Reviews
Ismene Brown
What a day for piano-lovers and Beethoven-lovers – Elisabeth Leonskaja for lunch, Maria João Pires for supper. Beethoven from both, stupendous playing from both, all in all generating a general sense of disbelief in this member of the audience. I mean, really! The Wigmore Hall is the epicure’s choice for music, but even by Wiggie standards this was beyond expectations.Still more, these two grand pianists were bringing Beethoven the virtuoso pianist himself to life, turning from a display of his dynamic improvisation powers to his instinctive pleasure in the more rule-based working-out of Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
“If it bleeds it leads”, proclaims crime news reporter Joe Loder (Bill Paxton) as he investigates the bloody remains of a car crash with his invasive camera lens in a bid to make the biggest bucks out of the exploitation of human tragedy. It’s a mantra which curious onlooker Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal, who has shed a massive 30 pounds for the role) takes to grim and vicious extremes when he sets up his own TV news business. First-time director Dan Gilroy sets his grisly and blackly funny satire of modern media practices and the American dream on a seedy night-time LA canvas which oozes style Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
I declare an interest. In the last 10 years or so the Scottish Ensemble has twice, at my invitation, visited the Borders village where I live, about 30 miles south of Edinburgh. On both occasions the ensemble performed a rich and challenging programme in front of a rural audience awestruck that such uncompromisingly competent music-making could descend on a village hall more accustomed to flower shows and badminton tournaments. As a promoter, I was amazed that the ensemble’s answer to my invitation was, without equivocation, “yes”. When the day came, a dozen players turned up, and with Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Alan Yentob’s culture programme, Imagine, returned for its autumn season with a two-part examination of one of the most potently disturbing episodes in the history of art, let alone culture. Even before the programme’s title, masterpieces by such as Kirchner, Beckmann and Klimt flashed before our eyes. Thus began an exploration into how Hitler – a failed art student -– acted out his hatred of the great art of the 20th-century avant garde, which he thought to be as sickly and degenerate as the Jews he was also determined to destroy.Yet it was German Jews who in the main collected and supported Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
James McCarthy’s oratorio Malala is both a heartfelt tribute to the young Nobel Peace laureate, Malala Yousafzai, and political statement in favour of the education of women. In it, as in its companion piece A Child of Our Time, a persecuted individual is turned into a symbol of all mankind. Indeed, Malala writes in a statement in the programme that “I wasn’t chosen because I am just one girl – I was chosen because of the belief in all girls whose voices can be heard.” This is put more simply in the music, which ends with the full chorus singing “we are all Malala!”The text of Malala, by the Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Can you sense a person's life through a sequence of objects? Not to mention influence and legacy? Biographical exhibitions are fascinating, not least because they also tell us something about looking back through the filter of the present. And William Morris (1834-1896) has certainly been, in many ways, a man for all seasons. Here the gifted design historian and biographer, Fiona MacCarthy, is the compiler in charge, providing an affecting look at a man whose sheer intelligence, combined with heartbreaking energy, determination and idealism, not only affected his world but went further Read more ...
Kimon Daltas
This concert was part of a tour of Canada’s National Arts Centre orchestra to five cities in the UK themed around the anniversary of the start of World War One. The Ottawa-based orchestra joined forces with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Choir for this London centrepiece to the tour, under the baton of violinist-turned-conductor Pinchas Zukerman. Splicing two orchestras together with necessarily minimal rehearsal time may not make perfect musical sense but, as artistic director of the NCA orchestra and principal guest conductor of the RPO, Zukerman is uniquely Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
"Baffling paranormal thriller" is your drive-thru soundbite to describe Intruders, but despite a lingering threat of genre-cliché, it holds your attention with a very capable cast and some stylish cinematography. The action is set in Washington State and Oregon in the American Northwest (though it was apparently shot over the border in British Columbia), and the chilly, metallic light has a distinctly Scandinavian air.It was funded by BBC Worldwide and BBC Two and first shown on BBC America, where it scored healthy ratings. How interesting that a show aimed at the Stateside market, where they Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The key lines are “you’re reborn into an untroubled world” – a world “where everyone’s the same.” The 1956 Don Siegel science fiction film Invasion of the Body Snatchers is often taken as a response to America’s fear of Communism and the associated suppression of self, or as a commentary on the encroaching conformity brought by the spread of consumerism and a regimented suburbia. In both cases, homogenisation and standardised behaviour were the potential result.Seeing the film anew does nothing to alter these interpretations. In cinemas again as part of the BFI’s Days of Fear and Wonder Read more ...
Florence Hallett
Andrew Graham-Dixon’s villainous alter ego got a second airing tonight in his exploration of 19th-century Britain’s love of all things Gothic. Last week we saw him hanging about in decaying graveyards, or appearing, wraithlike in a dank corner of a Gothic ruin, while ravens circled portentously overhead (main picture). We saw him relating tales of horror and mystery in flickering candlelight, or peering through the flames of an infernal bonfire, and in tonight’s episode, always one for going the extra mile, he was touring Victorian sewers, with only a rat for company.The great thing about Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
In The Overnighters documentarist Jesse Moss found his story and pursued it with remarkable empathy, all in the best traditions of the genre. He persuaded both sides in this tale of (quiet) confrontation to trust him, and they opened up completely. Then closing minute revelations that come as a total shock take his film to a different level, turning what would have been a strong film in itself into something that will stay in the memory for a very long time.It made us ponder that frequent question with the form: what persuades the subjects of a film to continue cooperation, when the subject Read more ...
Matthew Wright
The Afrobeats scene is coming to a venue near you. Anglo-Ghanaian artist Fuse ODG, who won the best African Act MOBO last week for the second year running, launched his first album T.I.N.A. last night with a relentless, exuberant performance that brought out the African party flavour to these songs. His album release and tour, on the back of the MOBO success, marks a significant moment in his progression from niche internet popularity to the mainstream. Fuse is a working model of how to create a music career online, and his profile has been raised to its current breaking-through status Read more ...