying and thought-out whole and has held the attention throughout? Yes, it really can. This Wigmore Hall recital by violinist Janine Jansen and pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk (pictured below by Marc Borggreve) of works by the Schumanns, Brahms and Franck was an evening to cast aside doubts and niggles; to appreciate a Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
As China and the US arm-wrestle for world domination in everything from trade to military power, we find ourselves in the throes of a space race again. After China became the first nation to land on the dark side of the moon this January, it seems particularly apt to revisit The Twilight Zone in all its retro glory to examine what aliens can – among other things – reveal to us about our humanity.The continual osmotic reaction between what happens on a stage and the news headlines outside the theatre means that this return of a production first seen at the Almeida in 2017, now transferred to Read more ...
Robert Beale
Best laid plans and all that … this concert was originally to have been conducted by the late Oliver Knussen, and of course things had to change after his death. In the end the more recently advertised Ryan Wigglesworth was unable to conduct either, and Moritz Gnann stepped in: he first appeared with the BBC Philharmonic in 2017 and last visited in November. The programme had already begun to change – the original choice of Borodin’s Second Symphony had been changed to Nielsen’s Fourth, the "Inextinguishable", and in the end we heard Dvořák’s Ninth, the "New World".Knussen’s own Flourish with Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
As fans of Inspector Morse are well aware, there are plenty of snakes lurking in the grass at our premier seats of learning. In place of Morse’s Oxford, Cheat brings us leafy, picturesque Cambridge, presented here as an agreeable haven of historic quadrangles, relaxing riverside bistros and alluringly wooded suburbs.However, for university lecturer Dr Leah Dale (Katherine Kelly), her enjoyment of this fenland idyll is being eroded by one of her students, Rose Vaughan (Molly Windsor). A sullen, monosyllabic grump who turns up late to seminars and never makes any oral contributions, Rose Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Feelings run high at the Hayward Gallery in a fascinating pairing of two artists from widely differing backgrounds. Kader Attia muses on unhappy, conflicted relationships between cultures in visual meditations on variations of colonialism. Diane Arbus, who died at the age Attia is now, photographed people who were often at the margins of society.Once criticised for what might appear as an obsession with freakery, it is increasingly evident how her curiosity was flavoured with sympathy and empathy. Attia is mesmerisingly obsessed with the difficulties of groups and societies, while Arbus Read more ...
David Nice
So this is how Bruckner's Fourth Symphony should go. It's taken a master conductor just past his 90th birthday and an orchestra on top form to teach me. No doubt Claudio Abbado and Brucknermeister Gunter Wand could have done so, too, but I never heard them live in this, the "Romantic", and they are no longer with us. Bernard Haitink - he eschews the "Sir" with a typically self-deprecating shrug - evinced a tearful semi-secret rapture in performances of Schumann's Second and Beethoven's "Pastoral" with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe; that he should do it in three-quarters of this Bruckner Read more ...
Florence Hallett
Pink walls, slightly dusky in the subdued light of a room shielded from the wintry sun, suggest the bodily concerns of this show, which through the touring collection Artists' Rooms, boldly reviews Louise Bourgeois’s career in a single, modestly sized, exhibition space at Kettle’s Yard. For a prolific artist associated with large-scale sculptures, the most obvious question is “How?”. But though four sculptures are featured, including one of the Cell series, this is a show that makes much of Bourgeois’s works on paper, including the 16-piece series, A L’Infini, where painting and drawing Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Penelope Skinner's monologue was a critical and audience hit at last year's Edinburgh Fringe, when its talking point found its moment. Here is Roger, a divorced father who lives in Walnut Creek and has lost his senior management job at AT&T, drifting along in middle age, when he discovers Angry Alan, his online saviour. Angry Alan says that all men's problems, including Roger's, are caused by the gyno-centric world we live in, and men should start fighting back, citing "meninism" as the route. And while they're at it, why not donate to the Men's Rights Movement that Angry Alan has Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
The centenary of the founding of the Bauhaus (literally, “Building House”) art school is on us, prompting publications and exhibitions worldwide. Subtitled “Visionary Founder of the Bauhaus”, Fiona MacCarthy’s revelatory biography of the figure instrumental in establishing it, the upper-middle-class Walter Gropius (1883-1969), will be a major contribution, strikingly readable and elegantly designed as it is. Based on five years of exhaustive research, her book expands our understanding of Gropius as well as the cultural history of the 20th century.For nine years Walter Gropius was the first Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Writing in 1980, the musician and musical theorist Chris Cutler said that “without the support and patronage of the culture-establishment, The Residents were able to exist, continue to exist, grow, find their public, hold that public – and expand it – until the pop establishment was forced to take notice.” He contended that as they were neither musicians or part of music sub-culture they “exemplified a new type [of development], specialising in nothing, turning their hands to anything: a type whose aims were no longer conceived in terms of music, theatre, film, writing or the visual arts, but Read more ...
David Nice
Forty years ago this July, Simone Veil gave her inaugural speech as first President of the European Parliament. She had many issues to include. Peace came first; as a survivor of Auschwitz and the "death march" just before liberation, she well understood why "our Assembly has, whatever its differences, a fundamental responsibility" to maintain it. She also saw the difficulties ahead in holding the centre of European solidarity over and above the immediate national concerns of the Union's members. Austrian Robert Menasse's novel is the first I've read to bring to life the complexity of such a Read more ...
Saskia Baron
This might just be the most challenging film review I’ve had to write in decades. The best thing would be to go and see Border knowing nothing more than that it won the prize for most innovative film at Cannes. Don't watch the trailer, and definitely don’t read those lazy reviewers who complete their word count by writing a detailed synopsis ruining every reveal and plot twist. Border is simply brilliant and best seen clean, although a duty of care means that viewers of a delicate disposition are warned that there’s a significant amount of body horror on screen. Fans of David Cronenberg, Read more ...