Barbican
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Haitink, Barbican HallMonday, 21 May 2012
The last night Haitink conducted at the Royal Opera House as musical director the staff wheeled on a moped as a leaving present. Ever since, his conducting has been inextricably linked to that mode of transport in my head. With Haitink, music-making... Read more... |
Jóhann Jóhannsson, Hauschka, Dustin O'Halloran, BarbicanSaturday, 19 May 2012
“Post-classical” the FatCat label call it, and well they might. All three of the acts who played at the Barbican last night in one way or another used the instrumentation of the classical concert hall but in a way that was completely dislodged from... Read more... |
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Jansons, Barbican HallSunday, 13 May 2012
I half expected to hear someone on the platform call out “Is there a doctor in the house?” For Mariss Jansons, principal conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and esteemed beyond measure, didn’t look well during this concert, the second in... Read more... |
Einstein on the Beach, Barbican TheatreSaturday, 05 May 2012
Einstein on the Beach was meant to be one of the jewels in the crown for the Cultural Olympiad. The celebrated 1970s collaboration between Philip Glass, Robert Wilson and Lucinda Childs - which Susan Sontag claimed to be one of the greatest... Read more... |
Bauhaus: Art as Life, BarbicanFriday, 04 May 2012
As an art school the Bauhaus has a reputation for being the cradle of modernism, famous for establishing an alliance between art and industry which produced enduring design classics such as Marcel Breuer’s tubular steel chairs, Josef Albers’ silver... Read more... |
Tetzlaff, London Symphony Orchestra, Eötvös, Barbican HallMonday, 30 April 2012
“I don’t want to be a Cyclops,” Pierre Boulez said in 2010, faced with the prospect of conducting a Chicago concert with only one working eye. Eye troubles, alas, have continued to bedevil the octogenarian giant of contemporary music, which is why... Read more... |
Arvo Pärt Total Immersion, BarbicanMonday, 30 April 2012
How incredibly heartening that this latest edition of the BBC Symphony Orchestra's Total Immersion, focusing on the music of the contemporary Estonian composer, Arvo Pärt, sold out days in advance. Including an introduction to Pärt's music by the... Read more... |
The Importance of Being Earnest, Barbican HallFriday, 27 April 2012
Gerald Barry's new operatic adaptation of Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest delivers a number of firsts. The first opera score to contain an ostinato for smashed plates. The first orchestra to include a part for pistols and wellington boots.... Read more... |
Q&A Special: Arts Patron Donatella FlickTuesday, 17 April 2012
Donatella Flick, one of Britain's most important arts patrons, is furious. "Madness!" she cries in her lush Italian voice. "This is a country that was fantastic, and now there's a demolition going on, bit by bit!" We're sitting in Sir Winston... Read more... |
The Sinking of the Titanic, Gavin Bryars Ensemble, Philip Jeck, Barbican HallTuesday, 17 April 2012
I don't have many feelings about the Titanic (any more than I do about any tragedies of the distant past). I know few of the facts, I can remember nothing of the film and I have been left almost completely untouched by the centenary. Yet I am... Read more... |
The Dream of Gerontius, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Gardner, BarbicanSunday, 15 April 2012
It's one of the great perversities of modern cultural life that orchestras from America and Venezuela visit London more often than those from Birmingham or Manchester. A perversity and a shame, as last night's exceptional performance of Elgar's The... Read more... |
Big and Small, Barbican TheatreSunday, 15 April 2012
It’s the star factor. Tickets for Big and Small, by the controversial German writer Botho Strauss, are selling fast because Cate Blanchett is in it. Her protean presence in this production by the Sydney Theatre Company, of which she is the co-... Read more... |
