Reviews
Sarah Kent
Mona Hatoum was born in Beirut of Palestinian parents. She came to London to study at the Slade School in 1975 and got stuck here when civil war broke out in Lebanon, preventing her from returning home. In effect, she has been living in exile ever since and the sense of displacement and unease induced by being far from home permeates much of her work.The video, Measures of Distance, 1988 (pictured below right) is a moving reflection on the love she feels for her mother, far away in war-torn Beirut. The screen is covered in a veil of arabic writing (her mother’s letters) Read more ...
Saskia Baron
There are times when you sit in the cinema and wish that you didn’t speak English and could just enjoy what you’re seeing. Unfortunately Knight of Cups is one of those times. This is a stunningly beautiful film, the first of Terrence Malick’s films to be (mainly) set in Los Angeles, and it features amazing work by long-term collaborators cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and designer Jack Fisk. But its narrative voiceover and dialogue are excruciating, quasi-parodic and they drag down the stunning images irretrievably.This is a world of gorgeous women, glossy minimalist architecture, movie- Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Denmark is casting a shadow in a way it has not done before. The international success of Copenhagen’s Lukas Graham is unprecedented. While Aqua, The Ravonettes, Efterklang and Trentemøller are amongst the great Danes who have made international waves musically, Graham has trumped them all to become a surprise world-wide bestseller with the single “7 Years”. Whether or not his brand of streamlined pop appeals – theartsdesk declared that “7 Years’” parent album has a “shiny plasticity that carries no real weight” – it has helped generate interest in the music of Graham’s home country which has Read more ...
David Nice
You rarely see a full production of Shakespeare's dream play so magical it brings tears to the eyes. But then you don't often get 42 players and 14 voices joining the cast to adorn the text with Mendelssohn's bewitching incidental music, plus the Overture composed 16 years earlier – certainly the most perfect masterpiece ever written by a 17-year-old. Add a fluent ensemble of actors, a sense of high style in costume design and, above a simple stage with audience on three sides and the orchestra on the fourth, a hammerbeam oak forest in the very hall where Twelfth Night had its first known Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It's striking what a broken heart can do for a comic. Not least it can provide him with some new material, but also make him take a step back to reevaluate what he has. In Marcus Brigstocke's case it led him into a horrible depression but happily, via some other byways, to this new show, Why the Long Face?, which started life at the Edinburgh Fringe last year.It touches only tangentially on depression, but for longstanding Brigstocke fans the mention of it and the failed love affair (after Brigstocke's wife divorced him) explains this change of direction for a comic whose mainstay has been Read more ...
David Nice
It often sounds as though Richard Strauss makes the ascent of his Alpine Symphony in too many layers of clothes. Hopes were that Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra would give us a characteristically sinewy, more lightly-clad mountaineer. What we got was something different: a perfect blending of rich textures, an objectivity that left humans more or less out of the natural landcapes, and an often swift expedition that gave space to climaxes.This was the third performance I've heard in a row which shed minutes from the average length of the work in question without seeming Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Terracotta warriors, Bactrian two-humped camels, Heavenly Horses, Buddhist caves, sand dunes, the world’s first printed book, a silk factory and temples galore including one that was the great mosque in Xi’an, were but some of the ingredients in a breathless first hour in a trilogy of programmes about the world’s oldest trading routes. They were opened up by the explorer and trader Zhang Qian of the Western Han dynasty, about 2,300 years ago.The Han were experts in mobile warfare and were searching for Heavenly Horses, to use instead of their sturdy but small ponies, the better to subdue the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The figures are approximate, but the Yardbirds’ first studio album has been issued on CD at least 12 separate times. With The Move, their debut album and its follow-up Shazam have each had a comparatively paltry eight outings on CD. As for vinyl editions, setting aside the UK originals in mono and stereo and contemporaneous worldwide pressings, similar quantities of reissues of the three albums have hit shops from the mid-Seventies onwards. The Move have not been afforded au courant hipster vinyl editions, but a few versions of the Yardbirds’ set have been issued over the past six or so years Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
La Follia was, as every programme note inevitably reminds us, a pop song of its day. A strutting Spanish dance, it featured in the work of over 150 composers, so catchy was its signature chord progression. Still a classic of Baroque concert programmes, it’s a great way to take the temperature of any given performance. At its best, it can have even a sedate audience stamping and swaying, thrilled by those grinding syncopations and that heartbeat pulse. Last night at the Wigmore Hall, Christophe Rousset and a trio of musicians from Les Talens Lyriques got a polite round of applause.Perhaps it Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
An exceptionally wide-ranging exhibition of paintings, sculptures, drawings and lithographs by Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) commemorates the 50th anniversary of his death. Amidst the flurry of Giacometti exhibitions – the National Portrait Gallery’s Pure Presence last autumn and a huge exhibition at Tate Modern to come next spring – this anthology is unmissable for the different contexts it offers.Giacometti’s close and lifelong working relationship with his brother Diego, the designer whose work has recently come to deserved prominence, is also explored. Throughout their lives, Diego was Read more ...
Saskia Baron
In the world of the concentration camp, clothes or the lack of them sealed your fate. What you wore marked out your role; whether it was the blue-gray Waffen SS uniform, a doctor’s grubby white coat, the striped suits given to slave-workers, or your own clothes from your former life. The first images of Son of Saul are a soft blur of figures in a distant wood, but walking swiftly to camera and into sharp focus is one man, Saul Auslander (Géza Röhrig). He’s wearing an overcoat with a big red cross on its back, an easy target if he should try to escape. His deep-set eyes bear the expression of Read more ...
David Nice
A mere 10 minutes in to this concert performance of an 18th century delight by Neapolitan Niccolò Jommelli, you knew the form to expect for the rest of the evening. Ian Page's Classical Orchestra kicked off with bracing rhythmic vitality from the start, and sounded super-bright in Cadogan acoustics so ideal for their forces. Then three of the main singers quickly showed their total classiness – the others were not to disappoint – with vivid continuo support led by the best in the business, Christopher Bucknall. And Mattia Verazi's crisp, clean libretto made the set-up clear very quickly: Read more ...