Reviews
Florence Hallett
It was suggested more than once during this adventure in Warhol-world that Andy Warhol himself was the artist’s greatest achievement. It’s a neat sentiment if not an original one, and while it may well be true, it didn’t bode well for a documentary in search of the “real” Andy Warhol. However exclusive the access to Warhol’s “planning diary”, however frank the interviews with friends, relatives and Factory colleagues, it seemed unlikely – and as a venture somewhat misguided – that we would ever really get beyond the version of Warhol so carefully cultivated by the artist himself.In Read more ...
David Nice
There were two reasons why I didn’t return to the Albert Hall late on Friday night to hear Andras Schiff play Bach’s Goldberg Variations. The first was that one epic, Mahler’s Sixth in the stunning performance by Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, needed properly digesting. The other was that at Easter I’d heard Jeremy Denk play the Goldbergs in Weimar, and I wanted that approach to resonate, too – dynamic, continuous, revelatory, in a very different way from how I know Schiff approaches Bach.Denk’s recitals are mandatory listening now, and the lunchtime recital yesterday at Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Pop went the easel, and more, as we were offered a worldwide tour – New York, LA, London, Paris, Shanghai – of the art phenomenon of the past 50 years (still going strong worldwide). We were led by a wide-eyed interlocutor, the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Alastair Sooke, to the throbbing beat of – what else? – pop music, Elvis and much else besides.Sooke protested a bit too much, doing down the previous big deal in modern art, Abstract Expressionism, in order to enhance the revolutionary nature of Pop in its fascination and appropriation of the tropes of advertising and consumerism. He Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
When Bach set out in 1713 to write his Orgelbüchlein, or “little organ book”, he listed the titles of the 164 chorales that he wished to include in what was to be a compendium of organ preludes for use throughout the church year. In the event, he completed only 46, leaving 118 so-called “ghost” chorales, each with a given text and (in most cases) a melody – often an old Lutheran hymn tune.The story could have ended there, with the 46 chorales of the Orgelbüchlein comfortably in the organist’s repertoire and a faint question mark over what Bach might have done with the others. Enter the Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra have made the Shostakovich Tenth their calling card. Their recent recording of the work on Deutsche Grammophon has received universal acclaim, and now they're making their first European tour together, performing the symphony in London, Salzburg, Lucerne and Paris. It’s a great choice, a work that plays to all their strengths, conductor and orchestra alike. But this varied programme also demonstrated other facets of this versatile and increasingly distinctive partnership.How refreshing to hear Haydn performed by a symphony orchestra, bold and Read more ...
David Nice
So here he was in town with his top American team, the already great conductor whose premature departure from Birmingham has left the players in mourning, unable to choose a successor yet, and whose insistence that it was too early to take up the coveted post of the Berlin Phil’s Principal Conductor blocked what should have been an obvious choice. During their first season together, Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra have already plunged into a series of Shostakovich recordings with a Tenth Symphony of shattering perfection, leading to high hopes that their Mahler Six last night Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Diane Chorley, Underbelly Potterrow ★★★Diane Chorley is the former owner of The Flick nightclub in Canvey Island, Essex. Back in the 1980s it was the place to go, and celebrities – from Michael Barrymore to George Michael and Mick Jagger – used to pass through its doors. In fact, it was David Bowie who gave her the title "Duchess of Canvey".But it all went wrong when she got into some bother, first with rival club Safari Beige, and then when the police realised why the club was so popular; the Duchess, you see, was providing the happy pills and potions for her customers. Now she is out of Read more ...
David Kettle
Two percussionists, two pianists, Adams, Reich and Bartók: Colin Currie and friends’ bracing morning recital at the Edinburgh International Festival made quite a pleasing change from the more traditional string quartets and vocal recitals elsewhere in the Queen’s Hall chamber programme. And it attracted quite a different audience, too – including many clearly there for the broader Edinburgh festival, unsure of what exactly they’d let themselves in for.Thankfully, they could hardly have asked for anything more lively, incisive and dramatic. And it started, ironically, with a performance of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Julian Cope: World Shut Your Mouth, FriedIt’s a fair assumption Julian Cope’s record label Phonogram was committed to the idea that he could be a solo commercial and critical success. Teardrop Explodes, the band he had fronted, had charted and his face regularly featured in the new crop of glossy pop magazines. The announcement of the band’s split had come in November 1982, but it took another year for “Sunshine Playroom”, the first solo single, to emerge.The record label’s faith was demonstrated by approving a £20,000 spend for the single’s promo video – it was the first that photographer Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
It's fitting that for its 50th anniversary the Edinburgh Festival Chorus should perform Berlioz’s gigantic Grande Messe des Morts. There is nothing in the large-scale orchestral repertoire in which the chorus plays so huge and significant a role – it sings throughout and the only soloist that Berlioz admits is a solitary tenor whose appearance in the "Sanctus" is almost apologetic.You don’t have to be a very acute observer of the Festival Chorus to realise that a 50th birthday, for a choir as much as for a person, is a mixed celebration. Some members of the chorus have sung in it since its Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
It’s been glorious to hear so much Bach at this year’s Proms – most of it after dark, and still more of it for the most intimate of forces. On paper, the Academy of Ancient Music and BBC Singers’ Late Night concert of Bach choral works didn’t quite have the mystique of Ibragimova’s Solo Sonatas and Partitas, Schiff’s Goldbergs or Ma’s Cello Suites. In practice, though, it was clever piece of programming that came into its own in its Friday night slot, sending people home to the weekend on the very highest of musical highs.It’s hard to look past the line-up of soloists, which reads more like a Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
If you were expecting a fusty, formal adaptation of Anthony Trollope – and one of his least known novels, to boot – Lady Anna: All At Sea will come as a breath of fresh air. Colin Blumenau’s production of Craig Baxter’s play, based loosely around the Trollope novel of the same name and commissioned by the Trollope Society to mark the bicentenary of the writer’s birth, speeds through its two-hour-plus run, keeping a nimble crew of seven on its toes and the audience engaged in its ludic conspiracies.The “All At Sea” element, the “interloping” part of the story if you like, refers to Trollope Read more ...