1940s
Haveron, BBC Philharmonic, Wilson, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - spirit of the 1940sMonday, 26 March 2018
John Wilson has built a reputation as a conductor which marks him out as a musicians’ musician. He doesn’t present himself with any pomposity, even wearing a neat black tie and lounge jacket on this occasion, while the male musicians around him were... Read more... |
Agnès Poirier: Left Bank review - Paris in war and peaceSunday, 11 March 2018
There are too many awestruck cultural histories of Paris to even begin to count. The Anglophone world has always been justly dazzled by its own cohorts of Paris-based writers and artists, as well as by the seemingly effortless superiority of... Read more... |
Emil Nolde: Colour Is Life, National Gallery of Ireland review - boats, dancers, flowersThursday, 15 February 2018
Colours had meanings for Emil Nolde. “Yellow can depict happiness and also pain. Red can mean fire, blood or roses; blue can mean silver, the sky or a storm.” As the son of a German-Frisian father and a Schleswig-Dane mother, Nolde was raised in a... Read more... |
DVD: The King's ChoiceTuesday, 30 January 2018
It’s fascinating to compare this Norwegian film, which despite being Oscar-nominated (it made the Best Foreign Film shortlist of nine, but not the final five) has slipped out without a cinema release in the UK, with Darkest Hour. Set over a crucial... Read more... |
Feng, CBSO, Gražinytė-Tyla, Symphony Hall Birmingham review - pulling it out of the hatThursday, 18 January 2018
Say what you like about Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla’s partnership with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra – and plenty has already been written – but sometimes the facts speak for themselves. At the end of this midweek matinee concert, an... Read more... |
The Rake's Progress, Wilton's Music Hall review - mercurial Stravinsky made cumbersomeTuesday, 21 November 2017
If you're not going to mention the imaginative genius of Stravinsky, Auden and Kallman within the covers of your programme, and the only article, by the director, is titled "Acting Naturally", then the production had better deliver. That remarkable... Read more... |
Messiaen & Shostakovich, St John's Smith Square review - Osborne and Gerhardt anchor 1940s masterpiecesWednesday, 15 November 2017
Only connect. As the Southbank Centre's International Chamber Music Series at St John's showcased supreme eloquence in two searing but perfectly-proportioned meditations from the Second World War, over the road at Smith Square Europe House was... Read more... |
Professor Marston and the Wonderwomen review - Rebecca Hall to the rescueFriday, 10 November 2017
Wonder Woman was the film that defied all the predictions: a big-budget superhero movie directed by a woman which managed to please not only the feminists and their daughters but also the boys who love DC and Marvel. In its slipstream comes... Read more... |
Schubert Ensemble, Kings Place review - spot-on introductions, dazzling performancesFriday, 10 November 2017
To demonstrate what makes chamber masterpieces tick and then to play them, brilliantly, is a sequence which ought to happen more often. Perhaps too many musicians think their eloquence is confined to their instruments. Not violinist Simon Blendis... Read more... |
The Consul, Guildhall School review - blowsy melodrama rooted by committed studentsTuesday, 31 October 2017
Fancy that: the day after the last major Menotti staging I can remember in the UK, The Medium at the Edinburgh Festival, "splendid piece of post-Puccinian grand guignol" turned up in two different reviews (moral: don't discuss the performance with... Read more... |
Tove Jansson (1914-2001), Dulwich Picture Gallery review – more than MoominvalleyFriday, 27 October 2017
Born into an artistic Swedish-speaking household in Helsinki, Tove Jansson’s first, and most enduring, ambition was to be a painter. Although best known as the illustrator behind the creatures of Moominvalley, those plump white hippopotamus-like... Read more... |
Prom 61 review: Fleming, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Oramo - heliotropic ecstasiesThursday, 31 August 2017
No sunshine without shadows was one possible theme rippling through this diva sandwich of a Prom. Even Richard Strauss's chaste nymph Daphne, achieving longed-for metamorphosis as a tree, finds darkness among the roots; and though Renée "The... Read more... |
