Russia
From the House of the Dead, Royal Opera review - Janáček's prison oddity prompts hot tearsThursday, 08 March 2018
A political prisoner is brutally initiated into the life of a state penitentiary, and leaves it little over 90 minutes later. Four inmates reveal their brutal past histories with elliptical strangeness - each would need an episode of something like... Read more... |
Red Sparrow review - from Russia with lustFriday, 02 March 2018
As it turns out, the slashed-to-the-hip Versace dress with which Jennifer Lawrence provoked controversy (synthetic or otherwise) on a freezing London rooftop was an accurate barometer of what to expect from Red Sparrow. It has the nostalgic... Read more... |
'The greatest play ever written': translating The Cherry OrchardSaturday, 24 February 2018
“The Cherry Orchard is the greatest play ever written,” I declared, confidently, aged 16, to my mother, having just read The Cherry Orchard for the first time. She responded to my claim with a non-committal snort – remembering, perhaps, the... Read more... |
McMafia, Series finale, BBC One review - the last bite is the cruellestMonday, 12 February 2018
McMafia has taught us to recognise one thing – you might call it the “Norton stride”. As the charismatic Alex Godman, James Norton has been advancing, confidently at screen centre, towards one challenge after another, and they have been coming (... Read more... |
Loveless review - from Russia, without loveFriday, 09 February 2018
After the anger, the emptiness… Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Loveless is his fifth film, and harks back to the world of complicated, somehow unelucidated family relationships that characterised his debut, The Return, the work that brought... Read more... |
Baráti, Lyddon, LPO, Jurowski, RFH review - Stravinsky's bright but derivative beginningsMonday, 05 February 2018
"You have to start somewhere," Debussy is reported to have said at the 1910 premiere of The Firebird. Which, at least, is a very good "somewhere" for Stravinsky, shot through with flashes of the personality to come. The Symphony in E flat of two... Read more... |
The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk, Kneehigh on tour review - sweetest musical ChagallianaThursday, 25 January 2018
Time flies so much more beguilingly in Daniel Jamieson and Emma Rice's 90-minute musical fantasia than it ever has, for me, in Bock and Harnick's Fiddler on the Roof – and the songs aren't bad, either. The inspiration here – and inspiration's the... Read more... |
Bruno Maçães: The Dawn of Eurasia review - middle of nowhereSunday, 21 January 2018
Part travelogue and part broad analysis of the current and future challenges facing the EU, the premise of Bruno Maçães’s new book The Dawn of Eurasia is to “use travel to provide an injection of reality of political, economic and historical... Read more... |
Weilerstein, Platt, Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - insight and passionFriday, 19 January 2018
Alisa Weilerstein is making two visits to Manchester in just over three weeks. Last night it was with the Hallé, next time she’ll be guesting with the Czech Philharmonic. This one was to play the solo in Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto, with Sir... Read more... |
Alexander Melnikov, Wigmore Hall review - three pianos, four monsterworksThursday, 18 January 2018
Living-museum recitals on a variety of historic instruments pose logistical problems. Telling The Arts Desk about his award-nominated CD of mostly 19th-century works for horns and pianos, Alec Frank-Gemmill remarked on the near-impossibility of... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Brahms, Janáček, George Martin, Dmitry MasleevSaturday, 13 January 2018
Brahms: Clarinet Sonatas, Janáček: Sonata (arr. Brill) Shirley Brill, Jonathan Aner (piano) (Hänssler Classic)Brahms's pair of clarinet sonatas are the epitome of autumnosity, were such a word to exist. Pipe-and-slippers music, which isn't... Read more... |
McMafia, BBC One review - James Norton looks promising in a murky le Carré worldTuesday, 02 January 2018
It’s not the first time that James Norton has kicked off BBC One’s New Year primetime celebrations in Russian style. Two years ago, he was costumed up as the courageous Prince Andrei, in illustrious ensemble company for Andrew Davies and Tom Harper’... Read more... |
