20th century
The Bernstein Project - Mass, Royal Festival HallMonday, 12 July 2010
It's been quite a week for youth and the vernacular in the world of so-called “classical” music. Multiply by four the seven fledgling stage animals currently firing up John Adams’s “earthquake-romance” in London's East End, add an orchestra of 13-to... Read more... |
I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw The Sky, Theatre Royal Stratford EastThursday, 08 July 2010
John Adams thinks his and poet June Jordan's fantasia on love in a time of earthquake flopped at its 1995 Berkeley premiere for two main reasons. The characters - three blacks, two whites, a Hispanic and an Asian - were deemed too self-consciously... Read more... |
DVD Release: EarthSunday, 13 June 2010
Note to lovers of those periodic lists of all-time international cultural landmarks: I seem to remember that Alexander Dovzhenko’s Earth once came in at number 82 in one such “best films ever” critical appraisal. Though that may place it somewhere... Read more... |
The Surreal House, Barbican Art GalleryFriday, 11 June 2010
Surrealism, it occurred to me while looking round this fine exhibition, is like pornography: it is hard to define, but everyone knows it when they see it. The Surreal House examines what precisely is conjured up in our collective minds by the word “... Read more... |
Art Gallery: Picasso Special - The Mediterranean YearsMonday, 24 May 2010
The war was over, Picasso was finally free to leave the privations of Paris behind him and to spend more time in the South of France, marking a return to his Mediterranean heritage. The Gagosian Gallery’s exhibition, curated by Picasso’s... Read more... |
Bridget Riley: From Life, National Portrait GalleryThursday, 20 May 2010
Forget about art “being about the idea” for a moment. Drawing from life is still considered by many to be the litmus test for proper artistic skill, or at least the foundation from which great art can arise. And so the enquiry, “But can he really... Read more... |
Randy Newman, Royal Festival HallWednesday, 19 May 2010
So anyway, when I told my three teenagers that I was off to see Randy Newman, there was a collective yawn and a mild snort of derision, which (and I think I know them well enough to interpret their snorts of derision) said, in effect, “Well, he’s... Read more... |
A Room and a HalfThursday, 06 May 2010
Definitely no standard biopic, Russian director Andrei Khrzhanovsky’s A Room and a Half captures part of the life, and a great deal of the spirit, of Russian poet Joseph Brodsky in a rare and rather brilliant gallimaufry of forms – from archive... Read more... |
LPO, Jurowski, Royal Festival HallThursday, 29 April 2010
For many of us, this was bound to be an emotional evening. Noëlle Mann, doyenne of all things Prokofievian on the editorial, archival, teaching and performing fronts, died peacefully at home last Friday, and it was to her that Vladimir Jurowski... Read more... |
Varèse 360°, SouthbankSunday, 18 April 2010
For those of you who think that classical music ends with Mahler - or Brahms just to be on the safe side - that the musical experimentation of the past 60 years was some sort of grim continental joke, an extended whoopee cushion of a musical period... Read more... |
Les Aventures Extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-SecFriday, 16 April 2010
BD, pronounced bédé, is short for "bande déssinée", the French equivalent of the comic-strip or graphic novel, which has long been accorded a popular affection and cultural standing well beyond that of its anglophone equivalent. Luc Besson says he... Read more... |
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