CDs/DVDs
theartsdesk
This month's most delicious sounds found by our reviewers include a return to form by jazz pianist Keith Jarrett and bassist Charlie Haden, new electronica/grime from Rude Kid, impressive debuts from Villagers and Hindi Zahra, and the latest from Band Of Horses, Tracey Thorn, Teenage Fan Club, Nina Nastasia, Konono No1, Bobby McFerrin and the Ipanemas. CD of the month is by the "lovely and kaleidoscopic" Afro-Colombian band Choc Quib Town. Reviewers are Robert Sandall, Sue Steward, Howard Male, Graeme Thomson, Russ Coffey, Bruce Dessau, Thomas H Green, Marcus O'Dair, Joe Muggs, Peter Read more ...
graham.rickson
This month the selection varies from sackbutts to serialism, by way of condensed Wagner, Elgar conducted by the much-missed Vernon Handley and music from both Shostakovich and a disciple of his. Among contemporary music there is Osvaldo Golijov’s lively setting of the Passion story and the young German composer Thomas Larcher and the great Henri Dutilleux. There are also more delights from Swiss master Frank Martin. Violin pyrotechnics are supplied by Ysaÿe. But we begin with vintage Gershwin, and that famous looping clarinet.FEELGOOD CD of the MONTH
Gershwin by Grofé: Symphonic JazzHarmonie Read more ...
theartsdesk
This month's DVD release round-up includes Me and Orson Welles, classic TV series from now (Mad Men 3) and then (Callan) and two sorts of English childhood, Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll and The Railway Children. A Czech gem from the 1960s makes it onto DVD, Bruce Lee's life is documented, and recent releases Avatar, Nowhere Boy, The Kreutzer Sonata, Sherlock Holmes, Mugabe and the White African, The Road, Nightwatching and The Limits of Control hit the shelves. Our reviewers are Anne Billson, Tom Birchenough, Fisun Güner, Sheila Johnston, Veronica Lee, Jasper Rees and Adam Sweeting. Read more ...
Jasper Rees
There was a celebrated two-word come-on to 1930s movie-goers. “Garbo Laughs!” was a poster strapline calculated to seduce fans of the mournful Swedish star to Ninotchka, in which her character had an unwonted fit of the giggles. Audiences were rather more conflicted when another cinematic embargo was ended. In The Great Dictator, Chaplin talks.He took his time: 1940 was 13 years after The Jazz Singer. The greatest star of the silent age chose to stick with what he knew, and cast Luddite aspersions on the new-fangled talkies. It was the rise of Nazism which persuaded him to succumb fully to Read more ...
sheila.johnston
Rainer Werner Fassbinder lived fast, died young and left an awful-looking corpse, in 1982, at the age of 37. But not before writing, directing and producing dozens of movies, as well as plays, television series and the odd radio drama or book. Nonetheless, somehow, in between the endless chain of great subversive melodramas that made his name internationally in the mid-1970s, the director found time for this delirious, two-part conspiracy thriller. Rarely seen, long unavailable, it's a visionary acid trip through a not-far-off dystopia, a revelation for fans both of sci-fi/ fantasy and of Read more ...
David Nice
At long last it's here on DVD: the greatest Bergman movie the master didn't make, though he wrote the most meticulously detailed, 300-page screenplay-cum-novel (which covers all the events of the four-part Swedish TV miniseries rather than the much shorter feature film we have here). Naturally, too, he approved a luminous performance by Pernilla August who, under her maiden name of Östergren, frolicked as red-headed maid Maj in the film many love best, Fanny and Alexander, and who as the wife of Bille August, the very distinguished award-winning director of The Best Intentions, rose to Read more ...
theartsdesk
This month's most intriguing and fabulous CDs are headed up by the strange and beautiful electronica of Scuba and a magnum opus from Natalie Merchant. Highlights include music from the offspring of the famous from Jakob Dylan and Harper Simon, maverick country from Willie Nelson and superior offerings from David Byrne and Fatboy Slim, "hearfelt and hopping mad" music from John Grant, gypsy punk from Gogol Bordello, ethereal jazz from Food and a brace from South Africa. Stinker of the Month is the latest from the overrated Paul Weller. theartsdesk's reviewers are Robert Sandall, Joe Muggs, Read more ...
graham.rickson
This month’s eclectic selection of new releases includes offbeat performances of Berlioz and Mahler, a neglected masterpiece by Swiss composer Frank Martin, Bach performed in two contrasting styles, Schubert piano music, a Roussel symphony and an intriguing disc of orchestral music by a young French composer. We also have music composed by the former keyboard player of Deep Purple, Brahms’s German Requiem, a pair of rare Stravinsky ballets and a wonderful new set of Tchaikovsky’s piano concertos. Earlier delights are provided by a selection of motets sung by a renowned countertenor Read more ...
theartsdesk
There's a piquant French perfume to our April round-up. DVD of the month is Olivier Assayas's magnificent family drama Summer Hours, reissued in the US with revealing extras (and available worldwide from Amazon). Maurice Pialat's work is considered at length and Séraphine and Rumba are among the new releases. We unearth an extraordinary Czech epic,The Valley of the Bees, and watch Ernst Lubitsch's delicious early Berlin comedies. Films covered previously, including New Moon, The White Ribbon, 2012 and Zombieland are noted in brief, with a link to the original review. Our critics are Anne Read more ...
theartsdesk
The best or at least most interesting new music CDs our reviewers have heard this month includes the latest from electro-pop pioneers Goldfrapp, Ry Cooder collaborating with the Chieftains, Ethiopian jazz from Mulatu Astatke as well as new albums from Envy, Son of Dave, Laura Marling, Gonjasufi, Asere, Balkan Beat Box, Chumbawumba, Jónsi and Michael McGoldrick. There's a re-issue of lounge favourite Henri Mancini. Album of the month is an astonishing tour-de-force by Brad Mehldau. Reviewers are Russ Coffey, Peter Culshaw, Thomas H Green, Howard Male, Joe Muggs, Peter Quinn, Graham Rickson, Read more ...
graham.rickson
This month’s reviews have a heavy late-romantic bias: chamber music by Dvořák, fascinating and idiosyncratic Mahler from Bernstein and Tennstedt, and some superb recordings of Bruckner, Sibelius and Rachmaninov (or Rachmaninoff, as Gianandrea Noseda and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra prefer to call him). The more offbeat items include an eclectic piano recital, two quirky ballet scores from the Soviet Union and contemporary orchestral music from France inspired by the cosmos. As usual, click on the links to purchase these items on Amazon.
Mahler: Symphony No 2 ‘Resurrection’, London Read more ...
theartsdesk
Two films with a East European flavour, Katalin Varga and Tales from the Golden Age, are among our March selection, which also includes the lovely, bittersweet Irish drama Kisses. Our US release (available worldwide, of course, by mail-order) is Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas with succulent extras. Alastair Sim stars in Guy Hamilton's 1954 film of An Inspector Calls, while the late Edward Woodward lives on in the Callan box-set. The footballer-producers Ashley Cole and Rio Ferdinand score a resplendent own goal in our stinker, Dead Man Running.Films we have covered previously, including Fantastic Read more ...