Reviews
Robert Beale
For the most adventurous programme in its autumn Saturday series at the Bridgewater Hall, the BBC Philharmonic’s John Storgårds brought two works from his native Finland’s repertoire, and a concerto some distance from the beaten track.Like the Hallé’s concert of mainly new music with Thomas Adès two days before, it did not pull the crowds in, despite a sweetener in the mix, but those who were there were enthusiastic.The sweetener was Sibelius’ tone poem, Pohjola’s Daughter, which, oddly for a repertoire work, seemed to get off to a slightly sticky start. Maria Zachariadou’s haunting cello Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
For Finnish composer Osmo Lindeman, the decision to pursue electronic music was made in 1968 during a visit to Poland. He had recently started using graphical notation for the scores of his compositions and was having problems getting conductors and orchestras to follow what he wanted.In Poland, he met composer Andrzej Dobrowolski and visited the Warsaw School of Music’s electronic music studio. He found that Dobrowolski also used graphical notation. With electronic music, Lindeman saw that there no barriers to using any type of score. He had the way forward. He would embrace electronic music Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Derived from the similarly-titled novel by Thomas Mallon and directed by Ron Nyswaner, Fellow Travellers tracks the course of its protagonists through several decades of 20th Century American history. It’s also an account of changing attitudes to homosexuality, and how gay culture emerged from the shadows and went mainstream.Spanning the era from the Joseph McCarthy witch-hunts of the early 1950s to the Aids crisis of the Eighties, the story revolves around the entwined fates of Hawkins Fuller (Matt Bomer) and Tim Laughlin (Jonathan Bailey, familiar from Bridgerton), who meet when both are Read more ...
aleks.sierz
We’ve all heard of the male gaze, but what about its subversion? Overturning masculine dominance is one of the themes of Boy Parts, the acclaimed debut novel by Eliza Clark, first published in 2020 and now adapted as a monologue for the stage by Gillian Greer.Playing in the main space at the Soho Theatre (currently also expanding into Walthamstow) and co-produced with Metal Rabbit, both great advocates of the capital’s new writing, this psychological thriller features Aimée Kelly and raises some disturbing questions about gender stereotypes and the relationship between art and life.The story Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Atmospherically and musically, the debut album from Lebanon’s Mayssa Jallad swiftly makes its case. It opens with a drifting, elegiac voice singing a wandering melody over a sound-bed including what sounds like a koto and a droning cello. The language employed is Arabic. On the next track, the meditative spell is punctured by the crack of distant gunfire. As it progresses, Marjaa: The Battle of the Hotels seamlessly fuses folky introspection, orchestrated drama, crackling electronica and field recordings. Sometimes – again, without any incongruity – within the same song.Marjaa: The Battle of Read more ...
Graham Fuller
The stories told by writer-director Carol Morley are poignant reclamation projects that demonstrate empathy for lost or troubled souls but don’t flinch from difficult truths.In the documentary The Alcohol Years (2000), Morley’s subject is her vanished self, a promiscuous, hard-drinking Manchester teenager. The part-dramatised Dreams of a Life (2011) questions why over two years elapsed before the death of Joyce Carol Vincent, a well-liked 38-year-old, was revealed by the discovery of her remains in her bedsit in busy Wood Green. The Falling (2014), inspired by reported events, explores the Read more ...
James Saynor
Are we all getting older, or are film award-winners getting younger? Sofía Otero won the Silver Bear for best lead performance at the Berlin Film Festival this year at the age of just nine. To achieve that, it surely needs to be one of the best moppet turns of all time – and I think it quite possibly is. She plays an eight-year-old boy who doesn’t answer to the name of Aitor even when he’s gone missing and dozens of searchers are yelling it out. This is because Aitor, amid an extended family in the Basque country, wants to go by the name of Cocó – no, make that Lucía, she later decides. Read more ...
Gary Naylor
There’s an old-fashioned feel to the story at its outset: Young woman, guitar in hand, Northern accent announcing as much as it always did, who makes a new life in London, all the money going on a room in Camden. One recalls Georgy Girl or Darling, films that were very much of their time. But it's safe to say that, even if you missed the extensive trigger warnings on the way into the Southwark Playhouse auditorium, a volume of swear words to give a Tory backbencher pause is enough to tell you that this show is very much 2023. Maimuna Memon’s song cycle is a deeply personal story of Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
The Philharmonia’s current season, Let Freedom Ring, celebrates American music through some notably interesting programming. And although last night’s concert was very conventionally structured, with an overture, concerto and big symphony to finish, it was also the chance to hear some repertoire only quite rarely presented.Barber’s Violin Concerto is a personal favourite, a bit of a guilty pleasure as it is undoubtedly Romantically indulgent, and old-fashioned even when it was written. But I’m surprised it’s not heard more often – I’d take it over Bruch or Brahms or Elgar every time. Here Read more ...
Robert Beale
Thomas Adès had a job to do in his first concert with the Hallé since being appointed Artist-in-Residence for the next two years: to win over the audience that came to witness it.It wasn’t a sell-out (anything that smacks of new music is unlikely to draw a huge number to the Bridgewater Hall, no matter what sweeteners are provided), but for those who were there he definitely succeeded, and by the end they were shouting their approval.That was due particularly as appreciation of his ability as a conductor pure and simple, as he finished the programme with Janáček’s Sinfonietta, that uplifting Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Lynn Nottage’s second London opening this year, the Donmar premiere of Clyde’s, is a comedy about a sandwich, the perfect sandwich. With just a little more punch to the plotting it would be another masterwork from this award-winning American playwright whose book for the musical MJ arrives on the West End next spring.Ebullient truckstop owner Clyde (Gbemisola Ikemulo, pictured below, left) takes on ex-cons as workers. This entraps them from the off: nobody else will be in a hurry to hire them, so Clyde is free to exploit and harangue them and generally make their iives tense. She does Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
A full Wigmore Hall always feels special. Formerly we saw a board with the words “HOUSE FULL” on it, in large, bright red capital letters at the entrance. If we had tickets back then, we knew how lucky we were. These days, the 552-seater hall gets booked out far more often, as it was last night. The promise of a programme of Schubert (both of the piano trios composed near the end of his all-too brief life) played by performers including András Schiff had filled the hall. Schiff was playing a fortepiano (no more information given, but he has been recording Schubert for ECM in recent years Read more ...