19th century
Mustonen, Nakariakov, BBCSO, Oramo, BarbicanSunday, 03 November 2013
This was Sakari Oramo's first concert with the BBC Symphony Orchestra since taking over as chief conductor. Of course he knows the orchestra well already, but it was important to make this a good ’un, and so it was.It opened with the world premiere... Read more... |
Ripper Street, Series Two, BBC OneTuesday, 29 October 2013
Proof that the BBC’s love of gritty realism is not solely the province of Luther and similar modern-day urban crime dramas comes just minutes into the second series of Ripper Street, before the credits even roll. In the East End of London a police... Read more... |
Whistler and the Thames: An American in London, Dulwich Picture GallerySunday, 27 October 2013
Dulwich Picture Gallery, the oldest publicly accessible painting collection in England, is hardly on the bank of the Thames, but its compilation of prints, drawings, watercolours and paintings by James McNeill Whistler (1834-1902) concentrates on... Read more... |
Brahms Cycle 1: Kavakos, Dindo, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Chailly, BarbicanWednesday, 23 October 2013
For the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra’s second residency at the Barbican Centre Riccardo Chailly pulled focus on an entirely new sounding Brahms. Gone were all those bad performance practices, bad habits, from the early 20th century, gone was the... Read more... |
The Paradise, Series Two, BBC OneMonday, 21 October 2013
“Everything has happened so quickly,” Katherine Glendenning mused as the new series of The Paradise shot off the block. She'd been en voyage for a year, losing a father and gaining a husband, but now Katherine was back. Moray’s melancholy... Read more... |
Les Vêpres Siciliennes, Royal OperaFriday, 18 October 2013
First fanfare had to be for the Royal Opera House’s main gambit in Verdi bicentenary year, staging its first ever Sicilian Vespers 158 years after the Paris premiere. Any of Verdi’s operas from Rigoletto onwards deserves the red carpet treatment,... Read more... |
The Sleeping Beauty, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Sadler’s WellsFriday, 18 October 2013
Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. Sometimes, of course, it’s even better to be both. And Birmingham Royal Ballet, in their all-too-brief London season, have been both lucky and good. Lucky, because they have Peter Wright’s little jewel of... Read more... |
Great Expectations, Bristol Old VicSaturday, 05 October 2013
Neil Bartlett, as he has demonstrated in his earlier Dickens adaptations of Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol, knows how to make gripping theatre out of a complex work of fiction. His Great Expectations rattles through the twists and turns of Pip’s... Read more... |
Don Quixote, Royal BalletTuesday, 01 October 2013
The opening night of the autumn season brings a gala first night, Carlos Acosta’s staging of Petipa’s Hispano-Russo-Austro-Hungarische castanet-fest, Don Quixote, with starry leads (Marianela Nuñez and Acosta himself), a very obviously expensive new... Read more... |
Philharmonia Orchestra, Salonen, Royal Festival HallFriday, 27 September 2013
“Lighting design”. Are there two more terrifying words to find in a concert booklet? Since I last went to a normal concert, it seems that the lunacy that is the tradition of bathing audience and stage in as much light as possible as if we were some... Read more... |
Listed: Jane Austen providesTuesday, 24 September 2013
Right at the start of the boom around 20 years ago, a Hollywood mogul is said to have told one of his people to get some more work out of that Jane Austen. She seemed like a good source of romantic comedies. Regrettably for all, there were only ever... Read more... |
Anne Schwanewilms, Roger Vignoles, Wigmore HallTuesday, 10 September 2013
So we glide between seasons from one communicative diva giving her all in a vast space to another casting spells in intimate surroundings. While Joyce DiDonato, not perhaps one of the world’s great voices but certainly a great performer, was... Read more... |
