16th century
First Person: 15 years of Tenebrae, a lifetime of choral musicTuesday, 11 April 2017
Having just celebrated a birthday the wrong side of 50 years of age I confess to regularly pinching myself when I dare to look back and see the higgledy-piggledy route my life has taken to bring me to the present day, as we celebrate 15 years of... Read more... |
CD: Jethro Tull - The String QuartetsWednesday, 22 March 2017
On Jethro Tull's classic "Songs from the Wood" Ian Anderson promised "all things refined". And refined the band certain has been. Musically educated, too. For 40-odd years they have specialised in baroque rock and minstrel ballads all served up... Read more... |
Michelangelo & Sebastiano, National GalleryThursday, 16 March 2017
The story of two characters whose friendship ended in bitter enmity is juicy enough for a typical spring blockbuster and yet this is an exhibition with a serious and scholarly bent. While the National Gallery is no stranger to academic exhibitions... Read more... |
Madonnas and Miracles: The Holy Home in Renaissance Italy, Fitzwilliam Museum, CambridgeTuesday, 14 March 2017
A lovely, scholarly and gently revelatory exhibition, Madonnas and Miracles explores a neglected area of the perennially popular and much-studied Italian Renaissance – the place of piety in the Renaissance home. We are used to admiring the great... Read more... |
Bruegel, Holburne Museum, BathSaturday, 11 March 2017
Painted in c.1640, David Teniers the Younger’s Boy Blowing Bubbles depicts a theme that would have been entirely familiar to his wife’s great-grandfather, the founder of one of art’s most illustrious dynasties, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c.1525-1569... Read more... |
Othello, Sam Wanamaker PlayhouseFriday, 03 March 2017
There's no reason why ruffs and candles shouldn't mesh with bursts of contemporary speech, song and lighting, given a defter hand than director Ellen McDougall's. Shakespeare's timeless issues of racism and sexism have plenty of mileage in them,... Read more... |
Hamlet, Almeida TheatreWednesday, 01 March 2017
How often do you leave a production of Shakespeare's most layered drama in tears, thinking "what an astonishing play!" even more than "what a fine Hamlet!" (or not)? Last night the Bard proved even greater than his Dane. Not that Andrew Scott was... Read more... |
Best of 2016: ArtThursday, 29 December 2016
Before we consign this miserable year to history, there are a few good bits to be salvaged; in fact, for the visual arts 2016 has been marked by renewal and regeneration, with a clutch of newish museum directors getting into their stride, and... Read more... |
Love's Labour's Lost/Much Ado About Nothing, RSC, Theatre Royal HaymarketFriday, 16 December 2016
“The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.” A sudden cold breeze blows through the endless summer afternoon of Love’s Labour's Lost in the play’s final moments. Death enters Shakespeare’s Edenic garden and innocence is lost. But what... Read more... |
Corkin, Siglo de Oro, Allies, Shoreditch ChurchMonday, 12 December 2016
Advent is as profitable for choirs as it is tricky to programme. How to delight the palates of carol-hungry audiences while offering them new treats? How to reconcile the fairy-lights of ubiquitous consumption and satiation with the Biblical call of... Read more... |
The Sixteen, Kings PlaceFriday, 04 November 2016
And so it comes to an end. Six months, 33 concerts, and many miles of travelling later, The Sixteen’s annual Choral Pilgrimage is now finished for another year. With so many concerts it’s inevitable that the singers’ relationship to the repertoire... Read more... |
Beyond Caravaggio, National GalleryWednesday, 12 October 2016
Cheekily bottom-like, their downy skin blushing enticingly, these must be the sexiest apricots ever painted. If you held out your hand, you might just be able to touch them, there in the foreground of what is thought to be Caravaggio’s earliest... Read more... |
