19th century
Winterreise, Bostridge, Adès, Barbican HallTuesday, 13 January 2015![]() Ian Bostridge’s relationship with Schubert’s song-cycle Winterreise goes back 30 years. Many of those years have been spent in the public eye (and ear), allowing us to watch the tenor grow and grow-up with this music. It’s been over a decade since... Read more... |
Royal Danish Ballet Soloists and Principals, Peacock Theatre, LondonSaturday, 10 January 2015![]() “A link in the chain of beauty” – that’s how the choreographer August Bournonville, in the 1840s, wanted every dancer in the Royal Danish Ballet to regard their art. And, remarkably, the chain of beauty we now call the Bournonville style has... Read more... |
Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, Dudamel, RFHFriday, 09 January 2015![]() Youth may have vanished from the title, and its first flush is gone from the cheeks of most of the young persons. Now they’re in their prime, a magnificent sight – and the sound, too, is that of a world-class orchestra with a voice. Which we heard... Read more... |
Swan Lake, English National Ballet, London ColiseumThursday, 08 January 2015![]() The twelve days of Christmas may be over, but I have good news for ballet fans in London: a whole new batch of presents for you has washed up at the Coliseum, and it's overflowing with lords-a-leaping, ladies dancing, and swans-a-swimming. In Derek... Read more... |
Un Ballo in Maschera, Royal OperaFriday, 19 December 2014![]() Covent Garden’s masked balls circling around the New Year feature not the seasonal bourgeois Viennese couple and a bat-winged conspirator but a king, his best friend’s wife and – excessively so in this production – the grim reaper. Big voices are... Read more... |
Tristan und Isolde, Royal OperaTuesday, 09 December 2014![]() Eternal love is in the air, not seasonal fluff, at the Royal Opera this December. Later in the month Verdi’s most ecstatic duet, in Un ballo in maschera, will find his Riccardo and Amelia briefly playing Tristan and Isolde, very much in the shadow... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Oslo: Two Peer Gynts and a HamletMonday, 08 December 2014![]() Not so much a national hero, more a national disgrace. That seems to be the current consensus on Peer Gynt as Norway moves forward from having canonized the wild-card wanderer of Ibsen's early epic. It’s now 200 years since Norway gained a... Read more... |
Levit, LPO, Jurowski, Royal Festival HallThursday, 04 December 2014![]() If Brahms’s First Symphony has long been dubbed “Beethoven’s Tenth”, then the 23-year-old Rachmaninov’s First merits the label of “Tchaikovsky’s Seventh” (a genuine candidate for that title, incidentally, turns out to be a poor reconstruction from... Read more... |
Queyras, Melnikov, Wigmore HallMonday, 01 December 2014![]() Even the most reluctant of completists should find the prospect of the Beethoven works for cello and piano undaunting. In their totality, these pieces consist of just five sonatas and three sets of variations, which fit neatly on to just two CDs, or... Read more... |
Gallery: Honoré Daumier and Paula Rego - a conversation across timeMonday, 17 November 2014![]() Baudelaire called him a “pictorial Balzac” and said he was the most important man “in the whole of modern art”, while Degas was only a little less effusive, claiming him as one of the three greatest draughtsman of the 19th century, alongside Ingres... Read more... |
Leonskaja, SCO, Kamu, Usher Hall, EdinburghFriday, 14 November 2014![]() Most pianists never truly master one of Brahms’s two piano concertos, those colossal symphonies for soloist and orchestra, let alone both. To present the two in one concert, then, seems foolhardy – and apparently was when András Schiff went for the... Read more... |
Emily Carr, Dulwich Picture GalleryWednesday, 12 November 2014![]() Walking into this exhibition is a bit like walking into a great forest. The dark green walls are hung all around with paintings of trees; we look up through branches that spiral dizzyingly skyward, while the upwards sweep of vast trunks seem... Read more... |
