20th century
Grivnov, LPO, Jurowski, RFHThursday, 30 April 2015
Deep pain and sadness expressed through intense creative discipline aren’t qualities noted often enough in the music of Sergey Rachmaninov. Yet they’ve been consistently underlined, with rigour to match, in Vladimir Jurowski’s season-long “Inside... Read more... |
Stephen Hough, RFHWednesday, 29 April 2015
It took just two bars of Debussy's La plus que lente for Stephen Hough to transport the entire Royal Festival Hall to Paris. The nearest thing the French composer ever wrote to a café waltz – inspired by a gypsy band in a local hotel – this... Read more... |
Three Tales, Ensemble BPM, IMAX Science MuseumThursday, 23 April 2015
Poised vibrantly enough between the buried-alive monotony of Philip Glass and the dynamic flights of John Adams, Steve Reich’s Three Tales deserves a special place in music-theatre history ("opera" it is not). Ironically, since it deals with the two... Read more... |
Man to Man, Wales Millennium Centre, CardiffTuesday, 24 March 2015
There can be few modern plays as testing for a female actor as Manfred Karge’s Man to Man. When Tilda Swinton took it on at the Royal Court in 1987 and brought to the many roles of this one woman show her androgynous intensity it was the performance... Read more... |
Bronfman, LPO, Jurowski, RFHSunday, 22 March 2015
Over the past two Saturdays, Vladimir Jurowski and a London Philharmonic on top form have given us a mini-festival of great scores for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. The hallucinogenic vision of ancient Greece in Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé last week was... Read more... |
Total Immersion: Boulez at 90, BarbicanSunday, 22 March 2015
Pierre Boulez sits in the back of a car as it drives across Westminster Bridge. He is talking about the audience appeal of his music, and he is characteristically direct. If the performance is good, and the situation is right, he insists, then... Read more... |
Serenade/Carmina Burana, Birmingham Royal Ballet, London ColiseumFriday, 20 March 2015
Serenade seems to be one of George Balanchine’s most evanescent works, a floating, delicate skein of movement that is over almost before it begins, leaving nothing but memory behind. In reality, it is tough as old boots, a warrior of a ballet, one... Read more... |
Modern Masters, English National Ballet, Sadler's WellsThursday, 12 March 2015
Reviews of English National Ballet in which I rave about what Tamara Rojo is doing for the company are getting to be the norm round here. This one is no exception, and I'm not even going to apologise for it. Last night was the opening of... Read more... |
Man and Superman, National TheatreThursday, 26 February 2015
How do you take your rom-coms? Full-fat Hollywood schmaltz, Shakespearean, or lean and elegant – a Stoppard perhaps, or Coward? If your answer did not include “With lashings of social philosophy, ethics and a lengthy dream sequence, preferably... Read more... |
Von Otter, BBCSO, Oramo, BarbicanThursday, 19 February 2015
Hair-raising guaranteed or your money back: that might have been a publicity gambit, had there been one, for Sakari Oramo’s latest journey with the BBC Symphony Orchestra around a Nielsen symphony. That he knows the ropes to scale the granite cliff... Read more... |
Magnificent Obsessions, Barbican Art GalleryFriday, 13 February 2015
The title has it about right: no matter what it is they are busily acquiring, collectors seem to be an obsessive bunch, and their obsessions can achieve quite magnificent proportions. The stereotyped image of the collector as a socially challenged... Read more... |
Florian Boesch, Roger Vignoles, Wigmore HallFriday, 30 January 2015
Ernst Krenek is probably best remembered nowadays as the composer of Jonny Spielt Auf – the quintessential Zeitoper of Weimar Germany and later the archetype of all that was designated “degenerate” in art by the Nazi regime. And perhaps also as –... Read more... |
