Reviews
Jasper Rees
Tom Lehrer famously declared satire dead when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Henry Kissinger not long after he'd bombed Cambodia back to the Middle Ages. Lehrer never wrote another song. Meanwhile other satirists battle on. Every day delivers fresh material to work with. This documentary supplied a little more by rummaging around on Donald Trump's family tree.Put succinctly, Meet the Trumps: From Immigrant to President reported that the rise and rise and rise of the Trump dynasty is a tale of brothel-keeping, horsemeat burgers and much rapacious trousering of federal Read more ...
David Nice
Young Amadeus is growing up in real time with MOZART 250, Classical Opera's ambitious 26-year project following its hero's creative life from childhood to the grave. 2015's start, marking two and a half centuries since the boy wonder's first visit to London, and its sequel had little to show of its main man, but plenty of other, senior composers flourishing in the same years. A full programme of 1767 told us a different story, with a surprise from the 11-year-old that was a kick in the teeth to those of us who thought Mozart was precocious and prodigious but showed no flashes of genius until Read more ...
Clem Hitchcock
North London’s much loved Estorick Collection is reopening its doors after a five-month spruce up. The Georgian listed building that houses a 120-piece collection of modern Italian art now boasts a new glass conservatory, opened out entrance hall and "daylight-enhanced" gallery spaces. It all bodes well, even if the reliance on a period of prolonged British sunshine to complete the effect feels a touch optimistic right now. Here’s hoping.The Collection’s return is marked by a temporary exhibition surveying a seldom highlighted episode from World War One. From 1917-18, thousands of British Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
It takes some pretty special casting to spice up Richard Eyre’s Royal Opera regular, currently returning for its 14th revival (with a 15th on the cards later this year). And that’s exactly what was on the bill here, with house debuts from both Joyce El-Khoury’s Violetta and Sergey Romanovsky’s Alfredo. If the result was at times uneven, it also had an energy, an uncertainty, that gave it a freshness lacking in more polished revivals.Lebanese-Canadian soprano Joyce El-Khoury arrived on the UK radar in 2012, singing Violetta for WNO, followed two years later by an outstanding Pauline in Read more ...
David Kettle
You can tell it’s a big deal when even a handful of London critics abandon the capital for a Saturday evening in chilly Glasgow. And there were more besides in the capacity crowd for Birtwistle’s opera The Last Supper, given a semi-staged performance by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra – seemingly anyone who’s anyone in Scottish music, from international composers to conductors and orchestra heads, and way beyond too. A big deal it most definitely was – and, miraculously, a free ticket too, since it was essentially a radio recording for a BBC Radio 3 broadcast (scheduled for 28 January) Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Nick Mohammed doesn't do things by halves as his chatty airhead alter ego Mr Swallow. Forget the scholarly approach of finely researched biographies of Harry Houdini (“boring!”); his “first-ever entirely true auto-biopic” of the magician and escapologist comes complete with conjuring tricks, song-and-dance numbers and a whole lot of laughs.Ably assisted by David Elms as Mr Goldsworth and Kieran Hodgson as Jonathan (in oriental tunics for no discernible reason), plus an onstage pianist, Mr Swallow chatters on, while Mr Goldsworth, the producer of this show within a show, has a devil of a job Read more ...
Robert Beale
Colin Matthews’s arrangements for orchestra of the 24 Debussy Préludes (originally commissioned by the Hallé) have been widely admired. The BBC Philharmonic’s concert, conducted by Nicholas Collon, at the Bridgewater Hall on Friday night began with three of Ravel’s five piano Miroirs, two of them orchestrated by Matthews (one a world premiere) and one by the late Steven Stucky.The Matthews approach to Debussy has been compared in places to Ravel’s own orchestral technique (though a direct claim that he transcribed Debussy as Ravel might have done seems over-egging the pudding somewhat). His Read more ...
David Nice
The Big Mac – as in Ligeti's music-theatre fantasia on the possible death of Death – is here to stay. Back in 1990, three critics (I was one) were invited on to the BBC World Service to say which work from the previous decade we thought would survive. I opted for Le grand macabre, having seen its UK premiere at ENO in 1983; a certain distinguished arts administrator condescended to rejoinder that he thought "even Ligeti has disowned that now". Well, the last laugh goes to the composer, looking down from one of the fluffy white clouds he depicted so well in music. But he probably Read more ...
Liz Thomson
In the heat of a Texas summer, Aaron Holland Broussard comes of age. It’s 1952: the two world wars still cast their long shadows and, far away, the Americans are fighting the Russians in a proxy war around the 38th Parallel.Aaron’s a good guy, an only child in a dysfunctional household – father a drinker, probably suffering what today we’d call post-traumatic stress disorder having gone over the top in the Great War, mother who’s been through the mill with all the grim treatments thrown at depressives back then. Aaron looks after his animals and plays his old Gibson, trying all the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In 1942, Roy Acuff set up Acuff-Rose Music in partnership with Nashville-based songwriter and talent scout Fred Rose. The new publishing company was dedicated to treating songwriters decently. They would not be cheated out of their copyrights. There would be clear and honest accounting. The contracts offered would have better percentages than rival publishers. There would be no shady deals. Acuff-Rose cocked a snook at the country music establishment and, in time, had writers as important as The Everly Brothers, Lefty Frizzell, Don Gibson and Roy Orbison on its books. Acuff and Rose had Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
There’s a passage in Martin Crimp’s impeccable libretto for Written on Skin that describes a page of illuminated manuscript. The ink, he tells us, stays forever wet – alive with moist, fleshy, indecent human reality rather than dried into decorous fixity. As a metaphor for storytelling, it’s potent; as a description of George Benjamin’s score, it’s close to literal. Nearly five years after its Aix premiere, the music of Written on Skin still shifts and shudders with awkward emotional truths, buckling with characters who refuse to be pinned in place, hunching with musical tension that refuses Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
"Oh what a beautiful morning! Oh what a beautiful day!" Curly the cowboy sang in the opening scene of Oklahoma!, the first musical from Rodgers and Hammerstein (1943). In the midst of war here was sheer optimism and celebration set – with some nods at reality ("there’s a bright golden haze on the meadow, the corn is as high as an elephant’s eye, an’ it looks like it’s climbin’ clear up the sky") – in the American West. It was also a fully integrated show – music, book, lyrics, choreography (Agnes de Mille, Cecil B DeMille’s niece) and set design with everything pushing the narrative, another Read more ...