Barbican
Charles Lloyd / Joe Lovano and Dave Douglas, BarbicanMonday, 24 November 2014
It’s not easy to write about a gig when you’re still shaking with adrenaline, still less so when that gig is the grand finale of the 2014 EFG London Jazz Festival, the climax to a giddy ten days of world-class contemporary music. But it’s a cross I’... Read more... |
BBC Singers, BBCSO, Pons, BarbicanThursday, 20 November 2014
Had the BBC Symphony Orchestra been at full stretch, rather than in the neoclassical and otherwise selective formations of last night’s concert, it might have outnumbered the live audience. Perhaps I exaggerate, but not much; this was never going to... Read more... |
Daphnis et Églé/La Naissance d'Osiris, Les Arts Florissants, Christie, BarbicanWednesday, 19 November 2014
Were it not for William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, the vocal and instrumental ensemble he started in Paris in the 1970s, the beauties of the musical French Baroque might have remained a dusty fact of pre-Revolutionary history. As it is,... Read more... |
Jazz Voice, Barbican/Jazz on 3, Ronnie Scott'sSaturday, 15 November 2014
Is it just me, or do Guy Barker's orchestral charts for Jazz Voice get more refined, more nuanced, more richly detailed every year? Effectively becoming earworm central last night, the Barbican resounded with tintinnabulating glockenspiels,... Read more... |
A Midsummer Night's Dream (As You Like It), Dmitry Krymov Lab, BarbicanThursday, 13 November 2014
Earlier this year two giant puppets, plus a bottom (lower case, human) on wheels, dominated Shakespeare’s dream play at the Barbican. Replace the bottom with an ever-present little dog and you might think we’re back more or less where we started... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Barry, Mendelssohn, Schumann, ShostakovichSaturday, 08 November 2014
Barry: The Importance of Being Earnest Soloists, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group/Thomas Adès (NMC)I missed the live performances of this work; being allergic to Wilde as a dramatist, I wasn't in any hurry to assimilate The Importance of... Read more... |
The Cunning Peasant, Guildhall SchoolThursday, 06 November 2014
Dvořák’s rustic operetta sits, swinging its legs rather diffidently, historically somewhere between the neverland Bohemia of Smetana’s The Bartered Bride and the lacerating reality of village life in Janáček'’s Jenůfa. The Cunning Peasant’s charms... Read more... |
Levsha, Mariinsky Opera, Barbican HallWednesday, 05 November 2014
Of course unavoidable circumstances do strike, and concerts do get delayed, but it’s astonishing just how often those circumstances seem to conspire against Valery Gergiev. Last night’s UK premiere of Rodion Shchedrin’s opera Levsha – the second... Read more... |
Uchida, LSO, Haitink, Barbican HallFriday, 31 October 2014
You know what to expect from a standard programme of masterpieces like this, led by two great performers in careful control of their repertoire, and those expectations are never going to be disappointed. You’re not going to hear the kind of new-... Read more... |
Malala/A Child of Our Time, Crouch End Festival Chorus, Temple, BarbicanWednesday, 29 October 2014
James McCarthy’s oratorio Malala is both a heartfelt tribute to the young Nobel Peace laureate, Malala Yousafzai, and political statement in favour of the education of women. In it, as in its companion piece A Child of Our Time, a persecuted... Read more... |
The Wild Duck, Belvoir Sydney, Barbican TheatreSaturday, 25 October 2014
Ibsen cast a cruel eye on the characters of his most relentlessly symbolic play – wild ducks wounded or domesticated by fate or character. They speak or behave unsympathetically, for the most part, yet the actors must make us care for them. Simon... Read more... |
Bosque Ardora, Rocío Molina, BarbicanFriday, 17 October 2014
Thirty-year-old Rocío Molina has been rattling cages in the hide-bound world of flamenco. Back home in Spain, gloom-mongers are predicting she’ll bring down the art form with her brazen, off-the-leash excursions from its honoured tropes. Her shows... Read more... |
