19th century
Little Women, BBC One review - life during wartime with the March sistersThursday, 28 December 2017
One of the much-hyped jewels in the crown of the family-friendly BBC holiday season is this new three-episode adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's much loved novel by Heidi Thomas, the writer of Call the Midwife. We started in the New England winter –... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly Special: Callas LiveSaturday, 23 December 2017
Remastered they may be, but the 20 live operas recorded here between 1949 and 1964 vary soundwise from clean at best to atrocious, with all the caprices of stage noise and audience participation seemingly acceptable at the time (so often there's the... Read more... |
The Greatest Showman review - the great huckster as song and dance manWednesday, 20 December 2017
The real-life PT Barnum was a mixture of impresario, hustler and exploiter, and Elvis Presley’s huckstering manager Colonel Tom Parker would surely have viewed him approvingly. However, he also was also a temperance campaigner and a reforming... Read more... |
Jenny Uglow: Mr Lear - A Life of Art and Nonsense review - a lonely Victorian life, so richly illustratedSunday, 17 December 2017
Jenny Uglow’s biography of Edward Lear (1812-1888) is a meander, almost day by day, through the long and immensely energetic life of a polymath artist. She builds her narrative on an enormous plethora of primary sources – his marvellous illustrated... Read more... |
Octets, Wigmore Hall review - Heath Quartet and star friends effervesceSaturday, 16 December 2017
To compose a masterpiece in your teens is rare enough; to choose the most elaborate form in chamber music, an octet for eight strings, ensures a peculiar kind of immortality. George Enescu, a still-underestimated genius described by protege Yehudi... Read more... |
Cendrillon, RNCM, Manchester review - magic and spectacleFriday, 15 December 2017
The Royal Northern College of Music’s production of Massenet’s Cendrillon has a particularly strong professional production team, and it shows. This is one of the most attractively spectacular operas the college has mounted for years.Director Olivia... Read more... |
The Nutcracker, English National Ballet review - a thoroughly enchanting performanceThursday, 14 December 2017
The familiar doesn’t have to get old. Last night at the Coliseum there were children in the boxes, adults in the circle and grandparents in the stalls. Seasonal favourite Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker brings all ages to the ballet — as well as... Read more... |
From Life, Royal Academy review - perplexingly aimlessMonday, 11 December 2017
Dedicated to a foundation stone of western artistic training, this exhibition attempts a celebratory note as the Royal Academy approaches its 250th anniversary. But if the printed guide handed to visitors offers a detailed overview of working from... Read more... |
Johnston, BBCSO, Oramo, Barbican review - sheer adrenalin in early SibeliusThursday, 07 December 2017
As the Parliament of the Autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland within the Russian Empire declared independence on 6 December 1917, Sibelius had his head down working on the third version of his Fifth Symphony, the one so hugely popular today. He tried... Read more... |
Christian Tetzlaff, Lars Vogt, Wigmore Hall review - lyrical Brahms from veteran duoWednesday, 06 December 2017
Sonata no 1 – Sonata no 2 – Sonata no 3 – that’s barely a recital programme, it’s just a list. Fortunately, violinist Christian Tetzlaff and pianist Lars Vogt (pictured below by Neda Navae) have good musical reasons for presenting the Brahms violin... Read more... |
Darius Battiwalla, Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester review - improvisation extraordinaireFriday, 01 December 2017
Organ improvisation is a remarkable art, prized in French musical culture particularly, and there was something highly appropriate in the choice of The Phantom of the Opera – a screening of the 1925 silent film with live accompaniment on the RNCM... Read more... |
A Christmas Carol, Old Vic review - Rhys Ifans takes on Scrooge, triumphantlyThursday, 30 November 2017
Fresh from the success of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Jack Thorne now gives us his exuberant adaptation of another much-loved text. Charles Dickens’ novella A Christmas Carol is the well-worn morality fable seared into our collective memory... Read more... |
