Reviews
The Sound of Music, Regent's Park Open Air TheatreTuesday, 06 August 2013
Over in Southwark you can currently find Rodgers and Hammerstein exploring the seamier side of life among the prostitutes and drop-outs of Pipe Dream, but in the woody amphitheatre of the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre it’s all raindrops on roses... Read more... |
SilenceTuesday, 06 August 2013
A taciturn, bearded Irishman leaves Berlin to return to his homeland. He’s travelling there to record silence. Arriving in Donegal, he wanders the countryside with a microphone trying to capture an environment where sounds made by humans do not... Read more... |
Prom 29: Tannhäuser, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, RunniclesMonday, 05 August 2013
On the one occasion I went to Bayreuth, I made the mistake of seeing The Flying Dutchman and Lohengrin after the best of Ring cycles. At the Proms we’ve had a week of serious Wagnerian withdrawal symptoms, so Tannhäuser was never going to feel like... Read more... |
CD: Mike Gibbs + TWELVE play Gil EvansMonday, 05 August 2013
Think of the ingredients you look for in a great jazz record – inspired, exploratory improv, the complete reinvention of standards, ear-catching arrangements, sonorities you've never heard before – and this new big band recording from Mike Gibbs... Read more... |
La Bayadère, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera HouseSunday, 04 August 2013
It’s unspeakably bad for so many reasons that the injured Bolshoi Ballet director Sergei Filin cannot be in London to see his company perform, and one is that he can’t see his protegée Olga Smirnova revealing herself to us as destined to be one of... Read more... |
Pipe Dream, Union TheatreSunday, 04 August 2013
Rodgers and Steinbeck: sound unlikely? Well, self-proclaimed “family show” man Hammerstein may have baulked at words like "whorehouse" when he created a play for music out of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday. But by 1955 the R&H duo... Read more... |
Edinburgh 2013: Ban This Filth!Sunday, 04 August 2013
If the past week or so has proven anything, it’s that feminism in 2013 has lost none of its power to inspire, anger and enthrall. Given the nature of the abuse meted out to those who raise their voices above the chorus, for Alan Bissett to turn his... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Verbier: Festival scales new heightsSunday, 04 August 2013
The moment when Alfred Brendel shuffled on stage during the Verbier Festival’s 20th Anniversary Concert not to play, but to turn pages for long-time colleague Emmanuel Ax, expressed everything that is so special, so extraordinary about this festival... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Harry NilssonSunday, 04 August 2013
Nilsson: The RCA Albums CollectionThe irony with Harry Nilsson is that despite being one of pop’s most distinctive and lauded songwriters, his two best-known singles were cover versions. In 1969 he hit the American and British charts with “... Read more... |
Conrad Shawcross: Timepiece, RoundhouseSaturday, 03 August 2013
Last time I encountered a work by Conrad Shawcross, it made me feel sick. His kinetic light sculpture, Slow Arc Inside a Cube IV, occupied a room the size of a broom cupboard at the Hayward Gallery’s Light Show. Inside a dense metal cage on spindly... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Timo Andres, Berlioz, SchoenbergSaturday, 03 August 2013
Timo Andres: Home Stretch Timo Andres (piano), Metropolis Ensemble/Andrew Cyr (Nonesuch)Begin with Timo Andres’s realisation of Mozart’s Coronation piano concerto. Mozart omitted to write down the soloist’s left hand part, so Andres provides... Read more... |
Prom 26: Serkin, BBC Symphony Orchestra, KnussenFriday, 02 August 2013
You wait years for a live performance to test whether Tippett’s Second Symphony is a masterpiece, and then two come along within six months. Both are due to the missionary zeal of the BBC Symphony Orchestra management, determined to give an... Read more... |
