Barbican
Du Goudron et Des Plumes, Barbican/ Flogging a Dead Horse, Roundhouse StudioFriday, 28 January 2011
Five people stand in the dark. A bleak gantry descends with a rumble onto their heads. They scuttle under it and flatten themselves to escape a crushing, but then they get up and start building. The platform is stripped of planks, rebuilt at crazy... Read more... |
LIMF: La Maldición De Poe, Purcell Room/ Flesh and Blood & Fish and Fowl, Barbican PitThursday, 20 January 2011
The up - which I’m sorry not to have reported on before it ended last night - was the Spanish puppetry troupe Teatro Corsario, who made their hour’s strut and fret upon the stage in the Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room a pleasingly diverting wee... Read more... |
Khachatryan, London Symphony Orchestra, Gergiev, Barbican HallTuesday, 18 January 2011
Valery Gergiev’s survey of the Tchaikovsky symphonies began here on a chilly January night with youthfully idealistic Winter Daydreams thrown into the sharpest relief against a disillusioned and angry Shostakovich whose own journey into the bleak... Read more... |
Barbican Centre, 2011 SeasonSaturday, 15 January 2011
In 2011 the Barbican offers eminent theatre directors Robert LePage and Peter Brook along with the diversions of London International Mime Festival. Music includes composer focuses on Unsuk Chin, Brian Ferneyhough and Peter Eötvös, and high-profile... Read more... |
BBC Symphony Orchestra, John Wilson, BarbicanMonday, 10 January 2011
Once upon a time, composers ran Hollywood. As conductor John Wilson reminded us last night, 44-time Oscar nominee and movie composer Alfred Newman became so powerful as second in command at MGM that he had two security guards posted at his office... Read more... |
Year Out/Year In: Classical Music and OperaFriday, 31 December 2010
Earlier this month, George Osborne, Vince Cable and Jeremy Hunt were spotted in a Royal Opera House box surveying the country's most expensive artistic patrimony. What they thought - and how they and the Arts Council might wield their axe - will... Read more... |
Ogrintchouk, BBCSO, Bělohlávek, BarbicanFriday, 17 December 2010
Everywhere I looked I saw children, some burying their heads in their mothers' chests, some doodling on programme notes. One was dancing to Prokofiev's Sixth Symphony. Ambitious. Last night's BBC Symphony Orchestra concert had been given over to... Read more... |
Cecilia Bartoli Sings Handel, Barbican HallWednesday, 08 December 2010
Cecilia Bartoli invites you to her party, she stands on stage beaming and welcoming you as her guest, about to serve up a banquet of song. This is what last night’s concert felt like in the glowing warmth of this remarkable Italian mezzo-soprano’s... Read more... |
Scholl, Jaroussky, Ensemble Artaserse, BarbicanWednesday, 08 December 2010
The egos and rivalries of the great castrati – of Senesino, Carestini, Farinelli – are legendary. Too few arias, too unheroic a role, or just too little virtuosity (Handel’s beautiful “Verdi prati” was almost lost to us when Senesino rejected its... Read more... |
Handel's Alcina, BarbicanSunday, 05 December 2010
Classical music does not get any cooler than mezzo Vesselina Kasarova. She jived. She grooved. She shuffled. She shimmied. She possessed the Barbican stage last night, an awesome black jumpsuit hanging off her rangy, kinetic figure, her neck... Read more... |
Volodos, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Chailly, BarbicanFriday, 03 December 2010
Not much snow left on the Barbican after last night's barnstormer from Riccardo Chailly and the Leipzig Gewandhaus. What hadn't melted in the flames of the Russian pyre that is Tchaikovsky's Francesca da Rimini would had been swept aside by the... Read more... |
AfroCubism, BarbicanMonday, 22 November 2010
In theory, AfroCubism should have been one of the most exciting world-music releases of the year; how could you go wrong with a supergroup composed of Cuban and Malian musicians working towards combining their musical styles in a new and exciting... Read more... |
