London
Gavin Dixon
How to respond to Mahler? That was the challenge set by the London Symphony Orchestra to Edward Rushton when they commissioned him to write an opener for this programme. Rushton’s response was to take a story from a biography of Alma and spin it into an orchestral fantasy. The story goes that Alma, listening to Gustav compose the Fifth Symphony, complained about the excessive orchestration, which he then dutifully toned down.Even by Rushton’s own admission the tale is apocryphal to the point of outright fiction, but it provided a starting point for a more idiosyncratic exploration of Mahler’s Read more ...
Simon Munk
Jonathan Thomas helped set up Thomas Heatherwick Studios, having met the man behind the Olympic Cauldron, new double-decker bus and potentially the controversial new Garden Bridge at university. Along the way, Thomas left to form Make Ltd and now Maker. He mixes modern materials and techniques with traditional craftsmanship to create bespoke and handmade furniture and installations.SIMON MUNK: What attracted you to making things with your hands?JONATHAN THOMAS: I grew up on a farm where if something broke you fixed it, or if there was something you needed, you made it. I was surrounded by Read more ...
Nick Hasted
“No other city has in its centre such an opportunity for profitable progress.” Anyone depressed and outraged by London’s gentrification plague will find this the most chilling statement by visionary gangster Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins), as his criminal guests sip champagne and his boat eases down the Thames, where Docklands cranes stand in stilled salute, and he sketches his plans for East London’s redevelopment around a 1988 Olympic stadium.The apparently prophetic nature of this 1979 gangster film is merely symptomatic of its greatness. John Mackenzie’s direction and Barrie Keeffe’s script Read more ...
stephen.walsh
I must have been one of the few in Saturday’s audience for Richard Ayres’s new opera who had never seen Barrie’s play or read the book, so I’m unable to judge how faithfully it renders the original – in case that matters. Somehow one knows the dramatis personae: Peter Pan himself, the Darling family, Nana the dog-nurse, Captain Hook, Tinkerbell, Tiger Lily and of course the ticking crocodile, who swallowed Hook’s watch along with his arm. They are all here, wittily, sometimes brilliantly, reimagined in Keith Warner’s panto-like staging. What eluded me, and perhaps not only me, was the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The idea of a movie spin-off from BBC One's spy show Spooks has been lurking with intent ever since the tenth and final series ended in 2011. Finally it's here, helmed by director Bharat Nalluri (who shot the first and last episodes for TV) and with Peter Firth's Sir Harry Pearce at its centre. Where, as the Spookfather-in-chief, he had to be.Since Spooks stuck unswervingly to its grand tradition of bumping off leading characters – diehards will still be wiping away a tear at memories of Rupert Penry-Jones's Adam Carter, Richard Armitage's Lucas North and Nicola Walker's Ruth Evershed – Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
During its 10-season run on BBC One between May 2002 and October 2011, Spooks built a lasting reputation as a superior espionage thriller, charting the battle of a squad of MI5 agents to protect the realm against its fiendish and unscrupulous adversaries. Despite the inevitable plot-holes and sometimes incredible storylines, Spooks managed to keep itself anchored in the bleak realities of intelligence work, where it was wise to trust nobody and if you were paranoid, that's because the bad guys really were out to get you.As a string of leading actors such as Matthew Macfadyen, Keeley Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Be a soloist: take responsibility for yourself. These are not maxims often encountered in musical ensembles where unity of purpose and execution is valued, but they lie behind the philosophy and sheer style of Ensemble InterContemporain, which Pierre Boulez founded in his own image to show confidence in the necessity and vitality of a Modernism always under threat when an easy life and easy listening are so easily bought.The Barbican’s celebration of Boulez in his ninetieth year began last week with the solemn obsequies of his Rituel and continued here in a vein of remembrance with Mémoriale Read more ...
David Nice
Judge Judy meets The Only Way Is Essex: this endlessly resourceful production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s first (mini) masterpiece Trial by Jury is one that cries out to appear on TV. Which in a make-believe sense it does: we’re the audience in the studio where Court on Camera is about to air. A warm-up chappie who turns out to be the Usher (Wagnerian bass-baritone in training Martin Lamb) – on other Sundays it will be a lady – gauges our capacity to applaud and boo, and we’re off on a case of breach of promise of marriage as you never saw it before.The pleasure is doubled because in Charles Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Model for Murder sits at the polite end of Fifties British exploitation B-pictures, a stiff, washed-out world of bloodless Mayfair murder, and sexless fashion world intrigue. Strip Tease Murder, a still more salaciously titled, Soho-set near-contemporary of this 1959 curio is also released this month, getting its hands grubbier with some actual, heavily censor-snipped stripping. But in this imaginary Mayfair, the looming Sixties of kitchen-sink cinema, blazingly colourful pop music and clothes, Psycho and Peeping Tom are still unimaginable.The pot-boiler plot finds merchant seaman David ( Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Visits by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra are always an adrenaline boost for musical life in London, and yesterday evening was no exception. The first concert in their brief residency took in Finnish, French and German music (plus one Russian piece – the big Swan Lake waltz for an encore), all presented with a distinctly American accent. This is an orchestra that trades in big sounds, delivered with clarity and confidence. It is a seductive combination, and while subtleties were often overlooked, they were rarely lamented for long, as the sheer joy of the music-making swept you along.Esa- Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Conductor Robin Ticciati and pianist Javier Perianes are an odd couple. Ticciati is forthright and disciplined, while Perianes is reticent but erratic. But they demonstrated last night that Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto can accommodate those extremes, and even draw on the resulting tensions.Ticciati brought a decidedly Classical approach to Beethoven’s score. Phrases were carefully shaped, and balances finely judged. Which isn’t to say that the music-making was mechanical; there was plenty of ebb and flow here, and Ticciati was always keenly aware of the shape and direction each phrase. Read more ...
joe.muggs
The Garudio Studiage collective could scarcely be more archetypal of London's current generation of makers. Their work – more often than not produced for ordinary consumers as jewellery, accessories or home decor, using found objects as subject matter and often as materials – blurs the lines between pop art, documentary, comedy and occasionally political commentary.Over on the Bruichladdich Site, we meet them and find out about their work and how location inspires them.