Scotland
Bell, Dreisig, LPO, Gardner, RFH review - royal rifts, and uplifting MahlerThursday, 27 April 2023
Brett Dean’s opera Hamlet will play at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich in June: the next stage of an acclaimed progress that began at Glyndebourne in 2017. Now on the last stretch of his three-year stint as composer-in-residence with the London... Read more... |
Shibe, NYOS, Larsen-Maguire, Usher Hall, Edinburgh - young Scottish musicians storm the heightsSaturday, 15 April 2023
One can only admire the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland for its steadfast indifference to the laws of box office gravity. A little known contemporary guitar concerto allied to a relatively unpopular Mahler symphony would be a hard sell even in... Read more... |
The Orielles, G2, Glasgow review - shoegaze trio keeping their eyes on the futureTuesday, 11 April 2023
It is temping to wonder what path the Orielles would have gone down in a world where the coronavirus never occurred. The Halifax trio had just released their second album, Disco Volador when the pandemic struck, and wiped out any hope of... Read more... |
Mimi Webb, O2 Academy, Glasgow review - TikTok queen fails to fire with sparse setThursday, 06 April 2023
Blake Rose clearly wasn’t leaving anything to chance. The support act bounded onstage draped in a Saltire, and soon brought up his days growing up in Aberdeen before moving to Australia. That Scottish upbringing helped inspire one of his songs, “... Read more... |
Williams, Dunedin Consort, Truscott, Wigmore Hall review - star soprano, total teamworkFriday, 31 March 2023
When your special guest is a young soprano with all the world before her, the total artist already, your programme might seem to run itself. Yet the Dunedin Consort’s sequence seen and heard in Glasgow, Edinburgh and (last night) London followed a... Read more... |
Lucia and the Best Boys, SWG3, Glasgow review - a celebratory homecoming for rising starSaturday, 11 March 2023
Jessica Winter is clearly a hardy soul. The Portsmouth singer made a point of shedding her jacket and top as her support set went on, a bold choice given the typically unpredictable Glasgow weather was serving up freezing snow outside at the time.It... Read more... |
St Mary’s Music School, RSNO, New, Usher Hall, Edinburgh review - a cornucopia of delightsWednesday, 08 March 2023
This evening brought to mind those marathon 19th century concerts when Beethoven would unleash a handful of new symphonies and a couple of piano concertos on an unsuspecting public.The programme in Edinburgh's Usher Hall began at 6pm with a... Read more... |
We Are Scientists, Oran Mor, Glasgow review - fan service with a smile proves lackingMonday, 27 February 2023
Although We Are Scientists onstage chat is always delivered with a light touch, there is truth running through it as well. Early on at this set their singer and guitarist Keith Murray quipped that he wouldn’t be needing his lucky charm for the... Read more... |
Dry Cleaning, Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow review - post-punk outfit say all the right wordsMonday, 20 February 2023
There is an endearing awkwardness with Dry Cleaning, despite steady success over the past three years. “Does anyone else want a wave?” asked their frontwoman Florence Shaw at one point, almost shyly, before proceeding to do just that in various... Read more... |
Macbeth (an undoing), Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh - audacious update of the Scottish playMonday, 13 February 2023
You’d hardly call a director particularly perceptive for highlighting Lady Macbeth as the true power behind the throne, scheming and cajoling her husband’s bloody ascent to the crown. In her audacious, provocative and thoroughly compelling Macbeth (... Read more... |
Celtic Connections: Juliette Lemoine, Orchestral Qawwali Project review - fusion of myriad musical traditionsWednesday, 25 January 2023
In full force again for 2023, Scotland’s premier folk music festival Celtic Connections is back with its signature strand of blending and sharing musical traditions. On Saturday, emerging Scottish folk cellist Juliette Lemoine gave a superb early... Read more... |
Demetrios Matheou's Top 10 Films of 2022Monday, 19 December 2022
I’m struck by how many of my 2022 picks deal with relationships in extremis: a love story disguised as a Hitchcockian murder mystery, a long friendship gone suddenly surreally awry, an unlikely romance that unfolds on a sub-zero train journey,... Read more... |
