CDs/DVDs
graham.rickson
Beethoven: Complete Works for Piano and Orchestra Howard Shelley (pianist and conductor), Orchestra of Opera North (Chandos)Lavish Beethoven box sets continue to appear. I’ve enjoyed Chailly’s symphony cycle, and another good one with Christian Thielemann and the Vienna PO has just dropped into the intray. Symphonic overload has been thwarted by this comprehensive collection of Beethoven’s music for piano and orchestra. Howard Shelley directs as well as plays, but there’s no slackness in terms of orchestral response. Shelley previously recorded matchless accounts of the Grieg and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It must have been difficult for Mexican acoustic instrumental guitar duo Rodrigo Sánchez and Gabriela Quintero to know where to go next. Initially discovered in Dublin as high-end buskers, they’ve built a career on energised acoustic pyrotechnics, combining complex Hispanic flourishes with heavy metal tics. It’s an invigorating concoction, especially live, and eventually they were courted by Hollywood, writing pieces for Puss in Boots and the last Pirates of the Caribbean film.The bigger picture, however, is that they’re seen by some as a one-trick pony. There’s a touch of the Gotan Project Read more ...
howard.male
Although Lars von Trier’s latest boasts a few mainstream stars (amonst them, Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Kiefer Sutherland) and the director himself has described the film as having not only having a Hollywood aesthetic but also - horror of horrors - a happy ending, everything is relative.Von Trier’s idea of a happy ending gets previewed at the beginning of the film, so it doesn't give much away by saying it consists of our snooker ball-sized Earth getting pulverised by a football-sized planet called Melancholia. As for why the director might think of the destruction of all life Read more ...
peter.quinn
Recorded live at New York's Blue Note during a two-week residency, this double CD celebrating the music and legacy of the jazz pianist and composer, Bill Evans (1929-80), stirs the soul even as it breaks your heart a little. Drummer Paul Motian, a member of the first Bill Evans Trio with Scott LaFaro on bass - widely recognised as one of the most influential piano trios in jazz - passed away in November last year.
Disc one sees piano maestro Chick Corea, together with Motian and another Evans alumnus, bassist Eddie Gomez, dusting down two Evans originals, “Peri’s Scope” from Portrait in Jazz Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Debut albums often set the bar high. How are you going to top a Psychocandy or a Piper At The Gates of Dawn? The answer is, not easily and, with rare exceptions, not at once. All those ideas that had been growing forever splurge out in those first excited studio sessions, years of passion and imagination explode into the open and the thrill carries to the listener.This especially applies when a debut album rewrites the book. It’s almost impossible to completely shift the musical landscape with the same finality twice, especially just a year or two later. Beardy Californian yoga mystic Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Gary Oldman's shrewd and skilful portrayal of mole-hunter George Smiley has prompted excitable Oscar gossip, but the biggest success of Tinker Tailor... is its creation of a melancholy sealed world where the common currency is secrets, lies and disillusion. Swedish director Tomas Alfredson has brought a supernaturally observant eye to jaded 1970s London, where a disgraced Smiley is brought back to the Circus (John le Carré's pet name for MI6) to conduct a clandestine probe for the traitor leaking secrets to Moscow.It's an all-male world of fading paintwork, whisky and cigarettes, where women Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Their name is Portuguese for miracles. Aiming high with their handle hasn’t prevented the Brooklyn-based Milagres from being criticised for their supposed Coldplay leanings. Sure, singer and main man Kyle Wilson has a tendency to stretch the middle of words out and there is a yearning, windswept feel to much of their debut album. Elbow and Grizzly Bear can be chucked into the pot too, but what they most sound like is a Mercury Rev/Talk Talk smoothie.The production of Glowing Mouth is crisp. Precise. Milagres’s lyrics are less specific. “Lost in the dark” sings Wilson on song of the same name Read more ...
bruce.dessau
I was pretty sure I could hear the sound of a kitchen sink being chucked into the mix on "Feel To Follow", the third track on The Maccabees' third album. The London-based quintet has certainly lobbed everything else into the mix to deliver a long player (an old-school term for an old-school album) that looks set to be a fixture in both student union bars and end-of-year charts. Given to the Wild is easily the band's most mature album yet, even if it does wear its influences a little too noisily. Still, as I write it is currently outselling Adele's 21 and that's got to be a good thing.It is Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Although a relatively new name around these parts, Kathleen Edwards has been alt-country’s nearly girl for almost a decade in her native Canada (as well as the doyenne of many campus radio stations across the States). But praise goes much further. Dylan likes her almost as much as Sheryl Crow, the Stones have had her on tour and in fact almost everyone who listens to her enjoys the way she injects warmth and lightness into musical styles normally bowing under the weight of earnestness. Voyageur, her fourth LP, has an even easier manner than before. It’s good, but not quite as existing fans Read more ...
graham.rickson
Liszt: Piano Concertos 1 and 2; Grieg: Piano Concerto Stephen Hough, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra/Litton (Hyperion)Liszt’s two piano concertos, particularly the subtler Second, aren’t played enough. They’re compact, dramatic, witty and cleverly structured, and it’s hard to listen to performances like these without grinning. Liszt can move from high-class schmaltz to cheesy melodrama in a flash; from the most poised romantic reverie to music which sounds as if it’s accompanying someone about to jump off a cliff. And what Stephen Hough excels at is the quick transformation, the mercurial Read more ...
Jasper Rees
What is it about Denmark? What, specifically, is it about Danish drama? I am currently fourth in the queue to borrow a box set of The Killing ( I know, I know: late), which all experts advise is as lethal as crack and to which Jennifer Saunders lately paid hilarious homage in Absolutely Fabulous. Borgen has just started trafficking across our screens, and last autumn there was the piercingly good low-budget film The Silence, partly German but also robustly Danish in its aesthetics and ethics. And now there’s In a Better World, best film at last year’s European Film Academy. And deservedly.It Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Bergen’s going to be pretty cold in January, but Aabenbaringen over aaskammen by the Norwegian city’s Casiokids will thaw the most frozen of feet. Their twinkly, occasionally Afro-assisted, sometimes New Order-ish electropop brings a smile too.Casiokids have been on the radar for half a decade, but Aabenbaringen over aaskammen is only their second album proper, following 2006’s Fück midi. Since then, there’s been a smattering of singles and 2010’s compilation/remix album Topp stemning på lokal bar. Aabenbaringen over aaskammen's 11 tracks include a remake of “London Zoo”, first heard on a Read more ...