Russia
Fiddler on the Roof, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre review - dazzling gem of a production marks its diamond anniversaryThursday, 08 August 2024![]() If I were a rich man, I'd be inclined to put together a touring production of Fiddler on the Roof and send it around the world, a week here, a week there, to educate and entertain. But, like Tevye, I also have to sell a little milk to put... Read more... |
Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Philharmonia Chorus, RPO, Petrenko, RFH review - poetic cello, blazing chorusFriday, 12 April 2024![]() Purple patches flourished in the first half of this admirable programme: it could hardly have been otherwise given Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s devotion to a new work in his repertoire, and the current strength of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under... Read more... |
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, Marylebone Theatre review - from Russia with loveFriday, 29 March 2024![]() Like all great literature, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s final, eccentric, playfully wondrous short story seems to have been written just for us – across two centuries and on the other side of the world. It’s a resonance that ripples through Laurence Boswell’... Read more... |
Uncle Vanya, Orange Tree Theatre review - Chekhov served up choiceMonday, 11 March 2024![]() "We all live here in peace and friendship," notes Telegin (David Ahmad), otherwise known as Waffles, early in Uncle Vanya, to which one is tempted to respond, "yeah, right."As casually bruising a play as I know, Chekhov's wounding yet also brutally... Read more... |
Faust, LSO, Rattle, Barbican review - violence and wit in Shostakovich, luminosity in BrahmsSunday, 03 March 2024The LSO’s apéritif hour “Half-Six Fixes” have an informality that usually works and sometimes doesn’t. But the first of this two-night run of Dmitri Shostakovich’s monstrous and terrifying Fourth Symphony was unforgettable. Panels on the auditorium... Read more... |
Gerhaher, Huber, Wigmore Hall review - new colours from old favouritesMonday, 22 January 2024![]() After a frozen week, the sensual languor of Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été promised warm respite at the Wigmore Hall – especially when delivered by house favourite Christian Gerhaher and his peerless pianist, Gerold Huber.Yet the Bavarian baritone saved... Read more... |
Tchaikovsky's Wife review - husband materialSunday, 31 December 2023![]() The movies haven’t been kind to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The Nutcracker Suite was a highlight of Walt Disney’s Fantasia (1940) perhaps, but the 1969 Soviet biopic directed by Igor Talankin was tedious and Ken Russell’s The Music Lovers, released... Read more... |
Queendom review - an LGBTQ+ performance artist takes to the streets of Moscow in protestFriday, 01 December 2023![]() It takes a brave or a foolhardy person to walk the streets wearing almost nothing but barbed wire and platform shoes, especially when the occasion is an anti-war demo in Moscow and the penalty for joining the march is up to 15 years in jail.It’s... Read more... |
Album: Lucidvox - That's What RemainedThursday, 16 November 2023![]() That's What Remained is the aural equivalent of being pulled into a maelstrom and then surrendering to this powerful natural force. Initially, it does not seem safe. But it soon becomes apparent that submission isn’t a problem. It will be fine.... Read more... |
Lugansky, RPO, Petrenko, RFH review - so sure in all their waysMonday, 30 October 2023![]() It’s a given that no finer Rachmaninov interpreter exists than Nikolai Lugansky – a few others may see the works differently, not better – and that Vasily Petrenko has an uncanny affinity with both the swagger and the introspection of Elgar. But... Read more... |
Prom 16: Hallé, Elder review - a mighty Russian journeyThursday, 27 July 2023Perhaps music and politics should always stay at a decent arm’s length; in the modern world, they seldom can. The Hallé’s annual visit to the Proms presented an all-Russian bill and closed with Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony: his much-disputed “... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Musical Offering - works for the Soviet-era ANS synthesiserSunday, 09 July 2023![]() One of the most striking scenes in Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 outer-space allegory Solaris is psychologist Kris Kelvin’s first encounter with a being which seems to be his wife, who had died a decade earlier. The unsettling incident’s inherent tension... Read more... |
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