Wales
Violet, Music Theatre Wales/Britten-Pears Arts review - well sung and played, but to what end?Friday, 24 June 2022
Best new opera in years, they said – don’t ask who – after the Aldeburgh Festival premiere of Tom Coult’s Violet. I’d have been happy in Hackney had it been as good as, say, Philip Venables’ 4.48 Psychosis or Stuart MacRae’s The Devil Inside. Alas,... Read more... |
First Person: composer Gavin Higgins on his new cantata 'The Faerie Bride'Friday, 17 June 2022
I was a strange child, I didn’t really fit in. I would twitch and distort my face into awkward shapes. I obsessively bit my fingers and knuckles till they bled. I collected leaflets and piled them high in neat stacks in the corner of my room. I was... Read more... |
The Corn Is Green, National Theatre review – Nicola Walker teaches a life lessonMonday, 25 April 2022
Let’s talk repertoire. Over the past decade the range of British plays, especially those from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, has shrunk in state-subsidized theatres. You can no longer easily see work by Shakespeare’s contemporaries, Restoration... Read more... |
Classical CDs: Escalators, dead leaves and a sixth-century bardSaturday, 02 April 2022
Eric Nathan: Missing Words (New Focus Recordings)“Inspired by words from Schottenfreude by Ben Schott” reads this double album’s tagline, a high-concept project based on Schott’s 2013 lexicon of newly-invented German compound words. Words like... Read more... |
Album: MWWB - The HarvestWednesday, 23 March 2022
Wrexham band MWWB were known until recently as Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard. Perhaps they changed their name because its freak-friendly quality could be mistaken for spliffed Half Man Half Biscuit-style silliness. MWWB are no bong-head novelty act.... Read more... |
Manic Street Preachers, Brighton Dome review - solid gig occasionally explodes to another levelFriday, 15 October 2021
There is a three song segment midway through Manic Street Preachers’ set which suddenly ramps everything up. For this brief while, the performance and response in the sold-out, nigh-on-2000-capacity venue, elevates the concert from another decent... Read more... |
K-Music 2021: striking the right note for musical fusionWednesday, 06 October 2021
It’s been eight years since the first K-Music landed in London, courtesy the Korean Cultural Centre UK, along with world, folk and jazz concert producers Serious. Since then it has brought an eclectic range of bands and musicians from Korea to the... Read more... |
The Ballad of Billy McCrae review - beware the quarryman's beautiful daughterFriday, 24 September 2021
An entertaining but undernourished industrial-domestic neo-noir set in South Wales,The Ballad of Billy McCrae depicts the power struggle between bent quarrying company boss Billy (David Hayman) and gullible failed businessman Chris Blythe (Ian Virgo... Read more... |
The Barber of Seville, Welsh National Opera review - back to work in an old bangerFriday, 10 September 2021
Welcome back, WNO! Yes, emphatically, and with a loud hurrah, which is precisely what the company received, and rightly received, from the somewhat arbitrarily scattered first night Millennium Centre audience for their opening revival of The Barber... Read more... |
The Toll review - once upon a time in west WalesSaturday, 28 August 2021
Budget constraints. In the hands of the right filmmakers, they can be a blessing in disguise, forcing creativity from simplicity. That’s exactly what works for The Toll, a dark comedy set in the wild west of these isles: Pembrokeshire.Michael Smiley... Read more... |
Classical CDs: Soviet symphonies, popular classics and percussionSaturday, 14 August 2021
Louise Farrenc; Symphonies 1&3 Insula Orchestra/Laurence Equilbey (Erato)Louise Farrenc’s music is good as you’d expect from a precocious talent who’d studied piano with Hummel and composition with Reicha. Born in 1804, Farrenc’s... Read more... |
Under Milk Wood, National Theatre review - Michael Sheen at his most magneticThursday, 24 June 2021
There's commanding, and then there's Michael Sheen, who sweeps on to the Olivier stage 15 minutes or so into the new National Theatre revival of Under Milk Wood and scoops up the entire production with it. Inheriting a role made to order for this... Read more... |
