Southbank Centre
Kavakos, Philharmonia, Blomstedt, RFH review - a supreme valediction forbidding mourningFriday, 22 November 2024
From a privileged position in the Festival Hall stalls, I could see 97-year old Herbert Blomstedt’s near-immobile back as he sat on a piano stool with the score in front of him, but also his supremely expressive right arm and hand, every finger... Read more... |
Bach Brandenburg Concertos, OAE, QEH review - forever youngThursday, 14 November 2024
Victims of their own success in the postwar era of well-recorded sound, the Brandenburg Concertos first arrived in the ears of listeners from my generation via glossy, plush and polished recordings by heavyweight orchestras of a sort that would have... Read more... |
Interview: Roy Haynes, Jazz Drumming Giant (1925-2024)Wednesday, 13 November 2024
Roy Haynes, who had begun to seem immortal, has died aged 99. In this extensive Arts Desk interview from 2011, one of the greatest jazz drummers ranges across his remarkable life with sharp intelligence and generous feeling.The man who played with... Read more... |
Documentary highlights from the 2024 London Film FestivalSaturday, 26 October 2024
One of the many pleasures of the London Film Festival is the chance to see high-quality documentaries on the big screen. If lucky, these films might get a brief, specialist cinema release, but all too often non-fiction features are destined for TV.... Read more... |
First Person: Tim Etchells on 40 years of making a noise with Forced EntertainmentThursday, 10 October 2024
Forced Entertainment is a theatre company based in Sheffield, touring original performances around the world. The core group of 6 artists has been working together for 40 years, often inviting others to collaborate on particular projects. From the... Read more... |
Andsnes, London Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra, Gardner, RFH review - total clarity in classic-romantic and prophetic RachmaninovMonday, 30 September 2024
If there was ever a time for the inevitable "Rach Three” (piano concerto, not symphony) in the composer’s 150th anniversary year – and I confess I dodged other occasions – it might as well have come in the fresh and racy shape of Leif Ove... Read more... |
Hough, Philharmonia, Rouvali, RFH review - where the wild things areFriday, 27 September 2024
This autumn, the Philharmonia’s “Nordic Soundscapes” season promises music suffused with the epic vistas, and weather, of high latitudes, along with reflections on the climate crisis as it threatens the traditional bonds between nature and culture.... Read more... |
Frankie Goes To Bollywood, Southbank Centre review - lots of lights, but a dull showMonday, 05 August 2024
In the 1960s, Cilla Black was rescued from hat check duties at The Cavern and made a star. In the 1980s, Rick Astley was whisked away from tea-making at the Stock-Aitken-Waterman studios to launch, 30 years later. a billion RickRolls. In the 2020s,... Read more... |
Concert Theatre DSCH, Norwegian CO, QEH review - visually stunning, viscerally thrilling ShostakovichMonday, 01 July 2024
This luminously persuasive, radically inventive performance of Shostakovich’s music begins – quite literally – at the end. Beneath a slowly revolving monochrome moon, a lone musician delivers a plangent rendition of the Moderato and Allegretto from... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: violinist and music director Pekka Kuusisto on staged Shostakovich, Sibelius, sound architecture and folk fiddlingMonday, 01 July 2024
Lilac time in Oslo, a mini heatwave in June 2023, a dazzling Sunday morning the day after the darkness transfigured of Concert Theatre DSCH, the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra’s from-memory Shostakovich music-drama. Pekka Kuusisto and I decide not to... Read more... |
First Person: LIFT artistic director Kris Nelson on delivering the best of international theatre to the nation's capitalThursday, 30 May 2024
LIFT 2024 is nearly here. It’s a festival that will take you on deep and personal journeys. We’ve got shows that will catch your breath, spark your mind and rev up your imagination. There’s adrenaline too. It’s international theatre for your gut.... Read more... |
Queyras, Philharmonia, Suzuki, RFH review - Romantic journeysTuesday, 30 April 2024
As he approaches his 70th birthday, Masaaki Suzuki has not just travelled into pastures new but proved himself thoroughly at home in them. The founder-director (in 1990) of Bach Collegium Japan, a distinguished harpsichordist-organist as well as one... Read more... |
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