Reviews
stephen.walsh
Having spent most of the summer on Wagner’s Ring, Longborough are now giving, as a kind of bergamasque, an opera whose entire length would fit into the first act of Götterdämmerung. La Bohème is everything The Ring is not. It is concise, melodious, playful, sentimental and weepy. Yet oddly enough, it could never have been written without Wagner. Puccini’s ears were open to every kind of influence, and quick to transform everything into a personal expression. So Bohème thrives on leitmotifs, skilfully worked transitions, complex simultaneities, and thematic orchestration – all those devices Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Michael Hurley: Armchair Boogie / Hi Fi Snock UptownWith songs about werewolves, penguins, the English upper classes, trains, the police and more werewolves, these albums from surrealist folk maverick Michael Hurley are charming and occasionally disconcerting. His ramshackle delivery seems a little offhand but it brings an intimacy that can’t fail to worm its way in. Armchair Boogie (credited to Michael Hurley & Pals) was originally issued in 1971; Hi Fi Snock Uptown in 1972. Both originally came out Raccoon, the label run The Youngbloods.Armchair Boogie was the belated follow-up to Read more ...
David Nice
If there’s a more thinly written, loosely structured and hammily acted play than Samuel Adamson’s panorama of Purcell’s London, then I have yet to endure it. Baffling, because this is the writer who brought us Southwark Fair, a lively depiction of the local scene which never so much as hinted as the village-institute clichés and banalities piled high here in a production by Dominic Dromgoole which does little to finesse the sorry situation.Who could have resisted top-league trumpeter Alison Balsom’s proposal to put on a show at the Globe? It must have seemed like a good idea: Purcell: The Read more ...
Caroline Crampton
Cush Jumbo could very easily have put on a hit show about Josephine Baker. There would have been a chorus line of flappers, replete with spangles and feathers. She would have belted out some of the more enduringly popular hits from Baker’s glory days in Paris. Perhaps the infamous banana skirt would even have made an appearance in what could, essentially, have been a crowd-pleasing jukebox musical.Instead, Jumbo has written a one-woman show so layered and nuanced that occasionally you feel like asking her to pause her performance while you take it all in. Civil rights, domestic violence, Read more ...
peter.quinn
Squeaking toy pigs. Tea pots. Bicycle pumps. Yes, the dynamic Brazilian composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal was back in town, making a rare appearance at Ronnie Scott's. Described by Miles Davis as “the most impressive musician in the world” - he first gained international recognition by playing on Miles's 1971 album Live-Evil - Pascoal's riotous polystylism incorporates jazz, rock and Brazilian music (MPB, bossa nova, chorinho, forro) to create what he calls musica universal or 'universal music'. However you label it, it's one of the most joyous noises in Read more ...
David Nice
Richard Strauss’s lavish postscript to 50 years of music theatre is about so much more than the theme of its source, Salieri’s Prima la musica e poi le parole ("first the music and then the words", with a big invisible question mark). Its overall subject of rival claims in opera also embraces spoken drama, poetry, dance and specific bel canto, all of them marshalled by the most experienced of theatre directors. And a director is what this concert performance probably needed to bring its cast members into dramatic harmony. Different levels of experience may have been at play, but at least the Read more ...
Simon Munk
Just go and buy it and download it right now, OK? Gunpoint is fantastic for so many reasons. But primarily it's fantastic because it plays fantastically. It's easy to lose sight of that fact when you learn the back story behind the game, when it's put in context. But let's not lose sight of this – Gunpoint is great fun to play.This stealth puzzle game sees your intrepid industrial espionage agent/hat-and-coated gumshoe breaking into a series of side-on buildings to investigate dodgy murders, steal corporate secrets and eavesdrop on intriguing conversations. These buildings are full of armed Read more ...
stephen.walsh
Her tongue firmly planted in her cheek, Mariame Clément grumbles in the Glyndebourne programme that Don Pasquale “poses no specific ‘conceptual’ challenge” to the opera director. Sighs of relief all round. Donizetti’s final comic masterpiece turns out to be “about” nothing but its own subtly nuanced retelling of the stock tale of the old buffer who plans to marry his ward, nephew’s sweetheart, or some such, but is outwitted by her with the help of a smart confederate. But that, it also emerges in Clément’s witty and intelligent production first staged on the tour two years ago but new now to Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Just three Cornettos: the trilogy accidentally named after an ice cream concludes here. Previously in the imaginations of actor Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright, London has been invaded by zombies and a quiet English village by organised crime. In The World’s End, it’s the turn of a faceless Home Counties feeder town to fall under the influence of yet another B movie sub-genre. In this case the local population is replaced by robots (although what precisely constitutes a robot is one of the film’s fun running gags).Is there just a hint of weariness as Pegg, Wright and faithful lumpen co- Read more ...
David Nice
A second visit to hear this already great young Russian pianist in six months was meant for private pleasure only. Yet no-one in the Wigmore Hall audience last night, I’ll hazard a guess, will ever have heard Liszt playing like Sudbin’s in a first half which itself merited a standing ovation, so the world needs to know about it.So many Liszt interpreters give us a too-many-notes feeling of rapid indigestion, a heaviness like the hot, humid, blanched days we’ve had recently. Sudbin’s playing was like yesterday’s happier summer evening, all clear colours with a cooling wind, in the recital’s Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Last night the “freaky” Devendra Banhart didn’t make an appearance. No songs were performed cross-legged, nor were there any wig-outs. For the majority of the evening the 32-year-old American-Venezuelan hippy was, by his standards, practically understated. In keeping with his new album, Mala, he chose to emphasise songwriting over personality. For those of us who were beginning to lose faith in him, it all came as something of a relief.At the beginning of Banhart’s psychedelic-folk career, the tall singer’s exotic approach led many to consider him a wunderkind. His imagination was wild and Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Anniversary years are essential to classical music, shaking up our regular rhythms of programming and listening every year with new emphasis and new discoveries. While Britten, Wagner and Verdi have all had their moments in 2013, it is Witold Lutosławski who may yet emerge as the unlikely hero. Last night his exquisitely stark Cello Concerto held its own against a major Adès premiere, itself written in memory of the elder composer – surely one of the 20th century’s neglected greats.The Cello Concerto isn’t folk-charming like the Concerto for Orchestra or sensuously appealing like the Third Read more ...