Barbican
Thomas H. Green
A few years ago it would have been hard to envisage proto-punk maniac Iggy Pop being a star feature of the EFG London Jazz Festival. His last few albums, though, have been heavily flecked with jazz, and let’s not forget that as far back as The Stooges’ 1970 album Funhouse, free jazz sax squalling was part of the mayhem. Tonight doesn’t veer into that kind of transgressive noisiness but is still far more than just, as the promotion suggests, a run-through of his often elegiac latest album Free.Once his band are onstage, including album co-creator, New York experimentalist Noveller (Sarah Read more ...
David Nice
The megastars are here at the Barbican, for an intensive three days in the case of the LA Phil and Gustavo Dudamel, throughout the season as the hall shines an "Artist Spotlight" on pianist Yuja Wang. Despite a shallow opener showcasing the individual talents of the Los Angeles principals and daft, rollicking Sousa at the end, there was a seriousness of intent and depth of focus that belied the touring glitz. The biggest miracle, perhaps, came in a three-minute encore from Wang - her third - but you couldn't fail to be deeply impressed by the execution of the rest.Just when you think you're Read more ...
Katherine Waters
Because he dramatised power, Shakespeare never really goes out of fashion. Treatments of his plays do though, and the RSC’s Measure for Measure, a transfer from Stratford set in turn-of-the-century Vienna, feels distinctly slack. The backdrop is supposedly a city filled with refugees, artists, political movers and shakers and members of the upper-class and demimonde. The arts and psychoanalysis are flourishing and social grey areas abound. But aside from design touches, little of this combustive social mix makes its way into the production. Psychological complexity already abounds and this Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
When it comes to the true jazz legends capable of filling concert halls with faithful fans, whom jazz festival programmers can put on as headliners, the choice is dwindling. Herbie Hancock is one and he does; his Barbican concert is one of the big events of this year’s EFG London Jazz Festival and it had been sold out for months.Hancock’s entrance onto the Barbican stage was greeted with a loud roar. Two hours later, the final sequence of the tunes which one would expect had the complete packed house up on its feet, with the keytar-toting hero strutting his way through “Cantaloupe Island” Read more ...
David Nice
So much was fresh and exciting about Michael Tilson Thomas's years as the London Symphony Orchestra's Principal Conductor (1988-1995; I don't go as far back as his debut, the 50th anniversary of which is celebrated this season). Carved in the memory are his concert performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's Mlada in "The Flight of the Firebird" festival, his high-octane piano playing as well as conducting in "The Gershwin Years", the transformative Prokofiev Fifth and Strauss Ein Heldenleben (both fortunately also recorded). He seems a more sober figure now, less swooping of gestures, eyes a little too Read more ...
Heather Neill
This is one play by Shakespeare ripe for tinkering. It's well nigh impossible now to take it at face value and still find romance and fun in the bullying: the physical and psychological abuse as a supposedly problematic wife is "tamed" into submission. And there have been experiments. Earlier this year, the Sherman Theatre in Cardiff presented a new play by Jo Clifford based on this source but set in a matriarchal world, and in 2003 Phyllida Lloyd directed a sparky all-female version at the Globe with Janet McTeer as Petruchio caricaturing male crudity to hilarious effect.If something radical Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
It’s hard to believe that in 1824 there were no fewer than six productions of Weber’s Der Freischütz in London alone. Since then this colourful piece of German Romanticism hasn’t fared nearly so well, disappearing from the UK’s opera houses not just for years but decades at a time.Fortunately concert halls (in London at any rate) have stepped enthusiastically into the breach, and after last night’s latest concert outing – an imported performance by Laurence Equilbey’s Paris-based Insula Orchestra (pictured below) and Accentus choir – you have to wonder whether maybe this isn’t for the best.If Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
The Oslo Philharmonic finished its centenary tour of Europe at the Barbican last night with ample proof that it consistently delivers one of the continent’s most well-rounded, and richly satisfying, orchestral sounds. The Norwegians’ modern history may date to 1919, but their stellar reputation only emerged in the 1980s. Then Mariss Jansons, just like Simon Rattle over in Birmingham, shaped a supposedly “provincial” outfit into a regiment of world-beaters. Today, as Vasily Petrenko’s tenure as chief conductor nears its end, his players cultivate sophisticated soundscapes which join Read more ...
David Nice
We have John Eliot Gardiner to thank for an unconventional diptych of Czech masterpieces in the London Symphony Orchestra's current season. He had to withdraw from last night's concert - he conducts Dvořák's Cello Concerto and Suk's "Asrael" Symphony on Thursday - but his replacement, Kazushi Ono, was no second-best. Familiar to us in the UK mostly as an opera conductor, firm and clear-headed in the three vivid narratives of the evening, he provided the ideal security for orchestral playing and stunning singing to fly.The programme proved, as always, that there's no slack in Janáček's mature Read more ...
David Nice
Verdi, Elgar, Janáček, John Adams - just four composers who achieved musical transcendence to religious texts as what convention would label non-believers, and so have no need of the "forgiveness" the Fátima zealots pray for their kind in James MacMillan's The Sun Danced. Dodgily championed by fellow conservative Damian Thompson - ouch - as "fearless defender of the Catholic faith and Western civilization" (for which I read, no Muslims in Europe, please), MacMillan is rather nauseatingly cited as a composer with a direct line to his Catholic God (he doesn't claim that himself); but, dammit, Read more ...
Sarah Kent
The Barbican’s latest offering – a look at the clubs and cabarets set up by artists mainly in the early years of the 20th century – is a brilliant theme for an exhibition. Established as alternatives to galleries and museums, places like the Chat Noir in Paris, Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich and Bal Tic Tac in Rome were hotbeds of creative exploration where members exhibited work, explored ideas and experimented with radical new art forms. If artist’s studios are spaces primarily for solo achievement, where great artworks are produced and reputations made, these clubs were social spaces Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Second performances are even more valuable than premieres, composers say, when it comes to launching a piece into the world. Spare a thought, then, for Jan Ladislav Dussek, who has had to wait over two centuries for this prize to be awarded to his Mass in G – really, a Missa solemnis – of a scale to rival Beethoven’s example. It was revived last night for the first time since its premiere in 1811 with exemplary spirit and dedication by Academy of Ancient Music forces under Richard Egarr.Like Beethoven, Dussek was a composer primarily for and at the piano. He flourished as a touring virtuoso Read more ...