First Person
'These were the quartets that made us fall in love with the genre': Dudok Quartet Amsterdam on HaydnSaturday, 02 November 2019
As a string quartet, it’s not easy to distinguish yourselves from others. There are so many string quartets playing the great repertoire, and the level of quartets has never been as high as it is now. Everybody is trying to be unique.We are all part... Read more... |
First Person: Simon Stephens - the contemplation of kindnessTuesday, 29 October 2019
Light Falls is the sixth play that I have written for the Royal Exchange theatre in Manchester and the fourth that its outgoing Artistic Director, Sarah Frankcom, will direct.She directed On the Shore of the Wide World, Punk Rock and Blindsided. In... Read more... |
First Person: Hannah Khalil on museum as metaphor in her new play for the RSCTuesday, 22 October 2019
It all started in 2009 in the National Portrait Gallery. I’d had a meeting nearby so popped in to get a cuppa and stare at the beautiful rooftop view of London from their top-floor café, but a picture caught my eye. It was part of an exhibition of... Read more... |
‘We must not allow boorish, opportunistic autocrats to hijack music’: Gabriela Montero on life and artMonday, 21 October 2019
For as long as I can remember, there has been a continuous loop of original music playing in my mind. My father used to joke about my “tuyuyo” – a little bump I have on the back of my head – that it was my personal repository for music. My husband,... Read more... |
Charles Owen and Katya Apekisheva on the London Piano Festival: 'It's not just playing one concert and going home'Tuesday, 01 October 2019
We’ve been friends for many years, since the mid-1990s when we were both studying at the Royal College of Music with the same inspirational piano teacher, Irina Zaritskaya. Our first duo performance was in 2001 at the Homecoming Festival in Moscow,... Read more... |
Simon Halsey on Tippett’s ‘A Child of Our Time’: ‘the biggest lesson was how to feel what he had written’Thursday, 26 September 2019
I was greatly privileged to know Sir Michael Tippett and to chorus-master his recording of A Child of Our Time. In my childhood, the two giants of English composition were “Tippett and Britten” - in that order. Since their deaths, Britten has... Read more... |
Foragers of the Foreshore - London's mudlarks on showSunday, 01 September 2019
Over the weekend, exhibitions and installations have started to bubble-up on the riverside walkway in London. Still-life photography of mudlark finds and a "scented history" of Barking Creek outside the National Theatre. Artwork from a dozen... Read more... |
Ewa Banaszkiewicz and Mateusz Dymek: 'Is our film porny?'Wednesday, 17 July 2019
Spoiler alert: About sixty-four minutes into our debut feature film, one of the main female characters undresses for the camera. Alicja is being filmed by the other protagonist, a young American documentarian named Katie. As the sexually charged... Read more... |
On making The Left Behind: 'We've plugged into the mains'Tuesday, 09 July 2019
The Left Behind is a television drama marinated in real-world research. It tells the story of a young man unable to break free from his bullshit job, zero-hour existence, thrown out of his family home when the council decide that as a... Read more... |
'A product not only of his era but also of his travels': Ian Page on Mozart's cosmopolitan educationMonday, 08 July 2019
When Mozart was an established composer living in Vienna during the final years of his short life, a young student seemingly came to him to seek his advice. The would-be young composer said that he was planning to write a symphony, and asked Mozart... Read more... |
Roger Wright on Oliver Knussen: ‘his challenge to us all to remain curious lives on’Friday, 14 June 2019
The composition course founded more than 25 years ago at Snape by composers Oliver Knussen and Colin Matthews is in full swing. The scene is the Britten Studio at Snape Maltings on the Suffolk coast. Like Colin, Olly's connections to Aldeburgh and... Read more... |
First Person: Matt Henry on fulfilling 'a dream come true' to play the legendary singer Sam CookeTuesday, 11 June 2019
When I first read One Night in Miami, I instantly felt a strong connection to the piece and its story. The fact that Sam Cooke, Malcolm X, Cassius Clay and Jim Brown, four iconic black men at the top of their game in 1964, actually... Read more... |
