Reviews
Bernard Hughes
James McCarthy’s oratorio Malala is both a heartfelt tribute to the young Nobel Peace laureate, Malala Yousafzai, and political statement in favour of the education of women. In it, as in its companion piece A Child of Our Time, a persecuted individual is turned into a symbol of all mankind. Indeed, Malala writes in a statement in the programme that “I wasn’t chosen because I am just one girl – I was chosen because of the belief in all girls whose voices can be heard.” This is put more simply in the music, which ends with the full chorus singing “we are all Malala!”The text of Malala, by the Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Can you sense a person's life through a sequence of objects? Not to mention influence and legacy? Biographical exhibitions are fascinating, not least because they also tell us something about looking back through the filter of the present. And William Morris (1834-1896) has certainly been, in many ways, a man for all seasons. Here the gifted design historian and biographer, Fiona MacCarthy, is the compiler in charge, providing an affecting look at a man whose sheer intelligence, combined with heartbreaking energy, determination and idealism, not only affected his world but went further Read more ...
Kimon Daltas
This concert was part of a tour of Canada’s National Arts Centre orchestra to five cities in the UK themed around the anniversary of the start of World War One. The Ottawa-based orchestra joined forces with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Choir for this London centrepiece to the tour, under the baton of violinist-turned-conductor Pinchas Zukerman. Splicing two orchestras together with necessarily minimal rehearsal time may not make perfect musical sense but, as artistic director of the NCA orchestra and principal guest conductor of the RPO, Zukerman is uniquely Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
"Baffling paranormal thriller" is your drive-thru soundbite to describe Intruders, but despite a lingering threat of genre-cliché, it holds your attention with a very capable cast and some stylish cinematography. The action is set in Washington State and Oregon in the American Northwest (though it was apparently shot over the border in British Columbia), and the chilly, metallic light has a distinctly Scandinavian air.It was funded by BBC Worldwide and BBC Two and first shown on BBC America, where it scored healthy ratings. How interesting that a show aimed at the Stateside market, where they Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The key lines are “you’re reborn into an untroubled world” – a world “where everyone’s the same.” The 1956 Don Siegel science fiction film Invasion of the Body Snatchers is often taken as a response to America’s fear of Communism and the associated suppression of self, or as a commentary on the encroaching conformity brought by the spread of consumerism and a regimented suburbia. In both cases, homogenisation and standardised behaviour were the potential result.Seeing the film anew does nothing to alter these interpretations. In cinemas again as part of the BFI’s Days of Fear and Wonder Read more ...
Florence Hallett
Andrew Graham-Dixon’s villainous alter ego got a second airing tonight in his exploration of 19th-century Britain’s love of all things Gothic. Last week we saw him hanging about in decaying graveyards, or appearing, wraithlike in a dank corner of a Gothic ruin, while ravens circled portentously overhead (main picture). We saw him relating tales of horror and mystery in flickering candlelight, or peering through the flames of an infernal bonfire, and in tonight’s episode, always one for going the extra mile, he was touring Victorian sewers, with only a rat for company.The great thing about Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
In The Overnighters documentarist Jesse Moss found his story and pursued it with remarkable empathy, all in the best traditions of the genre. He persuaded both sides in this tale of (quiet) confrontation to trust him, and they opened up completely. Then closing minute revelations that come as a total shock take his film to a different level, turning what would have been a strong film in itself into something that will stay in the memory for a very long time.It made us ponder that frequent question with the form: what persuades the subjects of a film to continue cooperation, when the subject Read more ...
Matthew Wright
The Afrobeats scene is coming to a venue near you. Anglo-Ghanaian artist Fuse ODG, who won the best African Act MOBO last week for the second year running, launched his first album T.I.N.A. last night with a relentless, exuberant performance that brought out the African party flavour to these songs. His album release and tour, on the back of the MOBO success, marks a significant moment in his progression from niche internet popularity to the mainstream. Fuse is a working model of how to create a music career online, and his profile has been raised to its current breaking-through status Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Minny Pops: Drastic Measures, Drastic Movement The Pop Group: Cabinet of Curiosities, We are TimeTwo groups with tangential relationships to the pop in their names. One from Bristol, the other from Amsterdam. Each attracted attention in the punk's slipstream yet most certainly weren’t punk. In time, both would be pigeonholed as post-punk, despite The Pop Group having formed in 1977 and Minny Pops getting off the ground in 1978 – successive years when punk was still vital, common currency and commercially viable.The term post-punk, like most after-the-fact categorisations, doesn’t neatly Read more ...
David Nice
Ibsen cast a cruel eye on the characters of his most relentlessly symbolic play – wild ducks wounded or domesticated by fate or character. They speak or behave unsympathetically, for the most part, yet the actors must make us care for them. Simon Stone and Chris Ryan sidestep the problem by not only updating the action but writing their own script on the subject, reinventing some of the motivations while keeping the essence. True to some of Ibsen’s main points it may not be, but this is heartbreaking drama, so truthfully acted it would make a stone weep.Most of the key situations remain. Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
Is there an ideal way to programme Metamorphosen? Richard Strauss’s elegiac masterpiece requires 23 solo strings. That’s more than most chamber orchestras can muster, but with a full size symphony orchestra the piece leaves most of the players with nothing to do. In this Usher Hall concert the Royal Scottish National Orchestra chose to let Metamorphosen stand in glorious isolation before the interval. Those players that could opted to stand – not an option for the lower strings – in a tight semicircle round principal guest conductor Thomas Søndergård, with the rest of the orchestra’s Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bach: Partitas 1-6 Igor Levit (piano) (Sony)Martin Geck's sleeve essay accompanying this pair of discs is a good read, hinting at the subtleties and complexities lying just below the surface of what may, superficially, look like six simple suites of dance movements. Bach's title page for the first Partita describes it as music "for keyboard practice... composed for music lovers, to refresh their spirits". Geck quotes from a letter about Bach written by Schumann in 1840: “I confess my sins to this lofty figure every day, while seeking to purify and strengthen myself through him... I'm Read more ...