Reviews
Glyn Môn Hughes
If you’re going to employ tens of extra musicians for Strauss’s gigantic Alpine Symphony, it’s probably just as well that a few other "biggies" are programmed in the same concert. So it was at the Philharmonic Hall, where the Strauss shared the programme with a new orchestration of Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons as well as a selection of Canteloube’s haunting Songs of the Auvergne. All three pieces are evocations of a place or a season, so this whole concert was almost a musical novel or an orchestrated visit to an art gallery.The Strauss is a blockbuster of a work, with members of the audience Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
To keep a string quartet on the road for 20 years requires patience, devotion and staying power. Therefore the Wigmore Hall's participation in the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the Belcea Quartet, which is being marked in several European concert halls, is fitting testimony to the achievements of these players. Last night's concert was the first of their London series.The Belcea Quartet in fact has only two members who have stayed the course since the 1990s, first violin Corina Belcea and violist Krzystof Chorzelski. The other two are more recent: the French cellist Antoine Lederlin Read more ...
Graham Rickson
Opera North have an excellent track record when it comes to staging musicals, and Jo Davies’s Kiss Me, Kate is among the best things they’ve done. Cole Porter’s score and lyrics are flawless, though the book (by husband and wife team Bella and Samuel Spewick) is a little clunky. Act 1 is overlong, and the show’s close is a tad perfunctory. But what an erudite, wise piece. Many successful new musicals are little more than jukebox compilations, whereas Kiss Me, Kate is a sophisticated, multi-layered drama, and one which expects its audience to have a working knowledge of Shakespeare. The Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Considering that they have never been known for their sartorial elegance, Squeeze are looking pretty smart and stylish these days. Band leaders Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook took to the stage in Birmingham looking especially dapper, with Tilbrook looking like he’d just walked off the set of Miami Vice in his pink suit. This was matched by a slick set with a video screen that showed what were more like short films for each song than the usual concert projections, making it clear that while they might be veterans, Squeeze were still going to put on a show.But first up was the legendary Dr Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
This was Henryk Górecki beyond the Third Symphony. His otherwise ubiquitous masterpiece was notable by its absence from yesterday's programme. That was surely a conscious decision, and a wise one, allowing his many other important works to come out from its shadow. Górecki turned out to be an ideal subject for the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s “Total Immersion” treatment. His music gradually evolved throughout his career, from acerbic neoclassicism, to esoteric serialism, and then to austere minimalism. But the links between the phases outweigh the differences, so hearing music from each in close Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The City: Now That Everything’s Been SaidWith early 1971's Tapestry, Carole King released a worldwide best seller which belatedly recognised that as an interpreter of her own songs, she had no peers. King had made the jump from the writer of songs for others to successful singer-songwriter. Harry Nilsson had done it. So had Randy Newman. Jimmy Webb would too. All three were based in Los Angeles.She had moved there from New York in 1968. The new home of America’s music business had supplanted the city where she had written “The Loco-Motion”, “Pleasant Valley Sunday, "Will You Love Me Read more ...
Aleks Sierz
Titles don’t come much more evocative than this: Valhalla, the gigantic hall in Odin’s Asgard where those slain in battle come to feast, is the Norse mythological version of the Islamist fantasy of eternal life for jihadist martyrs. Valhalla brings to mind the sound of Wagnerian horns and the sights of vast mountain peaks. It’s all very Nordic, very Aryan and very Tolkien. And it’s the setting for playwright Paul Murphy’s excellent new play about scientific ethics, an 80-minute two-hander which is co-winner, with Bea Roberts’s similary great And Then Come the Nightjars, of this new-writing Read more ...
Richard Bratby
“How fair is the Princess Salome tonight”! That slithering clarinet run, that glint of moonlight: few operas create their world so instantly and so intoxicatingly. At Symphony Hall, the lights rose on the very back row of the stage, the percussion riser serving as the terrace from which Andrew Staples’s Narraboth and Anna Burford’s Page exchanged their ecstasies and warnings. Beneath them, Kirill Karabits directed a surging, shimmering Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra with urgent, economical gestures. By the time Lise Lindstrom glided on downstage as Salome, the scope and quality of this Read more ...
Graham Rickson
Adams: Absolute Jest, Grand Pianola Music San Francisco Symphony/Michael Tilson Thomas, with Orli Shaham and Marc-André Hamelin (pianos), Synergy Vocals (SFS Media)Beethoven's scherzos can be deceptively weighty, the fun allied with serious intent. John Adams' brilliant Absolute Jest takes Beethoven's approach to extremes, in the form of a vast 25-minute scherzo cheerfully quoting from the great man's quartets and symphonies. Some are instantly recognisable. Like the Seventh Symphony's insistent 6/8 rhythm, which dominates the opening section. This is such clever, engaging music, with Read more ...
David Nice
With her strong, often fierce features and her convincing simulations of rage, Kate Fleetwood might have been born to play Medea. Unfortunately this isn’t Euripides’ Medea but Rachel Cusk’s free variations on the myth rather than the play. Many of her observations on marriage, motherhood and divorce are as penetrating and harsh as much of what we find in Greek tragedy, but they don’t join up to form the great dramatic arc you get in the original. Even director Rupert Goold, going way beyond the safe boundaries of so much British theatre as ever, can’t transcend the obstacles.In this last Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The question of the Macbeths’ dead child is one of those Shakespearean quandaries, like Hamlet’s age, Iago’s cuckolding and Beatrice and Benedick’s earlier dalliance. How much do they really matter? In this new film version of the Scottish play, it’s all about the back story. Everything – Macbeth’s disdain for death in battle, Lady Macbeth’s descent into somnambulant madness – hinges on the loss of a child.The solemn, wordless opening locates the Macbeths’ motivation in bereavement for a little child onto whose dead eyelids Macbeth places pebbles before the body is paganistically cremated on Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It has been three years since The Lemonheads, Evan Dando’s slacker kings, last toured the UK and six years since they released Varshons, a covers album. So it was a pleasant surprise when they recently announced a return to these shores to play some shows with no particular product to push, especially given that anyone might imagine that they had since long disappeared. Power pop with the odd dash of country and punk rock never goes out of fashion though, and in front of a room full of 30- and 40-somethings, the band dished out an evening of nostalgia that was enough to cast minds back Read more ...