Barbican
Things to Come, LSO, Strobel, Barbican review - blissful visions of the futureMonday, 27 March 2023
Last night at the Barbican was my first experience of a film with live orchestra, which has become a big thing in the last few years. The film in question was Alexander Korda’s extraordinary HG Wells adaptation Things to Come, from 1936, imagining a... Read more... |
Nonclassical: The Greenhouse Effect, Barbican Conservatory review - enjoyable freestyle happeningMonday, 13 March 2023
It would seem unfitting to report on Nonclassical’s event – happening? – in the Barbican Conservatory on Sunday with anything resembling a conventional review. So instead I shall treat this free-form “experience” to a non-sequential response, in the... Read more... |
Benjamin, Jaya-Ratnam, Harper, Milton Court review - black musicians take centre stageWednesday, 22 February 2023
This recital was a welcome opportunity to hear songs by a panoply of black composers – many of them women – ranging from Amanda Aldridge (1866-1956) to Ella Jarman-Pinto (b.1989), performed with extrovert glee by Nadine Benjamin, accompanied by... Read more... |
LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - exhilarating, hilarious mock-heroicsMonday, 13 February 2023
So it turns out there isn’t a problem with Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life), a stroppy mock-epic I thought couldn’t ever love again, when constantly singing phrases from Antonio Pappano and the LSO turn it into an hallucinogenic... Read more... |
Eliza Carthy and The Restitution, Barbican review - folk at its finestTuesday, 07 February 2023
Eliza Carthy has been busy, as she always has. Recording various albums with various artists during the pandemic, her show with her band, The Restitution (and many others), at the Barbican on Saturday, was well stuffed with music, musicians,... Read more... |
Jansen, LSO, Noseda, Barbican review - hearts of darknessFriday, 27 January 2023
There’s life in the old overture-concerto-symphony format yet – especially if the conductor not only shapes every phrase but takes care over the number of string players needed for each work, the soloist lives every bar of a concerto you thought you... Read more... |
Watts, BBCSO, Wigglesworth, Barbican review - clarity, control and focusSaturday, 21 January 2023
Ryan Wigglesworth is a man of many talents. He has recently been appointed Chief Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony, but he is also a versatile opera conductor, and an operatic sensibility is clear in the musical personality he projects.Last... Read more... |
Katya Kabanova, LSO, Rattle, Barbican review - living every bar of Janáček’s tragedyThursday, 12 January 2023
Amanda Majeski pushed the boundaries as Janáček's tormented heroine for director Richard Jones at the Royal Opera. Here there were confines – no “concert staging” this, but a laissez-faire affair with scores and music stands, occasionally obscuring... Read more... |
National Youth Orchestra, Bloch, Barbican review - blazing and surging odysseysThursday, 05 January 2023
In precarious times, musical wonders never seem to cease – for now, at least. Who would have thought during lockdown that we’d be back so soon and so frequently to the kind of massive orchestra needed to play a cosmic blockbuster like Richard... Read more... |
Bach Christmas Oratorio (Parts 1-3 & 6), Britten Sinfonia, Polyphony, Layton, Barbican review - glorious riposte to Arts Council axeThursday, 15 December 2022
What do you do when your high-achieving ensemble has just been dealt a brutal, capricious blow, but you have the most joyfully festive work in the repertoire on your seasonal agenda? To say that the Britten Sinfonia came out with all trumpets (and... Read more... |
Ott, LSO, Stutzmann, Barbican review - highways to hell (and back)Friday, 11 November 2022
In a Renaissance artist’s studio, a wannabe master proved his skill by drawing a perfect circle. Perhaps playing Beethoven’s A minor Bagatelle (aka “Für Elise”) as an encore should count as the pianist’s equivalent. At the Barbican last night, Alice... Read more... |
An Anatomy of Melancholy, Barbican Pit review - stunning journey into an Elizabethan heart of darknessTuesday, 01 November 2022
We enter the Barbican Pit as if visiting an apothecary. On the walls of the passage approaching it there are scientific diagrams and documents, while the stage itself is set up with glass cases filled with different potions and experiments.A figure... Read more... |
