Reviews
Like Water for Chocolate, Royal Ballet review - confusing and ill-conceivedTuesday, 07 June 2022
When George Balanchine said that “there are no mothers-in-law in ballet”, he wasn’t just stating the obvious. He meant that there are some things that simply cannot be expressed in dance. Emotion and nuance are a story-ballet’s native territory;... Read more... |
Hewitt, Concerto Budapest SO, Keller, Cadogan Hall review - magical Mozart and bullish BeethovenTuesday, 07 June 2022
Considering its status as the most famous piece of classical music [citation needed], Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is actually quite rarely programmed in London. I can’t remember the last time I heard it live before last night, and it took the... Read more... |
Orfeo ed Euridice, Blackwater Valley Opera Festival review - heavenly possibilities, devils at work in the detailsTuesday, 07 June 2022
"Elysian" is the best way to describe the dream gardens of Ireland's Lismore Castle in early June: lupins, alliums and peonies rampant in endless herbaceous borders, supernatural perspectives towards the main building on various levels. This year’s... Read more... |
Davidsen, Oslo Philharmonic, Mäkelä, Barbican review - full workout for the nervous systemMonday, 06 June 2022
It could have been the most electrifying week of the musical year. Alas, Heathrow meltdown kept me from two of Klaus Mäkelä’s Sibelius concerts with his Oslo Philharmonic in Hamburg. But there was still what should have been the grand finale, the... Read more... |
Bloc Party, Barrowland, Glasgow review - falling back on past glories brings a jubilant responseMonday, 06 June 2022
As Bloc Party singer Kele Okereke noted at one point in this gig, his band have now been visiting Glasgow for nearly two decades. Yet few of the shows played in that 18 year span, which have touched upon nearly all of the city’s main music venues,... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: In A Rocking Mood - Beverley’s Rock Steady 1966-1968Sunday, 05 June 2022
Beverley’s was an ice-cream shop and restaurant on Orange Street in Kingston, Jamaica. Records were on sale too. In 1961, an aspiring singer-songwriter named James Chambers turned up there with a song he’d written called “Dearest Beverley.” If it... Read more... |
Così fan tutte, Garsington Opera review - gambling with the highest stakesFriday, 03 June 2022
The scene is Monte-Carlo, around the beginning of the last century: a carefully observed world of cloudless skies, glittering seas, high society and careless privilege shared with Death in Venice. John Cox’s staging works in cool harmony with the... Read more... |
The Midwich Cuckoos, Sky Max review - the 1957 sci-fi classic is given a contemporary spinFriday, 03 June 2022
If your memory of the 1957 John Wyndham novel about an alien invasion of an English village by chilling children with blonde pageboy hair is still pin-sharp, probably best to back-burner it before you watch Sky’s new adaptation of The Midwich... Read more... |
LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - four centuries of Italian music on paradeFriday, 03 June 2022
If you sought a spectacular shrugging-off of jubileemania last night, you could have done no better than this programme to coincide with Italian Republic Day from our own national treasures Antonio Pappano – Knight of the British Empire, if you’ll... Read more... |
Bergman Island review - Mia Hansen-Løve's joyful English-language debutFriday, 03 June 2022
French director Mia Hansen-Løve’s graceful, intriguingly open-ended seventh feature, and her English-language debut, is set on Fårö, the island that Ingmar Berman loved.“This is your landscape, Bergman. It corresponds to your innermost imaginings of... Read more... |
Parsifal, Opera North review - full focus and a dream line-upThursday, 02 June 2022
Wagner, in his medievalist, pan-European, 19th century way, wanted Parsifal to be a blend of abstract and religious experience for his audiences at Bayreuth, calling it a “festival play for a stage consecration”. Questions for those performing it... Read more... |
Carmen, Queen Elizabeth Hall review - a flawed but fascinating retreadThursday, 02 June 2022
When Natalia Osipova comes a-calling, a choreographer doesn’t say no. The Bolshoi-trained ballerina, having commandeered all the prime roles in her nine years at the Royal Ballet, is always looking to conquer new territory. In a string of self-... Read more... |
