Oxford
Mutter, Vengerov, Argerich, Oxford Philharmonic, Papadopoulos, Barbican review - a birthday banquetMonday, 14 January 2019
When three of the planet’s starriest soloists take the time to celebrate the anniversary of a young, non-metropolitan orchestra, it may seem perverse to leave the hall entranced most by the one work in which the illustrious trio played no part. Of... Read more... |
A Discovery of Witches, episode 2, Sky 1 review - when the sorceress met the vampireSaturday, 22 September 2018
Witches, vampires and magicke of all descriptions continue to be big box office, so Sky 1’s new dramatisation of the first book of Deborah Harkness’s All Souls Trilogy should be finding a ready-made audience. Anybody who’s into this kind of stuff... Read more... |
Neil Simon: 'I don’t think you want it really dark'Monday, 27 August 2018
Asked to nominate the most important playwright in America since the war, theatregoers would probably plump for Arthur Miller, Edward Albee or David Mamet. But in terms of sheer popularity there is another candidate. Neil Simon’s wiseacre comedies,... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Sverre Indris Joner, John McLeod, Poulenc, StravinskySaturday, 21 July 2018
Sverre Indris Joner: Con cierto toque de tango Henning Kraggerud (violin), Norwegian Radio Orchestra/Sverre Indris Joner, with Tango for 3 (Lawo Classics)Sverre Indris Joner is described in this disc’s notes as “the doyen of Latin American... Read more... |
Philip Pullman: La Belle Sauvage review - not quite equalSunday, 22 October 2017
La Belle Sauvage, the first instalment of Philip Pullman’s eagerly-awaited new trilogy The Book of Dust, opens in the Trout, a rambling Thames-side pub on the outskirts of Port Meadow, north of Oxford. Here all kinds drink: scholars, labourers,... Read more... |
Alan Hollinghurst: The Sparsholt Affair - pictures at an exhibition, with telling gapsSunday, 08 October 2017
Television has paid its dues to the 50th anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act - rather feebly, with some rotten acting, in Man in an Orange Shirt; brilliantly, with mostly superb performances, in the monologue sequence Queers, surely due a second... Read more... |
Endeavour, Series 4 Finale, ITVMonday, 30 January 2017
There were signs of a collision as early as the second series. The event loomed larger in the third last year and last night, after an actual car crash, it finally happened: Endeavour became interchangeable with Midsomer Murders. How are the... Read more... |
The Schumann Project, Oxford Lieder FestivalMonday, 31 October 2016
It felt oddly disrespectful showing up in time for Schumann's wake on the fifteenth and final day of this year's Oxford Lieder Festival. Having started with the early piano music and many of the chamber works before moving on to Schumann's annus... Read more... |
Endeavour, Series 3 FinaleMonday, 25 January 2016
We have been here before – literally. Morse and his colleagues discreetly observe a gangster’s funeral in Kensal Green cemetery – just as they did in Promised Land, one of the best episodes of Inspector Morse, first broadcast in March 1991. A... Read more... |
CD: Foals - What Went DownSunday, 06 September 2015
Coming to Foals without the baggage – without knowing, for example, that they’re a British guitar band of mid-Noughties vintage – is a disconcerting experience, not least where fourth album What Went Down is concerned. Opening with a huge... Read more... |
The Secret World of Lewis Carroll, BBC TwoSunday, 01 February 2015
Alice is always with us; the most quoted work of literature, after the Bible and Shakespeare. In fact, Desert Island Discs should probably add Alice to the mandatory Bible and Shakespeare as an automatic inclusion for the survival kit. Now 150 years... Read more... |
First Episode, Jermyn Street TheatreSaturday, 01 November 2014
Rediscovered work offers aficionados a tantalising piece of the puzzle. Terence Rattigan’s callow debut, reborn after 80 years in obscurity, bears the hallmarks of his later plays, notably closeted ardour and the torment of unequal passion, but is... Read more... |
