Features
David Nice
How do you make a two-part final featuring five piano concertos work as a couple of totally satisfying programmes? First, give a wide list of concerto options, ask each pianist for two choices, settle on what will make the best contrasts – and then engage the brilliant Domingo Hindoyan and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra of which he has been chief conductor since 2021 as partnersThe fact remains that, despite differing levels of interpretation, the five finalists, all in their twenties, were as one with their fellow players and their conductor. It takes both elements to pull that Read more ...
Elizabeth Atherton
Is it an opera company’s role to avert climate change? Should a circus troupe have to prioritize promoting the Welsh language? Is the purpose of a dance ensemble to bring about social justice? Should these issues be the main focus for our arts organisations? Surely not, and yet… Just a glance at the six core funding principles with which the Arts Council of Wales (ACW) judges whether the arts organisations it exists in order to support are worthy of public subsidy shows that these are the very measures by which they are deciding which companies in Wales will be prioritised. Not Read more ...
Hugh Barnes
The trial of the left-wing intellectual Pierre Goldman, who was charged in April 1970 with four armed robberies, one of which led to the death of two pharmacists, was known as “The Trial of the Century” – even though the century wasn’t over yet, as one of the prosecutors quipped.It is over now, of course, but even though the events explored in Cédric Kahn’s semi-biographical courtroom drama unfolded more than half a century ago, there’s an electrifying currency to the film, which touches on a marvellous array of French discontents harking back to the Dreyfus Affair. At the same time its Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Lighters at the ready, because here comes the flood. Drawn from 16-track tape, 1/4in reels and lo-fi sound board cassettes that are now a half century old, the 27 CDs of 431 performances, 417 of them previously unreleased, of Dylan and The Band’s 1974 arena tour of the US, is a set that challenges the listeners’ staying power perhaps more than it celebrates an epochal tour.Sure, the 1974 tour was an important milestone in the Dylan story, and a coda, of sorts, to the story of The Band and Dylan’s trajectory away from the turbulent zenith of 1966. They were like two stage sets colliding: Read more ...
Alexandra Dariescu
This year, I am delighted to be supporting the Alexandra Dariescu Award at the Leeds International Piano Competition for an outstanding performance of a work by a female composer. This marks a significant milestone in the 60-year history of The Leeds, as it is the first year a piano concerto by a female composer has been added to the repertoire of the Concerto Final round with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.Clara Wieck-Schumann's Piano Concerto (the composer/pianist pictured below) has garnered much attention in recent years, and I am hopeful that you will discover and love it Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
The summer festival circuit in Central Europe can be a bit of a merry-go-round. Notices in festival towns promise world-class orchestras and soloists, but they are usually the same performers, making festival appearances as part of broader touring schedules.But a festival needs to be distinctive, it needs to be unique. Any hint of routine is fatal to its spirit of occasion. The setting usually helps, and the festivals in Lucerne and Gstaad both take place amid breathtaking scenery and in towns of real charm and character. Add to that a homegrown ensemble – typically a festival orchestra – and Read more ...
Mark Kidel
We’re in deepest Dorset, on the edge of the village of Cranborne. The sun has just set. A cluster of thatched rooves, ancient looking barns and outhouses.It could be a set for Game of Thrones, a reconstruction of pre-industrial times. Groups of people huddle together, in festive mood. At the heart of this cluster of age-old looking structures, there’s a large round house, with an earth and turf roof, covered in grass and weeds. This is one of the most weird and wonderful performance venues in the UK, as iconic in its small way as the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury.Twice a year, the Earth House Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Great ballet dancers who boldly turn away from a stellar international career to grow a national ballet company in their homelands are few, but legendary. Alicia Alonso did it in Cuba, Ninette de Valois did it in Britain. And, dancing across the cusp of even more perilous political weather than either, so did the brilliant Bolshoi Ballet star Nina Ananiashvili when 20 years ago she left the world stage to return to her broken and battered native Georgia and generate its own classical ballet company. This summer London will see the State Ballet of Georgia's British debut, Read more ...
Justine Elias
“When we hear the formula ‘once upon a time,’ or any of its variants,” wrote Angela Carter in her introduction to her Book of Fairy Tales, “we know in advance that what we are about to hear isn’t going to pretend to be true. We say to children: Don’t tell fairy tales!’ Yet children’s fibs, like old wives’ tales, tend to be over-generous with the truth rather than economical with it.” Moviemakers, our modern storytellers, often hedge their bets when exploring the fantasy genre, blending it with science fiction or the faux-historical epic, as though fantasy isn’t quite enough on its own. Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
“Cherish the moments. They go ever so quickly.” Sheila Hancock, beloved actor, writer – and award-winning singer, notably of Stephen Sondheim in Sweeney Todd – gave us that carpe diem nudge in the course of an afternoon discussion of her favourite music. Beside her, a bunch of playing partners (the Carducci Quartet, pianist Christopher Glynn, soprano Caroline Blair) performed extracts from her choices. Such events can often err on the side of cosy blandness. But here amid the early-Georgian splendour of Duncombe Park outside Helmsley in North Yorkshire, Dame Sheila – utterly undimmed at Read more ...
Mark Kidel
The artist Bill Viola died, after a long illness, early in the morning of Friday 12 July. I had the privilege of getting to know him while making a documentary about his life and work in 2001-2003. He quickly became a friend, as did his wife Kira and his sons, Blake and and Andrei. He felt like a kind of brother, who’d grown up through the same changes that shook culture up in the 1960s and 70s. Although he was American, I felt that we spoke the same language.I’d become interested in video art – the principal domain of his work – in the mid-1970s. I wrote about it, persuaded the BBC to give Read more ...
Lucia Lucas
Until last week, Tippett’s New Year had not been staged since 1990, probably because it’s considered very hard to produce. I think it is generally harder than Britten. It’s also an ensemble piece; you need 10 people who are fairly accomplished in performing new works.There are parts that needed to be updated. Some of the libretto, seen through our lens of 2024, seemed insensitive. You can’t sanitise everything and take the drama out of the story, but it was important to update, with the blessing of Tippett’s estate.When we first started, everyone was simply trying to do it right, but it was Read more ...