Features
Marina Vaizey
David Jones’ black and white drypoint – a drawing made by incising lines on a copper plate with a diamond-tipped needle and then printing from the plate – is a view of the nativity which is fresh, full of wonder and a highly intelligent naïveté. It shows all the sophistication of an artist who has looked at the art of the past but is also fully aware of modernism’s confusions of perspective, able to deploy them even when depicting recognisable scenes.And this is, of course, the scene that is central to the Christmas story, the sheltering in a humble stable of the most famous refugee family in Read more ...
David Nice
In 1981 a 20-year-old Swedish trumpeter on national service turned up in the town – city, by Swedish reckoning – of Örebro as soloist in Bach’s Second Brandenburg Concerto. The ensemble, then a mix of amateurs and professionals, some of them from the local military academy, is now the much-recorded and award-winning Swedish Chamber Orchestra; the trumpeter, Håkan Hardenberger, is probably the most famous in the world, and certainly the most adventurous – he still fights for contemporary composers to take first place in musical creation. Earlier this month the SCO and Hardenberger Read more ...
Sarah Kent
At first sight Piero della Francesca’s The Nativity appears to be a simple picture, especially when compared with more flamboyant depictions of the scene by artists such as Gentile de Fabriano, Botticelli and Rubens. Like a director staging a play on a limited budget, Piero has been sparing with his cast, props and scenery. Only 10 actors are included: Mary kneels on the ground gazing at her newborn son who lies on a corner of her cloak, five angels celebrate Christ’s birth in song and Joseph sits on a saddle beside two shepherds who seem to have just arrived on the scene. In addition, there’ Read more ...
David Nice
This is difficult. An official obituary, such as the one I’ve just finished for The Guardian, has no problem in pointing out the achievements of Kurt Masur’s distinguished career. Whatever his party-line status in Honecker’s East Germany, which he used to get the Leipzig Gewandhaus rebuilt to his own satisfaction, Masur did play a crucial role as one of five spokesmen preventing a Tiananmen Square-style massacre before the Berlin Wall fell. In 2001 he responded swiftly with his New York Philharmonic to give a memorial performance of Brahms’s A German Requiem, motivated players to give free Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Always desperately seeking the next profit-boosting lifeline, the record industry is getting all worked up about the "vinyl revival". While sales of CDs and downloads have been falling, those shiny black circles, once believed defunct, have been enjoying an upward surge. Tesco has even taken the bizarre decision to stock a triple LP by Iron Maiden.Don't get too excited, though. Vinyl apparently now makes up about three per cent of UK record sales, and while this is clearly an improvement on the 0.1 per cent share vinyl dwindled to in 2007, we're not looking at the imminent death of Spotify Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Jaap van Zweden is going places. At 55, he is already 16 years into a second high-profile musical career. His first, as a violinist, saw him appointed leader of the Concertgebouw, the youngest ever to hold the position. From there, he moved to the conductor’s podium, and is now Music Director of the Dallas Symphony and the Hong Kong Philharmonic. According to some rumours, he is also under serious consideration for the New York Philharmonic. But when we met, our conversation began with a more immediate engagement, the première of Magnus Lindberg’s Second Violin Concerto with Frank Peter Read more ...
Simon Martin
Art collectors are rarely what one might expect. Everyone has their particular enthusiasms, quirks and foibles, which make their collections unique and reflective of their tastes. In my career as a curator I have learnt never to have preconceptions when visiting collectors. The best pictures can often be found in the most modest of homes. Nothing can beat the buzz of encountering an iconic artwork in the most unlikely of settings. It is a lesson in how important it is not to make judgements about individuals before meeting them properly.Such was the case with Michael Woodford, perhaps one of Read more ...
Stuart Houghton
Fallout 4 has proven to be one of the year's biggest games launches. A sprawling role-playing game with a huge open world full of danger and decaying beauty, it casts you in the role of the Sole Survivor of an experimental cryogenic vault that has preserved you for two centuries while the outside world has slowly begun to recover from nuclear war. With just a loyal stray called Dogmeat for company, you must venture forth to find your missing child and face your destiny.The post-apocalyptic world of Fallout is vividly brought to life by Bethesda Softworks' relatively small team of artists, Read more ...
David Nice
Much of what follows was included in the 25th anniversary programme for Jonathan Miller’s legendary production of The Mikado at English National Opera. And the show goes on, still dazzling on each curtain-up thanks to the undated feat of the late Stefanos Laziridis’ sets and Sue Blane’s costumes, its routines absolutely classic on its 14th revival. On 6 December it marked its 200th performance, so there’s good reason to wheel out this celebration of sundry Mikados again.First, a word about the revival. It was apt that the first ENO Charles Mackerras (Conducting) Fellow, 28-year-old Fergus Read more ...
Laura Eason
I adapted Around the World in Eighty Days very specifically for my own theatre company, Lookingglass Theatre of Chicago, where I am one of 24 multi-skilled ensemble members who are writers, directors, actors, and/or designers. Although Lookingglass’ work varies, we most often do adaptations of classic stories, frequently epic in scale, told in a highly theatrical, strongly visual and/or physical way. Some of the novels/stories/myths that Lookingglass members have adapted include Dickens’s Hard Times, Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Lewis Carroll's two Alice books under the title Lookingglass Alice. Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
As you all know by now, Friday is D-Day for Adele's new album 25, and part of the all-media Adelathon is Friday night's show on BBC One, Adele at the BBC. It's a mix of live performances and taped sequences linked together by chunks of interview with Graham Norton, and makes the perfect relaunch package for the reclusive superstar. It opens, aptly enough, with her performing "Rolling in the Deep".It probably won't surprise you to learn that a visibly excited Norton is not at his most critical. There aren't any questions about Adele's ill-starred songwriting collaborations with Damon Albarn Read more ...
Ellie Nunn
West Side Story, Kiss Me Kate, even The Lion King – all have shown us how Shakespeare’s stories can translate into musical form. It’s not hard to see why: the plots provide strong frameworks for adaptation, with central problems to be resolved, protagonists for us to root for, villains to charm us, lovers to pity – they're all there. Although Measure for Measure is often referred to as Shakespeare’s problem play, its translation into a musical set in Soho in the 1960s feels – perhaps surprisingly – right.Desperate Measures looks at a time in our history when censorship regulations Read more ...