Birmingham
Pete Paphides: Broken Greek review - top of the pop memoirsSunday, 01 March 2020
Think of the phrase “music memoir”, and you might conjure images of wild nights and heavy mornings. You’re unlikely to think of suburban West Bromwich and tributes to Mike Batt’s Wombles back catalogue. But then, Pete Paphides’s story is comprised... Read more... |
Frang, CBSO, Yamada, Symphony Hall Birmingham review - the tingle factorThursday, 20 February 2020
There’s a particular moment of a particular recording – I suppose every slightly over-obsessive record collector has one – that I just keep listening to over and over again. It’s in Fritz Reiner’s 1960 Chicago Symphony recording of Respighi’s The... Read more... |
Transatlantic Sessions, Symphony Hall, Birmingham review - folk fusion from Burns to the bossSaturday, 08 February 2020
In its seventeenth incarnation, Transatlantic Sessions - a concert comprising music from some of the finest names in Scottish, Irish and American folk - had its penultimate night of its UK tour in a packed-out Symphony Hall, Birmingham on Friday... Read more... |
Miloš Karadaglić, Birmingham Town Hall review - flashy and fierce, with exquisite detailWednesday, 22 January 2020
Dubbed “classical music’s guitar hero”, the 36-year-old London based Montenegrin guitarist Miloš Karadaglić – more commonly known by just his first name – is back on the international stage. He returned in 2019 after a devastating hand injury... Read more... |
Mahler's Eighth, CBSO, Gražinytė-Tyla, Symphony Hall Birmingham review - a symphony of 600Monday, 20 January 2020
“Try to imagine the whole universe beginning to ring and resound” wrote Gustav Mahler of his Eighth Symphony. “There are no longer human voices, but planets and suns revolving.” It’s an image that captures the impossible scale and mind-boggling... Read more... |
Röschmann, LSO, Rattle, Symphony Hall, Birmingham review - passion with precisionWednesday, 15 January 2020
Alongside the heartfelt tenderness, there is an emotional weight - as well as a compositional sophistication - prevalent in Alban Berg’s Seven Early Songs. Perhaps this correctly discloses the word "early" as pertaining to the composer’s... Read more... |
Bauer, CBSO, Koenig, Symphony Hall Birmingham review - Christoph pulls it offFriday, 13 December 2019
Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla’s programmes in Birmingham are so personal – so utterly bespoke – that in the event of her being indisposed, they present something of a problem. That’s what happened this week. The programme was vintage Gražinytė-Tyla –... Read more... |
Dariescu, Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, Simonov, Symphony Hall, Birmingham review - Soviet fear and loathingThursday, 17 October 2019
It remains some of the most terrifying music ever written. Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony - the composer’s portrayal of the fear and anxiety felt under Stalin's regime - is a horrifyingly brutal musical portrayal of life lived under a totalitarian... Read more... |
Black Flag, The Mill, Birmingham review – hardcore punk originators come up trumpsThursday, 10 October 2019
Prior to this week, it had been 35 years since hardcore punk firestarters Black Flag had set foot in the UK. That said, it was not without some trepidation that I made my way to one of Birmingham’s more compact venues to see a band who had once been... Read more... |
Balsom, CBSO, Gražinytė-Tyla, Symphony Hall Birmingham review - made in BrumThursday, 03 October 2019
There’s nothing like practising what you preach. “I say straight out that I regard all so-called 12-tone music, so-called serial music, so-called electronic music and so-called avant-garde music as utter rubbish, and indeed a deliberate conning of... Read more... |
Simon Halsey on Tippett’s ‘A Child of Our Time’: ‘the biggest lesson was how to feel what he had written’Thursday, 26 September 2019
I was greatly privileged to know Sir Michael Tippett and to chorus-master his recording of A Child of Our Time. In my childhood, the two giants of English composition were “Tippett and Britten” - in that order. Since their deaths, Britten has... Read more... |
Power, politics and Peaky Blinders - the Shelby family return for Series 5Thursday, 22 August 2019
This is how Steven Knight pictured Peaky Blinders when he first set about creating it. “I was very keen not to do a traditional British period drama, especially where it comes to depictions of working class people. Where the impulse is to say ‘it’s... Read more... |
