1950s
Hallé, Wilson, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - valedictory Vaughan WilliamsFriday, 22 April 2022
The baton passed, metaphorically, to the Hallé last night in the Vaughan Williams symphony cycle shared between them and the BBC Philharmonic to mark the composer’s 150th anniversary. Literally, that baton was in the same hand as on the last date,... Read more... |
Great Freedom review - love behind bars in GermanySaturday, 12 March 2022
A story of forbidden love, Great Freedom takes place almost entirely in a prison. The film's background is encapsulated in the word “175er/ hundertfünfundsiebziger”, still to be found in German dictionaries and collective memories as a... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Sun Shines BrightTuesday, 08 March 2022
“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” the John Ford scholar Tag Gallagher quietly observes in the penetrating – and deeply moving – video essay he contributes to Masters of Cinema’s Blu-ray disc of Ford’s 1953 masterpiece The Sun Shines Bright. It’s... Read more... |
Postwar Modern: New Art in Britain 1945-65, Barbican review - revelations galoreFriday, 04 March 2022
The Barbican’s Postwar Modern covers the period after World War Two when artists were struggling to respond to the horrors that had engulfed Europe and find ways of recovering from the collective trauma.Perhaps inevitably, a considerable amount of... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Dick Raaijmakers aka Kid Baltan, and Tom DisseveltSunday, 13 February 2022
In 1957, popular music was given a jolt when the first electronic pop record was recorded. “Song of the Second Moon” was created and composed by the Dutch musician Dick Raaijmakers who was working at NatLab, the research laboratory of the... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Stan Tracey Trio - The 1959 SessionsSunday, 23 January 2022
What’s now been titled The 1959 Sessions represents an unreleased studio album completed by the Stan Tracey Trio on 5 and 8 June 1959 at Decca’s London studio at Broadhurst Gardens. If issued then, it would have been the swift follow-up to the trio’... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Hungarian MastersTuesday, 28 December 2021
Three films, each restored to glorious 4K, make up Second Run’s Hungarian Masters set. Billed as “essential works by three of Hungarian cinema’s most renowned filmmakers”, each film earns that praise in its own way.Zoltán Fábri’s ... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Johnny GuitarTuesday, 28 September 2021
Watching this restored print of Nicholas Ray’s delirious Western reminded me of the discovery that those pristine white statues of the Ancient World had once been painted in gaudy colours. When I first saw Johnny Guitar, it was one of those movies... Read more... |
The Midsummer Marriage, LPO, Gardner, RFH review – Tippett’s cornucopia shines in fits and startsSunday, 26 September 2021
British opera’s attempted answer to The Magic Flute, and its presentation as the opening gambit of Edward Gardner’s eminent position as principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, leave me queasily ambivalent.After all the smoke and... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The RiverTuesday, 31 August 2021
The cinema fan in your life is going to thank you for this one. The BFI’s new two-disc Blu-ray version of Jean Renoir’s 1951 The River, filmed in India, is absolutely packed with extras: no fewer than six other offerings, including a 90-minute "... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Chris Barber - A Trailblazer's LegacySunday, 25 July 2021
The book included with this splendid box set dedicated to British jazz innovator Chris Barber includes a series of quotes paying tribute to his standing. Billy Bragg says "Chris Barber's influence on British popular music, be it through playing jazz... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Night of the HunterTuesday, 13 July 2021
A United Artists studio executive was treated to a pre-release screening of Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter in 1955. His damning response was, “it’s too arty.” The studio showed little interest in promotion and it was deemed a flop.... Read more... |
