Russia
Catherine the Great, Sky Atlantic review - a glorious role for Helen Mirren only gets betterFriday, 04 October 2019
“I want something Russian…” It’s with such a cry that Helen Mirren, bored by the bizarrely transgressive masked ball that comes at the close of the first episode of Catherine the Great, gets the dancing going: nothing from the imported fashions of... Read more... |
Kolesnikov, Britten-Shostakovich Festival Orchestra, Latham-Koenig, Symphony Hall, Birmingham review - cross-country friendships flourishThursday, 19 September 2019
Celebrating the friendship between the two great 20th-century composers, the Britten-Shostakovich Festival Orchestra launched this year. Founded by British conductor Jan Latham-Koenig and British Ambassador to the Russian Federation Sir Laurie... Read more... |
Preludes, Southwark Playhouse review - journeying into the mind of RachmaninoffThursday, 12 September 2019
Where does music come from? That’s the vital question posed to Sergei Rachmaninoff in Dave Malloy’s extraordinary 2015 chamber work, as the great late-Romantic Russian composer – stuck in his third year of harrowing writer’s block – tries to... Read more... |
Prom 41: Ghindin, LPO, Jurowski review - perfect sound in a Russian spectacularMonday, 19 August 2019
It was a Disney theme-park of Russian music, and in an entirely good way: none of the usual rides, but plenty of heroes and villains, sad spirits and whistling witches, orientalia from the fringes of empire, pagan processionals and apocalyptic... Read more... |
Edinburgh International Festival 2019: Eugene Onegin, Komische Oper review - no-holds-barred romanticismSunday, 18 August 2019
Returning to Edinburgh International Festival, Berlin's Komische Oper brought Barrie Kosky’s sumptuous production of Eugene Onegin to the Edinburgh Festival Theatre. It’s a production that isn’t trying to do anything overly clever or convey a... Read more... |
Prom 12: Benedetti, National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, Wigglesworth - adrenalin highs and string sound to die forSunday, 28 July 2019
In the Netherlands, Mark Wigglesworth is already a musical legend for his work with Dutch youth orchestras. Hopefully, in addition to the year and a bit when he wrought miracles at English National Opera, he will become so in the UK after his... Read more... |
War and Peace, Welsh National Opera, Royal Opera House - bold epic weakened by loosely-directed characterisationsWednesday, 24 July 2019
On the UK's biggest day of shame, it was some relief to tap in to the fury of the Russian people at a much greater national degradation (Napoleon's invasion in 1812, Hitler's in 1941). Though it works even better at the end of the first, "Natasha... Read more... |
The Mother, QEH review - Natalia goes psychoSaturday, 22 June 2019
The publicity said it would be dark. But who would have guessed The Mother would be this dark? With its tally of dead and dying babies, gouged eye sockets and flayed skin, Arthur Pita’s latest dance-drama vehicle for the phenomenal Natalia Osipova,... Read more... |
Boris Godunov, Royal Opera review - cool and surgical, with periodic chillsThursday, 20 June 2019
Suppose you're seeing Musorgsky's selective historical opera for the first time in Richard Jones's production, without any prior knowledge of the action. That child's spinning-top on the dropcloth: why? Then the curtain rises and we see Bryn Terfel'... Read more... |
Three Sisters, Maly Drama Theatre, Vaudeville Theatre review - a Chekhov of luminous clarityThursday, 20 June 2019
Lev Dodin has been artistic director of the famed Maly Drama Theatre for some three and a half decades now, over which time the St Petersburg company has earned itself the highest of international reputations. London audiences have been fortunate to... Read more... |
The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Cheek by Jowl/Pushkin Theatre, Barbican review - theatre satire updatedThursday, 06 June 2019
Director Declan Donnellan has a rich record of working with Russian actors: his previous walk on the Slavic side, the darkly powerful Measure for Measure that came to the Barbican four years ago, was preceded by some magnificent versions of... Read more... |
Natalia Goncharova, Tate Modern review - a prodigious talentWednesday, 05 June 2019
The times they are a-changin’. On show at the Barbican is a retrospective of Lee Krasner’s stunning paintings and, for the first time ever, Tate Modern is hosting two major shows of women artists. At last, the achievements of great women are... Read more... |
