London
Markie Robson-Scott
“Why is everyone from your school a criminal crackhead?” “Why is everyone from yours a Tory minister?” These questions lie at the heart of Zadie Smith’s NW. Keisha (the wonderful Nikki Amuka-Bird), aka Natalie, is married to wealthy Frank (Jake Fairbrother), who’s asking the crackhead question. Leah (Phoebe Fox), who answers back, is her best friend – though that’s no longer a given.Keisha and Leah went to school together and grew up on Caldwell, a Willesden estate; they still live nearby. Keisha is a success story, a perfectionist black barrister – “Life was a problem that could be solved by Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Lest we forget. On Flanders’ Fields. For the Fallen. No one does stiff-upper-lip, buttoned-up remembrance quite like the English. Since its composition only a little over half a century ago, the War Requiem has become our national anthem for the departed. When Britten’s hastily greasepainted collage of Wilfrid Owen and the best bits of Mozart and Verdi (not to mention Berlioz) is retired every so often, something more muted is generally preferred for chilly November evenings: Fauré, or at a stretch Duruflé, Requiems as sympathetic to sing as they are to listen to, with melodies as sweet as a Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
New York-born actor Robert Vaughn, who has died at the age of 83, achieved massive popular success when he starred as the sleek secret agent Napoleon Solo in The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which ran for four seasons from 1964 to 1968 and exploited the then-new James Bond mania to ratings-busting effect. Prior to that, Vaughn, both of whose parents were actors, had racked up a long string of minor credits in American TV and movies, the most prestigious of which was an appearance in John Sturges's 1960 cowboy classic, The Magnificent Seven. The latter also starred Steve McQueen, with whom Vaughn Read more ...
Saskia Baron
In case one thought that turning hit TV shows into movies was a 21st century phenomenon, here comes a restoration of The Small World of Sammy Lee to prove that film-makers were at it back in 1963.Writer-director Ken Hughes's noir drama started off as Sammy, a tense, one-hour, one-location television play made in 1958. Its small screen success allowed Hughes to hire the incomparable documentary photographer Wolf Suschitzky as his DP and cast musical star Anthony Newley for the feature film version. Newley plays Sammy, a small-time hustler in Soho, dodging the bookies' heavies who are chasing Read more ...
Florence Hallett
In Monster Field, 1938, fallen trees appear like the fossilised remains of giant creatures from prehistory. With great horse-like heads, and branches like a tangle of tentacles and legs, Paul Nash’s series of paintings and photographs serve as documents, bearing witness to the malevolent lifeforce that, unleashed by their undignified end, has taken hold of these apparently dead trees.Like the trees of Monster Field, piles of wrecked World War Two aircraft at Cowley Dump, removed from their proper environment in the sky, take on a new and disturbing life of their own, shifting and stirring, Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Two personable musicians, who win on all fronts: at the pinnacle of their highly competitive and skilled professions, highly articulate, and perhaps unlikely partners in their art. In one corner, ladies and gentlemen, the composer, world-leading jazz trumpeter, teacher, head of Lincoln Center Jazz, the New Orleans-born Wynton Marsalis, 55. In the other, Nicola Benedetti, 29, the Scottish classical violinist, teacher and leading campaigning proselytiser for the importance of music in all spheres.Miss Benedetti played the premiere of Wynton Marsalis’s Violin Concerto in D, with a mere 100 Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
American mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton has a wonderful, characterful voice, with apparently effortless and even tone production and control. She seems to be able to spin out a quiet phrase – and just hold it for ever.The past few years have seen here winning prizes: she carried off both the main prize and the song prize at the 2013 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, and received the 2015 Richard Tucker award. Her opera career is now taking flight in major houses, and justifiably so. One audience member even incongruously yelled out “Sing Eboli!” at the start of the encores. She Read more ...
David Nice
No-one can easily replace Mark Wigglesworth as Music Director of English National Opera: ask any of the musicians working there and you'll find they're all heartbroken. That said, they could not have chosen a nicer man or a better all-round musician than Martyn Brabbins.In the UK we know him best for his concert work and especially for his espousal of the unfamiliar, from the debateably terrible Havergal Brian "Gothic" Symphony - proof of Brabbins' capability in mustering the hugest possible forces - to a re-evaluation of Tippett's Second Symphony as an absolute masterpiece. In opera, not so Read more ...
Marcus Davey
We've got a lot to celebrate in 2016: 50 years since the Roundhouse became an arts centre and 10 years of transforming young lives through creativity. In celebration of this momentous year we embarked on a journey of discovery to uncover the stories from train-enthusiast accounts of our humble beginnings to real-life high-wire love stories, from week-long raves in the 1990s to politically-charged spoken word in the 2000s. So many incredible stories have emerged from the walls of this beautiful building.In the 1960s freedom of expression and liberation had arrived in London. Skirts were Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
True to its title, Pool of London is one of the great London films. More than this, it included British cinema’s first – albeit chaste – interracial romance and convinces as film noir. Filmed in 1950 and released in February 1951, it was passed by the British Board of Film Censors for screening with no cuts. But it did get an “A” certificate, which meant children had to be accompanied by adults. This no children’s film, though.Merchant seamen Dan MacDonald (Bonar Colleano) and Johnny Lambert (Earl Cameron) arrive in London on the freighter Dunbar, which docks on the Thames in the heart of the Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
The Philharmonia’s Sunday concert wasn’t quite the event they’d planned. Christoph von Dohnányi scored a hit last season with Schubert's Ninth Symphony, so his reading of the Eighth seemed an ideal way to begin. But Dohnányi withdrew early on, leaving the work in the less inspiring hands of Josep Pons.The second half was devoted to Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, with the star pairing of Robert Dean Smith and Matthias Goerne. But Goerne too pulled out, and at very short notice. Fortunately, Catherine Wyn-Rogers proved a worthy stand-in, and Pons found his stride, making the second half more Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
The Lobgesang "lies very near my heart," wrote Mendelssohn. And the composer was so self-critical that the published order of his symphonies bears no resemblance to their composition: this "Hymn of Praise", known as the Second, was the penultimate before his symphonic masterpiece, the "Scottish". It is more often performed in recording studios, to satisfy recording companies’ hunger for complete cycles, than in concert, at least outside the composer’s native Germany.So a reappraisal is in order. Who better to lead it, in concerts and a forthcoming recording with the London Symphony Orchestra Read more ...