Reviews
Bruckner 6, OAE, Rattle, RFHSaturday, 23 April 2016It’s always fun to watch the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. As members of a self-governing orchestra, and often soloists in their own right, the players like to do things their way. Come the ripe second theme of the Bruckner Adagio and the... Read more... |
Blue Eyes, Episode 5, More4Saturday, 23 April 2016
Diversity has replaced perversity as a staple of modern drama. Whereas once upon a time an unenlightened viewer might cry – on seeing two men kiss – that they were going to leave the country before homosexuality became compulsory, a scene of mixed-... Read more... |
Manu Dibango & the Soul Makossa Gang, Ronnie Scott'sSaturday, 23 April 2016
It’s a nice dilemma. Cameroonian saxophonist and band leader Manu Dibango, who has a Ronnie’s residency ending tonight, helped create the disco sound with his 1972 single “Soul Makossa”. Since then he has ranged over the extended Afro-soul-funk-jazz... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Krenek, Schumann, OsmosisSaturday, 23 April 2016
Krenek: Piano Concertos 1-3 Mikhail Korzhev (piano), English Symphony Orchestra/Kenneth Woods (Toccata Classics)Ernst Krenek? If he's remembered at all, it's for his jazzy Weimar Republic opera Johnny spielt auf. This was an international hit after... Read more... |
Elizabeth at 90: A Family Tribute, BBC OneFriday, 22 April 2016
If only the Duchess of York had waited two more days, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II could have shared her natal date with St George, Shakespeare and Turner. But the Queen Mother did bequeath a sense of duty (as did George VI) and perhaps of... Read more... |
BalletBoyz, Life, Sadler's WellsFriday, 22 April 2016
Hearing that both Javier de Frutos and rabbit heads appear in the new BalletBoyz bill might give you pause. A choreographer so unafraid of graphic content that he started his career with naked one-man shows, and later made a piece about the Pope so... Read more... |
Jeff Lynne's ELO, O2 ArenaThursday, 21 April 2016
It was one of those bright spring days when it seemed every other radio station was playing “Mr Blue Sky”. It certainly didn’t feel like 30 years since ELO toured. But the fans at the O2, last night, knew exactly how long it’d been. Some may even... Read more... |
Funny Girl, Savoy TheatreThursday, 21 April 2016
Vaudeville is having quite the West End moment, with Funny Girl inheriting the Savoy from Gypsy and Mrs Henderson Presents over at the Noël Coward. Gypsy is the pick of the bunch dramatically, delivering theatre history with real psychological heft... Read more... |
Miles AheadThursday, 21 April 2016
Catching the essence of the mercurial, secretive and notoriously abrasive Miles Davis on film might reasonably be described as a mission impossible, but Don Cheadle has put his heart and soul into it. He directed it and plays the title role, he co-... Read more... |
The Flick, National TheatreWednesday, 20 April 2016
A Pulitzer Prize and numerous walkouts: The Flick, infamously, courts extreme reactions. Yet this latest American import is dedicated to minutiae. In Annie Baker’s slow-burning (three hours-plus), microscopic epic, her lens is trained on ordinary... Read more... |
Bastille DayWednesday, 20 April 2016
This Paris-set thriller was one of several films which had its release date postponed in the wake of the terrorist attacks in the French capital last November, giving the impression that it might be shockingly violent or provocatively political. In... Read more... |
Jenůfa, Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Bělohlávek, RFHTuesday, 19 April 2016
Janáček's lacerating music-drama of love-led sin and redemption in a 19th century Moravian village is the opera I'd recommend as the first port of call for theatregoers wary of the genre. Its emotional truths are unflinching, its lyricism as... Read more... |
