Barbican
Bostridge, Britten Sinfonia, Barbican HallSunday, 05 May 2013
The Barbican Hall’s house lights faded to black, with just the soft glow of music stand lamps on stage as the Britten Sinfonia filed on and eased into the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Directed from leader’s desk by Jacqueline Shave, the... Read more... |
Power, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Wilson, Barbican HallSaturday, 04 May 2013
Blether on MasterChef about love and passion for one’s craft has so devalued the currency that I hesitated in applying the terms to conductor John Wilson, last night moving from Hollywood and Broadway to another enthusiasm, tuneful British music.... Read more... |
Fräulein Julie, Barbican TheatreWednesday, 01 May 2013
Most theatre directors produce work which is visually the same as everyone else’s. Katie Mitchell doesn’t. Her plays are always brilliantly acted, highly atmospheric and often use film media in an amazing way. But she almost never works in this... Read more... |
Mangan, Royal Academy Opera Students, BBCSO, Denève, Barbican HallSaturday, 27 April 2013
Highly sexed cockerels and cats, a lovesick lion and a ballet of frogs might not seem like a recipe, or rather a menagerie, for profundity. Yet in two ravishing French man (or child)-meets-beast fables for the stage, Poulenc and Ravel are quite... Read more... |
Monteverdi Choir, London Symphony Orchestra, Gardiner, Barbican HallFriday, 26 April 2013
Backed up by reasonably adventurous orchestral programming, lucky conductors can forge a strong Stravinsky evening by picking and mixing from his five ancient Greek rituals. Sir John Eliot Gardiner, unintentionally homaging the late Sir Colin Davis... Read more... |
Juan Diego Flórez and friends, Barbican HallMonday, 22 April 2013
It takes a certain kind of artist to book American mezzo-extraordinaire Joyce DiDonato as a supporting act. It’s a risk. Even if you happen to be Juan Diego Flórez. But it’s one that actually paid off on the first night of Flórez’s three-concert... Read more... |
Lamsma, BBCSO, Brabbins, Barbican Hall/ Mei Yi Foo, Kings PlaceSaturday, 20 April 2013
Brave old world, that has so much unheard music in it. Not exactly the words of Shakespeare’s Miranda, I know, but that’s how I feel having experienced great things in the concert hall for the first time recently: Tippett’s Second Symphony from... Read more... |
Brass Band Battle: Serbia vs Mexico, BarbicanMonday, 15 April 2013
Remember the Brass Band Battle of a couple years ago? The one that pitted Romania’s Fanfare Ciocarlia vs Serbia’s Boban & Marko Markovic Orkestar on CD and stage? The concert at London’s Koko was great fun, less a "battle" and more a good... Read more... |
Sir Colin Davis, 1927-2013Monday, 15 April 2013
In its ebbs, flows and final grand flourishing, the career of Sir Colin Davis was reminiscent of some of the great musical masterpieces with which he became closely identified. From Mozart to Tippett, Berlioz to Beethoven and Sibelius, Davis proved... Read more... |
Sunken Garden, English National Opera, Barbican TheatreSaturday, 13 April 2013
Sunken Garden is described officially as a “film opera”. Two words. Emphatically unhyphenated. No attempt made to neologise or fashion some third-way genre terminology. It’s not a symbol that bodes well for mutually-informed, sensitive... Read more... |
Ubu Roi, Cheek by Jowl, Barbican Silk Street TheatreSaturday, 13 April 2013
Or, The Lord and Lady Macbeth of the Seizième, as imagined by a bourgeois teenager who fancies himself to be Bougrelas, heir to the Polish throne. That's one way of looking at the concept so dazzlingly carried through by Declan Donnellan and Nick... Read more... |
Bach St John Passion, Academy of Ancient Music, Egarr, Barbican HallSaturday, 30 March 2013
A Leipzig church is surely the place we’d most like to be for Bach on Good Friday. Never mind: the Barbican Hall is kinder to the best period instrument ensembles than it is to big symphony orchestras. Better still, having sat stunned and weepy for... Read more... |
