Stravinsky
Classical CDs Weekly: John Cage, Schubert, StravinskySaturday, 02 February 2013
John Cage 100 Various artists (Wergo)Wergo’s handsomely produced box set was assembled for last year’s John Cage centenary. Fans will lap it up, and one hopes that curious newcomers will take the plunge and open their ears to this... Read more... |
Interview: 10 Questions for Herbie HancockMonday, 05 November 2012
Herbie Hancock has never stood still. He hit the ground running, joining Miles Davis's second great quintet on piano in 1963 at the age of just 23, and from that moment on demonstrated a Stakhanovite work ethic and appetite for the new which saw him... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Medtner, Martin Shaw, StravinskySaturday, 28 April 2012
Medtner: Arabesques, Dithyrambs, Elegies and other short piano works Hamish Milne (Hyperion)The title is already intriguing; enough to send you running to the dictionary to find out what a dithyramb is. Nikolai Medtner’s three examples are fun... Read more... |
Parsifal, Mariinsky Opera/Gergiev, Wales Millennium CentreSunday, 01 April 2012
Is it my imagination, or are we getting more Wagner in concert than we used to? It could be a welcome development. How marvellous not to have to tremble at the thought of the latest flight of directorial fantasy: Isolde pregnant, Siegfried as an... Read more... |
Apollo/ Jeux/ Suite en blanc, English National Ballet, London ColiseumThursday, 29 March 2012
Just a typical night at the ballet. The sun god rises with his goddesses, people play tennis and flirt in a garden, a handsome young chap struts his considerable stuff on a Twenties beach, and an array of white-tutu’d ballerinas perform deliciously... Read more... |
Ballet for £10 - English National Ballet reach outWednesday, 28 March 2012English National Ballet is offering best seats for its current London Coliseum season this week for £10 as it tries to broaden the potential ballet audience from the familiar pleasures of Swan Lake or The Nutcracker to the sophisticated delights and... Read more... |
Firebird/ Rite of Spring, English National Ballet, London ColiseumFriday, 23 March 2012
Two amazing things in one evening from a company totally at sixes and sevens artistically - it could only be English National Ballet. First amazing thing: the uncovering of a confident and stylish young choreographer straight from school. Second... Read more... |
Mutter, London Symphony Orchestra, Gergiev, Barbican HallMonday, 28 November 2011
Praise be, or slava if you prefer, to Valery Gergiev for honouring new Russian music alongside his hallmark interpretations - ever evolving or dangerously volatile according to taste – of Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Stravinsky. Last LSO season... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Moscow: Nikolai Ge at the Tretyakov GallerySunday, 06 November 2011
The Nikolai Ge retrospective at Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery marks the 180th anniversary of the artist’s birth – not the kind of round centenary or bicentenary landmark that often brings such projects to fruition. But the show is literally a... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Schumann, Stravinsky, XenakisSaturday, 22 October 2011
Schumann: Geistervariationen András Schiff (ECM)Hungarian pianist András Schiff has been revisiting some of the core repertoire with which he first made his name. This ECM two-disc set offers a revelatory Schumann recital – this label’s typically... Read more... |
DVD: PinaFriday, 23 September 2011
The clips as you load the DVD show women in extremis - women tied to the end of a rope, women being assaulted by mass male groping, women dancing on pointe with bleeding chunks of meat stuffed into their ballet shoes. Pina Bausch’s commentaries on... Read more... |
Jewels, Royal BalletWednesday, 21 September 2011
On six more occasions you can have an ideal experience of dance by visiting the Degas exhibition at the Royal Academy and then going to see Balanchine’s Jewels at the Opera House. The first part of this trio of abstract ballet gems, Emeralds, evokes... Read more... |
