1940s
Cinderella, Ratmansky/Australian Ballet, London ColiseumThursday, 21 July 2016
Does Alexei Ratmansky, former Bolshoi director and current world-leading classical choreographer, really love Prokofiev's Cinderella, or did he choose to create a new one for Australian Ballet in 2013 principally because he wasn't happy with his... Read more... |
Coote, CBSO, Wilson, Symphony Hall BirminghamSaturday, 07 May 2016
Can it be true? Was this really the CBSO’s first performance of Bax’s The Garden of Fand? OK, Bax is hardly mainstream repertoire, and if Oramo or Rattle had conducted it, someone would have remembered. Further back in the orchestra’s 96-year... Read more... |
John Piper, Pallant House Gallery, ChichesterThursday, 28 April 2016
You wouldn't judge a painting on how it would look in your own home, but textiles are different: in fact it is exactly this assessment that counts. A length of fabric laid flat is a half-formed thing: it needs to be cut, stitched and draped before... Read more... |
DVD: Pink String and Sealing WaxTuesday, 26 April 2016
Although the Ealing Studios’ melodrama Pink String and Sealing Wax was set in the 1880s and based on a play first performed in 1943, the film hit cinemas in late 1945 when World War II was barely over. The war saw a fundamental shift in the role of... Read more... |
TrumboSaturday, 06 February 2016
Trumbo depicts the 13-year struggle by the screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) to break the blacklist imposed on him and the other members of the Hollywood Ten in 1947. By continuing to get his scripts produced throughout the Fifties, Trumbo... Read more... |
Cinderella, Scottish Ballet, Edinburgh Festival TheatreThursday, 07 January 2016
When producing Cinderella, the main question is: sweet or sour? That Prokofiev score is splendid, but it's no walk in a candy shop; in Act I the stepsisters have passages so scraping, spiky and dissonant that sugar-coating would seem to be out... Read more... |
Dan Cruickshank: Resurrecting History – Warsaw, BBC FourThursday, 03 December 2015
Dan Cruickshank, that enthusiastic architectural historian, who likes nothing better than some scaffolding he can clamber up to get a better look, revealed that as a child of seven he moved some 60 years ago to Warsaw with his family. His father,... Read more... |
Alexander Calder, Tate ModernTuesday, 10 November 2015
Sculpture that moves with the gentlest current of air! Sculpture that makes you want to do a little tap dance of joy! Or maybe the Charleston – swing a leg to those sizzling Jazz Age colours and shapes and rhythms. Look, that’s the queen of the... Read more... |
Giacometti, National Portrait GallerySunday, 18 October 2015
Any number of puzzling and fantastical stories were told by Alberto Giacometti in the construction of a personal mythology that helped secure his reputation as an archetypal artist of the avant-garde. Less heroic than the oft-quoted accounts of his... Read more... |
When We Were Women, Orange Tree TheatreTuesday, 08 September 2015
Can you peg a whole play on a decent twist? When We Were Women’s narrative tease pays off interestingly, but takes a hell of a long time getting there. It leaves little space to explore the ramifications of an intriguing revelation, a frustration... Read more... |
Prom 38: Osborne, BBC Philharmonic, MenaFriday, 14 August 2015
Pairing Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony with John Foulds’ Three Mantras was a smart piece of programming: established modern classic and obscure novelty sharing an inspiration from Indian music and philosophy, and both perfectly designed for showing... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Tennessee Ernie FordSunday, 26 July 2015
Tennessee Ernie Ford: Portrait of an American SingerAlthough there are different American music charts, success in one category but not another is not a marginal accomplishment. A major star on the country chart can be as popular, heavy... Read more... |
