Reviews
Balanas Sisters, Anonimi Orchestra, The Bomb Factory, Marylebone review - talented Latvian conductor heads exciting new ensembleWednesday, 24 January 2024
In an evening filled with "firsts" one of the many striking aspects was the effect the Anonimi Orchestra debut had on people walking past on the Marylebone Road. As we sat in the warehouse space of the Bomb Factory – with its exposed brick walls and... Read more... |
Manon, Royal Ballet review - a glorious half-century revival of a modern classicTuesday, 23 January 2024
It’s 50 years since the first, damning reviews of Kenneth MacMillan’s ballet Manon declared it to be too long and lumbered with terrible music. One of them also said that the title role was an appalling waste of the ballerina who, in the title role... Read more... |
Ablogin, SCO, Emelyanychev, City Halls, Glasgow review - a happy 50th birthdayTuesday, 23 January 2024
The mood was indeed celebratory at Glasgow’s City Halls on Friday evening for the second of two concerts celebrating the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s 50th birthday. It opened with a suite from Figaro Gets a Divorce, a comic opera written by composer... 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... |
Music Reissues Weekly: The Long Ryders - Native SonsSunday, 21 January 2024
Native Sons joyfully reframed musical styles of the past for the present. Even so, the freshness and oomph of The Long Ryders’ debut album meant revivalism was sidestepped. Originally issued in October 1984, it was a landmark in helping to nurture... Read more... |
Sakamoto's Kagami, Tin Drum, Roundhouse review - haunting virtual reality performance from late composerSaturday, 20 January 2024
This mixed reality concert is simultaneously a dimension juggling conundrum, a philosophical puzzle, and a fascinating insight into what the future might hold. Composer Ryuichi Sakamoto – whose influences included Bach, John Cage and David Bowie –... Read more... |
Igor Levit, Wigmore Hall review - every note of Brahms’ late genius carefully weighedSaturday, 20 January 2024
Successful performances, conductor Robin Ticciati once suggested to me, are when “the head has a conversation with the heart”. The same goes, surely, for great music, though from personal experience one has to reach a certain age to find that true... Read more... |
Cowbois, Royal Court review - fabulously queer extravaganzaSaturday, 20 January 2024
At its best theatre is a seducer. It weaves a magic spell that can persuade you, perhaps against your better judgement, to love a show. To adore a show; to enjoy yourself. This, at least, is my experience of Charlie Josephine’s Cowbois, a queer... Read more... |
The End We Start From review - watery apocalyptic drama with star turnFriday, 19 January 2024
The End We Start From couldn’t be more timely, opening in cinemas after weeks of heavy rain and flooding dominated UK news. But the film’s release has also coincided with the ITV police drama After the Flood and it’s too tempting... Read more... |
True Detective: Night Country, Sky Atlantic review - death in a cold climateFriday, 19 January 2024
This fourth series of the erratic detective drama opens with an epigraph, attributed to a certain Hildred Castaigne: “For we do not know what beasts the night dreams when its hours grow too long for even God to be awake.” It sounds dark and creepy,... Read more... |
The Holdovers review - a perfectly formed comedy that wears its perfection lightlyFriday, 19 January 2024
Twenty years ago Alexander Payne put Paul Giamatti on the map in Sideways; here he is again, as another punctilious expert, this time not in the field of viniculture but plain old culture, of the old-fashioned classical kind. And his adversary is... Read more... |
Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer review - the visionary director's extraordinary careerFriday, 19 January 2024
“It’s an injustice of nature that I haven’t become an athlete and it’s an injustice of nature that we do not have wings,” says German director Werner Herzog, aged 81, sounding characteristically intense.Who else, muses Wim Wenders, one of the many... Read more... |
