1930s
Kempf, Brno Philharmonic, Davies, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - European tradition meets American jazzWednesday, 15 October 2025
Dennis Russell Davies and his musicians from the Czech Republic’s second city began a UK tour last night with an enterprising programme and a large and appreciative audience in Manchester.Freddy Kempf as piano soloist was an undoubted part of the... Read more... |
Lee Miller, Tate Britain review - an extraordinary career that remains an enigmaSaturday, 04 October 2025
Tate Britain’s Lee Miller retrospective begins with a soft focus picture of her by New York photographer Arnold Genthe dated 1927, when she was working as a fashion model. The image is so hazy that she appears as dreamlike and insubstantial as a... Read more... |
Hadelich, BBC Philharmonic, Storgårds, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - youth, fate and painMonday, 22 September 2025
Concerts need to have themes, it seems, today, and the BBC Philharmonic’s publicity suggested two contrasting ideas for the opening of its 2025-26 season at the Bridgewater Hall. One was “Fountain of Youth” (the programme title and also that of... Read more... |
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale review - an attemptedly elegiac final chapter haunted by its pastSaturday, 13 September 2025
It can be a hostage to fortune to title anything “grand”, and so it proves with the last gasp of Julian Fellowes’s everyday story of posh folk at the turn of the 20th century. The Granthams are facing a lowering of their status, and it’s time to... Read more... |
Waley-Cohen, Manchester Camerata, Pether, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester review - premiere of no ordinary violin concertoFriday, 05 September 2025
Manchester Camerata is enhancing its reputation for pioneering with three performances featuring Nick Martin’s new Violin Concerto, which it has commissioned, two of them in art galleries rather than conventional music venues.So the concerto had its... Read more... |
Top Hat, Chichester Festival Theatre review - top spectacle but book tails offFriday, 01 August 2025
After 76 years, you’d have thought they could’ve come up with a better story! Okay, that’s a cheap jibe and, given the elusive nature of really strong books in stage musicals, not quite as straightforward as meets the eye.More of that later and, let... Read more... |
Buxton International Festival 2025 review - a lavish offering of smaller-scale workSaturday, 26 July 2025
The Buxton International Festival this year was lavish in its smaller-scale productions in addition to Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet, the heavyweight offer of the opera programme. And outstanding among them was the combination of Bernstein’s Trouble in... Read more... |
Girl From The North Country, Old Vic review - Dylan's songs fail to lift the moodThursday, 10 July 2025
Well, I wasn’t expecting a Dylanesque take on "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'" as an opening number and I was right. But The Zim, Nobel Prize ‘n all, has always favoured The Grim American Songbook over The Great American Songbook and writer/director... Read more... |
Outrageous, U&Drama review - skilfully-executed depiction of the notorious Mitford sistersMonday, 23 June 2025
If somebody submitted a treatment for a new costume drama series set in the 1930s in which not just one but two fictitious sisters from a fading aristocratic family pair off with leading fascists, while the cousin warning them off these liaisons is... Read more... |
Ithell Colquhoun, Tate Britain review - revelations of a weird and wonderful worldTuesday, 17 June 2025
Tate Britain is currently offering two exhibitions for the price of one. Other than being on the same bill, Edward Burra and Ithell Colquhoun having nothing in common other than being born a year apart and being oddballs – in very different ways.... Read more... |
Donohoe, RPO, Brabbins, Cadogan Hall review - rarely heard British piano concertoThursday, 17 April 2025
The name Arthur Bliss always summoned up for me the image of a fuddy-duddy old buffer writing boring music. But as I’ve discovered his work over the last few years – initially prompted by Paul Spicer’s excellent 2023 biography – I have realised this... Read more... |
Connolly, BBC Philharmonic, Paterson, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - a journey through French splendoursMonday, 31 March 2025
The BBC Philharmonic took its Saturday night audience on a journey into French sonic luxuriance – in reverse order of historical formation, beginning with Duruflé, continuing with Chausson and ending with Saint-Saëns. It was conducted by Geoffrey... Read more... |
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