Reviews
Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2014, National Portrait GallerySunday, 16 November 2014
It is hard to know whether the thematic and stylistic threads running through this year’s Taylor Wessing Prize are evidence of some general shift in approach, or simply reflect the judges’ tastes. In any case, where last year’s shortlist featured... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Reykjavík: Iceland Airwaves 2014Sunday, 16 November 2014
A slim 69-year-old man in a rumpled sports jacket looking like a gone-to-seed history lecturer with the colour-clash dress sense of Michael Portillo is gripping a microphone so hard it’s a wonder it hasn’t been crushed. He is barking lyrics in... Read more... |
The Kooks, O2 Academy, BirminghamSunday, 16 November 2014
Brighton’s guitar pop outfit, the Kooks have been churning out largely pleasant but fairly bland songs since their 2006 debut Inside In/Inside Out. Recent album Listen, however, has suggested that things might be changing. Less evident, but not... Read more... |
Samuelsen Duo, RLPO, Petrenko, Philharmonic Hall, LiverpoolSunday, 16 November 2014
Major change is afoot at the Liverpool Philharmonic. The new season has just opened as Philharmonic Hall has been undergoing a major refurbishment and earlier concerts during the autumn were held in the gargantuan acoustics of both cathedrals, where... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: The Velvet UndergroundSunday, 16 November 2014
The Velvet Underground: The Velvet Underground Super Deluxe EditionMGM, The Velvet Underground’s label, didn’t have a clue how to promote the band’s third album. The press kit accompanying its March 1969 release described drummer Maureen... Read more... |
Jazz Voice, Barbican/Jazz on 3, Ronnie Scott'sSaturday, 15 November 2014
Is it just me, or do Guy Barker's orchestral charts for Jazz Voice get more refined, more nuanced, more richly detailed every year? Effectively becoming earworm central last night, the Barbican resounded with tintinnabulating glockenspiels,... Read more... |
Glare, Linbury Studio TheatreSaturday, 15 November 2014
Søren Nils Eichberg’s new opera Glare is advertised as a “taut” thriller. It’s actually a short thriller. Big difference.The question of whether or not opera – a medium that wouldn’t win any prizes for sprinting – can successfully pull off a... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Hindemith, Colin Matthews, Walton, The Vocal ConstructivistsSaturday, 15 November 2014
Colin Matthews: No Man's Land, Crossing the Alps, Aftertones Hallé Orchestra, Hallé Choir, Hallé Youth Choir/Nicholas Collon and Richard Wilberforce, with Ian Bostridge (tenor) and Roderick Williams (baritone) (Hallé)Colin Matthews is still... Read more... |
Kate Tempest, The Haunt, BrightonFriday, 14 November 2014
Even before Kate Tempest appears, it’s clear this isn’t going to be an evening of slam poetry jamming. Her band walk on, three guys who attack a line-up of electronic kit with vigour, one wielding drumsticks, alongside Anth Clarke, a striking black... Read more... |
Leonskaja, SCO, Kamu, Usher Hall, EdinburghFriday, 14 November 2014
Most pianists never truly master one of Brahms’s two piano concertos, those colossal symphonies for soloist and orchestra, let alone both. To present the two in one concert, then, seems foolhardy – and apparently was when András Schiff went for the... Read more... |
Assassin's Creed: UnityFriday, 14 November 2014
What a setting! The history-hopping stealth action series drops into Revolutionary Paris in Unity. Arguably the first game of the "next generation" uses more processing power to render a gigantic, living city teeming with revolting peasants, towered... Read more... |
DiplomacyFriday, 14 November 2014
More frequently and accessibly than his fellow veteran directors of the New German Cinema, Volker Schlöndorff has captured the pandemonium wrought by Nazism – in in his Palme d’Or-sharing masterpiece The Tin Drum (1979), its quasi-sequel The Ogre (... Read more... |
