Features
Helen Hawkins
In the current reappraisal of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, what to make of the depiction of women in their key films, that striking tribe of Isoldes with chestnut hair and passionate natures?Powell (1905-90), a man of Kent whose love for his actors was apparently without limits, could be a dictatorial director who, by his own admission, used shock tactics on set to get what he wanted. Whereas Pressburger (1902-88) was a conservative Hungarian who preferred women to be silent partners: “anti-feminist” was Powell’s term for him.Yet between them, and factoring in the upheavals of the Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Announcing “A Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger production” or, alternatively “A Production of the Archers”, an arrow thuds into the centre of a roundel. Whether in black and white or colour, that famous rubric not only conflates the auras of Robin Hood and the Royal Air Force, but issues a warning you’re about to get a shot in the eye. The critic Ian Christie, one of Powell and Pressburger’s earliest champions, wrote in “Arrows of Desire” (1985), his second book on the great writer-director-producer duo, that the logo (pictured below) was “a promise of ‘real film magic’ for forties Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Martin Scorsese walks onstage to a hero’s welcome, shoulders a little hunched, with a touch of sideways shuffle or hustle, taking acclaim in his stride at 80. He has sold out London’s 2,700-capacity Royal Festival Hall for the BFI’s biggest Screen Talk by far, and the queue for returns stretches into the street, to see a director as big as any star.Fellow director Edgar Wright is here to interview him for 60 minutes about his 27-film career, but barely gets beyond 1980’s Raging Bull in 90. The coked-up motormouth familiar in Scorsese cameos from his backseat rant at Travis Bickle to his Read more ...
David Lang
I wouldn’t say that I am super religious, but I am definitely religion-curious. It is a big part of my family background, and, to be honest, a big part of the history of my chosen field, Western classical music. For the past 1000 years, the church has been the most powerful commissioner of Western music, and its most active employer of musicians.Because of this, much of our foundational repertoire is explicitly on the subject of how music helps a listener get in the mood for a religious experience. And that is interesting to me.Music and religion are intertwined, not just because of Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Dramatisations of real-life crime have become all the rage on TV, as screenwriter Neil McKay and producer Jeff Pope are well aware. Their history of morbid collaborations includes See No Evil: The Moors Murders, the saga of serial killers Fred and Rosemary West in Appropriate Adult, and, in Four Lives, the story of serial killer Stephen Port.Now, in The Reckoning, they’ve focused their energies on Jimmy Savile. It arrives on BBC One and iPlayer on Monday (9 October) with Steve Coogan in the leading role. The series was first announced by the BBC three years ago, but its long gestation has Read more ...
Sir David Pountney
Purcell came very early to me. When I was a chorister at St. John’s Cambridge “Jehova quam multi sunt” was a perennial favourite and we were thrilled by the evenings when George Guest brought in some string players to accompany Purcell’s verse anthems. These were special occasions. Then, since no management had the wit to invite me to direct Purcell, I finally engaged myself to direct The Fairy Queen at ENO.That was very directly the genesis of Masque of Might which is being given its world premiere by Opera North tomorrow.The Fairy Queen is like the other Purcell “masques” or “theatrical Read more ...
Edward Gardner
“If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.”“What is best in music is not to be found in the notes.”With these two quotations from Mahler, I already feel like putting my pen down. I had intended to write about my approach to the upcoming performance of his Second Symphony with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, but the more I thought about words, the more reductive my thoughts became.Journalists trying to unlock Claudio Abbado’s genius in interviews on Mahler were met a smile, nod, and just “schöne Musik”, “beautiful music”. As ever Read more ...
Carol Williams
I have always had a fascination with concert programmes. I did my Doctorate thesis on this subject. I remember vividly as a youngster attending many uninteresting programmes and thinking “there has to be more exciting, exhilarating, interesting music for the concert goer!” What type of repertoire makes audiences come back to solo organ concerts?The varied repertoire kept me alive and my studies at the Royal Academy of Music with David Sanger were priceless. I came from a musical family - Dad had an amazing ability to play the theatre organ, Mum the piano and Aunt Olwen played organ in church Read more ...
Hugh Barnes
François Truffaut said that there is no such thing as an anti-war film because cinema inevitably glorifies the horror of conflict. The premise was robustly challenged over the weekend at the Ukrainian Institute London’s fourth annual film festival, Side By Side, which screened a handful of films, documentary and narrative, feature-length and short, that compelled the audience to reflect deeply on war’s horrific nature.A recurring festival theme was a sense of filmmaking itself being overtaken by events in the wake of last year’s Russian invasion of Ukraine. In I Did Not Want to Make a War Read more ...
Guido Gärtner
Nine cities in seven countries; all in all, eleven concerts, on top of that, an appearance at home in Munich. Celebrating its 500th anniversary, the Bayerisches Staatsorchester is currently on an extended journey. We have been looking forward with great anticipation to this tour during which we are aiming to present everything from our longstanding tradition that has stood the test of time and share it with a great number of music lovers throughout Europe.The Bayerisches Staatsorchester (Bavarian State Orchestra) can count itself lucky to be able to call the National Theatre in Munich home ( Read more ...
First Person: mezzo Stephanie Wake-Edwards on open dialogue and shared goals in the new show 'FEAST'
Stephanie Wake-Edwards
“Do you actually speak like that?” was the first thing a senior colleague said to me during my initial week at a prestigious UK opera house. I’ve always had a tricky time understanding who I really am.As a culture, we are obsessed with class. By fitting criteria, ordering ourselves, relating to a prescribed list, we find our place in the world, supposedly. I would hear people talking about it as a kid and think “what the hell does it all mean?”. Working, middle, upper middle, upper, new money, “oh they have cultural capital but not necessarily economic”. It all felt very confusing, but Read more ...
David Nice
Circumstances matter here. The annual visit to what remains my favourite music festival in the world was going to be kyboshed by the date fixed for a big hospital operation. But the Pärnu Music Festival worked overtime to get me rebooked to the first slice of the 10 days, while my Macmillan nurse fixed up five crucial meetings and tests on the two days before my new departure date. I went, came back the evening before the 12-hour op and still can’t believe it all happened.That also shifted my usual expectations: I like to go for the big chamber concert featuring the world-class musicians of Read more ...