Reviews
Sun Rings, Sacconi Quartet, Festival Voices, Kings Place review - lift-off for an exhilarating voyage into the unknownSaturday, 18 January 2025
What better way to start a season about the Earth than by looking back on it from an astronaut’s perspective? At a time when the activities of assorted billionaires and emerging superpowers are making the space race topical again, it feels more than... Read more... |
A Complete Unknown review - how does it feel?Friday, 17 January 2025
Being unknowable has been almost as much of a preoccupation for the erstwhile Robert Zimmerman as writing songs. Previously on film he has played the role of Alias in Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, having first presented himself to... Read more... |
Love Life, Opera North review - Lerner and Weill's blast into the pastFriday, 17 January 2025
The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there. But in Love Life, Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner’s musical from 1948, it’s all the same country. The couple whose marriage is at the centre of it all are seen in different eras of US... Read more... |
Vermiglio review - a simple tale, simply but beautifully toldFriday, 17 January 2025
Another new release opens with the sounds of people in bed playing over the credits, but these are not Babygirl’s sighs of a woman faking sex but the angelic breathing of three young sisters sharing a bed in the snowy Alto Adige.It’s 1944, and Italy... Read more... |
Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, Dudamel, Barbican review - an epic journey from gossamer-like intimacy to apocalyptic rageThursday, 16 January 2025
Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela took the Barbican by storm last night with a thrilling account of Mahler’s Third Symphony, his great exploration of the cosmic order, ascending from raw paganism to sublime... Read more... |
Jenůfa, Royal Opera review - electrifying details undermined by dead spaceThursday, 16 January 2025
This was always going to be Jakub Hrůša’s night, his first at the Royal Opera since performances of Wagner’s Lohengrin won him the role of Antonio Pappano’s successor as Music Director, which he takes up at the beginning in the 2025/6 season.From... Read more... |
German National Orchestra, Marshall, Cadogan Hall review - sheer youthful exuberanceThursday, 16 January 2025
This concert was an effusion of pure joy. Billed as the German National Orchestra, the Bundesjugendorchester (Federal Youth Orchestra), all of whose players are aged from 14 to 19, make a glorious, powerful sound. Just over 100 teenage musicians... Read more... |
Chris McCausland, Winchester Theatre Royal review - Strictly winner as cheerfully cynical as everThursday, 16 January 2025
By all accounts Chris McCausland had to be persuaded to take part in the most recent series of Strictly Come Dancing, which he won with his professional partner Diane Buswell. It would be a commendable achievement for any non-dancer, but for a blind... Read more... |
Album: The Weather Station - HumanhoodThursday, 16 January 2025
Four of Humanhood’s 13 tracks are short, impressionistic mood pieces. Between 48 seconds and just-over a minute-and-a-half long, they mostly lack singing. Instrumentation is jazzy, leaning on piano and wind instruments. Drones and white noise evoke... Read more... |
Oliver!, Gielgud Theatre review - Lionel Bart's 1960 masterpiece is Bourne againWednesday, 15 January 2025
Into a world of grooming gangs, human trafficking and senior prelates resigning over child abuse cases comes Oliver!, Lionel Bart’s masterly musical. Is its grim tale of workhouses, pickpockets and domestic violence an awkward fit with today’s... Read more... |
What's the Matter with Tony Slattery?, BBC Two review - absorbing but troubling search for answersWednesday, 15 January 2025
In the late Eighties and Nineties, Tony Slattery became one of the most ubiquitous faces on television, appearing regularly on Whose Line Is It Anyway? and Have I Got News For You while popping up in quizzes and sitcoms all over the place (as well... Read more... |
Leif Ove Andsnes, Wigmore Hall review - colour and courage, from Hardanger to MajorcaTuesday, 14 January 2025
Forthright and upright, powerful and lucid, the frank and bold pianism of Leif Ove Andsnes took his Wigmore Hall audience from Norway to Poland (or rather, Paris and Majorca) with a final stop in France. A recital that began with two large-scale... Read more... |
