contemporary classical
Michael Jarrell, Hoddinott Hall, CardiffWednesday, 13 October 2010
Music, Wagner famously pronounced, is the art of transition. For the Swiss composer Michael Jarrell, by contrast, music is “the art of punctuation”. On the one hand, how to get from one thing to the next; on the other hand, how to separate one thing... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Llantwit Major: Arvo Pärt in the Vale of GlamorganSunday, 12 September 2010
Amazingly, the Vale of Glamorgan Festival has been on the go for more than 40 years, and has got better and better as it has gone along. Until recently, any kind of mould-breaking musical enterprise was likely to collide with the entrenched... Read more... |
Bliss, Opera Australia, Edinburgh Festival TheatreMonday, 06 September 2010
Here we go again. Art takes on capitalism, round 4,598,756. The blissful life of Harry Joy, ad exec extraordinaire, beloved father of two, is (surprise, surprise) not quite what it seems. His wife is having an affair, his daughter is fellating his... Read more... |
The Lying Down Concert: Earthrise, Royal Opera HouseSunday, 05 September 2010
We should lie down to listen to music much more often. Gravity pulls away the thought and frown lines, smoothes the intellectual tracks and folds on the face, while you feel the blood in your head pumping lushly to dreamier parts of your brain.... Read more... |
Tilbury, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Volkov, Royal Albert HallSunday, 22 August 2010
A metallic shower rained down upon us as five percussionists of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra's percussion sextet unleashed the meteoric potential of five huge metal thundersheets on our unsuspecting ears, and percussionist number six, a... Read more... |
The Duchess of Malfi, ENO, PunchdrunkWednesday, 14 July 2010
It's tough being a critic. There I was last night at Punchdrunk's first operatic foray, The Duchess of Malfi - put on in collaboration with the English National Opera - trying to make sense of a typically Punchdrunkian world that had been shattered... Read more... |
Pollini, London Symphony Orchestra, Eötvös, Barbican HallMonday, 21 June 2010
Helmut Lachenmann is a sort of George Bush of contemporary classical composition, a bogeyman, a warrior, an ideologue. In my time his name has always been served up with an exclamation mark - "you like Lachenmann!?" - partly because his... Read more... |
OperaShots, Royal OperaSaturday, 19 June 2010
Anyone hoping to take refuge from last night’s football fever in the solemn halls of the Royal Opera House would have scored something of an own goal. Heading the bill for OperaShots – a trio of new operas staged in the intimate Linbury Theatre –... Read more... |
Thomas Adès, London Symphony Orchestra, Barbican HallSunday, 06 June 2010
If the second half of the 20th century saw opera throttled by existential crises, and left composers wondering whether the only future for the art form was for it to be hung out to dry, or to become an arcane intellectualised annex for the musical... Read more... |
Judith Weir, Bath FestivalSunday, 06 June 2010
In general, I’m no particular fan of composers talking in public about their own music. My family suggests that this is because I’m hoping to get the job of talking about it myself. But the real reason is that, on the whole, composers don’t tell the... Read more... |
After Life, BarbicanSunday, 16 May 2010
"We need to inform you officially. Mr Walter, you died yesterday. I’m sorry for your loss." It comes as no great surprise to learn that Michel van der Aa’s opera After Life is based on a Japanese film. The Borgesian hyper-real scenario, the no-place... Read more... |
Powder Her Face, RO, Linbury Studio TheatreThursday, 29 April 2010
Let's get straight to the fellatio, shall we. The blow job - and its Polaroid rendition - that led to the 1960s divorce trial of the dissolute Duchess of Argyll forms the centrepiece aria (an aria that "begins with words and ends with humming") in... Read more... |
