Reviews
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 ...
Graham Rickson
Prokofiev: Symphonies 4 (Op.47) & 5, Dreams Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra/Kiril Karabits (Onyx)Prokofiev was adept at recycling good ideas. His Symphony No. 3 is linked thematically to the opera The Fiery Angel, and the less abrasive No 4 shares some ideas with the ballet The Prodigal Son. The piece was radically revised in 1947 and became Prokofiev's Op 112, though I've always preferred the more compact earlier version. Composed in 1929, it's full of delectable ideas, the lyricism anticipating the scores written after his return to Russia in the mid-1930s. Like the beautiful woodwind Read more ...
Matt Wolf
London property prices could well plummet, not to mention James Franco's ever-wayward career, if enough people see Good People, a staggeringly inept London-set gorefest that casts James Franco as an expat London property developer and Kate Hudson as his schoolteacher-wife who likes buying major appliances for friends as gifts. But since Danish director Henrik Ruben Genz's English-language feature film debut is likely to sink without a trace, the reputations of all involved should suffer scant permanent damage, and there may even be those who take solace in the news that Hollywood hunks Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
When the Royal Opera House told Kenneth MacMillan that Mahler was unsuitable for ballet, he went – where else? – to Germany. Though the success of MacMillan's Lied von der Erde for Stuttgart Ballet led to its happy adoption into Royal Ballet repertoire, making ballet to Mahler still seems to draw German companies more than others – whether because the orchestras, audiences, or state subsidies are better, who knows?But the company visiting the Edinburgh International Festival last night was not that familiar Mahler-exponent, Hamburg Ballet, whose director John Neumeier has tackled eight of the Read more ...
David Nice
Praise be to Carl Nielsen. Praise always, of course, to one of the greatest symphonists, and happy 150th birthday (again), but gratitude on this occasion is due to a programme mostly lining up Nielsen works rare and familiar, for getting me to the Albert Hall to witness a surely unsurpassable performance of the Brahms Violin Concerto. The sound quality, the near-perfect intonation with which Nikolay Znaider wields his Kreisler Guarneri “Del Gesù” is only the half of it; hearing such close work with an orchestra and conductor equally alert to every small detail without ever losing sight of Read more ...
Simon Munk
Sneak in, get the jewels, don't be seen. It should all be so simple. No, it really should be all so simple – because Mike "Thomas Was Alone" Bithell's second solo game does best when it keeps things simple and sticks to its purist gameplay guns. The problem is on top Bithell has layered phoned-in A-list celeb voice-acting, top-heavy thematic concepts and an attempt to retell the Robin Hood story in a YouTube and Twitch age.The play's the thing – and Volume does that superlatively. Taking clear inspiration from Metal Gear Solid's virtual reality missions, it presents sparse and stylised Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
A few months ago I saw a documentary called Ming of Harlem: Twenty-One Storeys in the Air, about a man who kept a tiger and an alligator as pets in his tiny New York apartment. It was a staggering thing to comprehend, not just because of the logistics involved, but the blithe cruelty in doing that to an animal, even a savage one. Then I saw The Wolfpack.No, this doesn’t concern cruelty to wolves, but to children, and not just any children, but a man’s own. I’m beginning to wonder what they put in the water in Manhattan.This is a fascinating film, often difficult to believe, about six brothers Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Heaven, or a lot of pagan gods at least, may know what was in the air 2500 years ago. Bettany Hughes has just finished her trilogy of philosophers from that millennium, and now we have Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill taking us genially around Athens, founded – you guessed – 2500 years ago and providing the template for cities ever since.The televisual essay is now an integral part of popularising ancient history. And what could be more persuasive (and helpful to the tourist industry) than visits to two great ancient cities – Rome follows next week – with a pat on our heads to remind us of Read more ...