Reviews
Surviving the Holocaust - Freddie Knoller's War, BBC TwoFriday, 23 January 2015
First-hand testimonial is surely the building block of history. Whether it’s in the form of written diaries or the television memory, it allows us to go back to the very basics as we, the reader-viewer, effectively re-experience the life of the... Read more... |
Cucumber, Channel 4Thursday, 22 January 2015
It doesn’t take many cucumbers smacked into cupped male palms to realise this isn’t, surprisingly, a show about salad. Russell T Davies has written three new series (Banana shows on E4, and Tofu online), exploring LGBT sexuality today. Queer As Folk... Read more... |
Leiferkus, LPO, Jurowski, RFHThursday, 22 January 2015
To pair Rachmaninov’s brooding and little-performed The Miserly Knight with Wagner's brooding but much-performed Das Rheingold is an audacious piece of programming. The operas share an interest in the mortal power of money, and Rachmaninov’s score... Read more... |
James Dillon's Stabat Mater, London Sinfonietta, Volkov, QEHThursday, 22 January 2015
James Dillon calls this major work, premered at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival last November, a “Cubist Stabat Mater”. He sets the hymn, but adds in more recent words, texts on related themes by Picasso, Kristeva and Rilke, among... Read more... |
Andrea Chénier, Royal OperaWednesday, 21 January 2015
What kind of regime, asks Gérard, talks of justice while killing poets? It’s a question the answer to which suggests itself all too swiftly this week, briefly turning a revolutionary romp of an opera into something rather more chilling. Playing... Read more... |
A Most Violent YearWednesday, 21 January 2015
JC Chandor is rapidly turning into one of the most fascinating (and gifted) filmmakers out there, as A Most Violent Year proves in almost every way. Shamefully overlooked in this year's Oscar line-up, which neglected the film altogether, this... Read more... |
The Changeling, Sam Wanamaker PlayhouseWednesday, 21 January 2015
Ever been stuck in a claustrophobic space with a group of really unpleasant people? Add mayhem, murder and the kind of razor-sharp wit to be found in only a very few of the nastiest individuals, and you have Dominic Dromgoole’s candlelit production... Read more... |
Latvian Radio Choir, Kļava, St John's Smith SquareWednesday, 21 January 2015
Latvia likes to be different. At least that’s the message they sent out with the cultural programme marking the start of the country’s presidency of the Council of the European Union. Pomp and circumstance were out, and instead we got a Cage-... Read more... |
New Atlantis, The CrystalWednesday, 21 January 2015
The future is a bad place. Most of our predictions about climate change and the world’s resources seem to come from a mindset of mute despair. In New Atlantis – part of the Enlightenment Café series produced by LAStheatre, which brings together... Read more... |
The Eichmann Show, BBC TwoTuesday, 20 January 2015
Part of a series of programmes marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, The Eichmann Show was a 90-minute account of how the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the SS's most enthusiastic engineers of the Holocaust, became "the... Read more... |
JACK Quartet, Wigmore HallTuesday, 20 January 2015
The mixed grilled school of programme-making is not for the JACK Quartet. Contemporary, contemporary, and contemporary: that was the bill of fare last night at this challenging recital offered by the young American group, graduates of the Eastman... Read more... |
La Maison de la RadioTuesday, 20 January 2015
Beyond being a portrait of a day in the life of French national broadcaster Radio France, it is hard to work out what La Maison de la Radio might be about. There is nothing about what the institution is meant to be for, little hinting at the... Read more... |
