London
Bernard Hughes
To St James’s Piccadilly to hear the young pianist Misha Kaploukhii give an impressive performance of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto, accompanied by the Greenwich Chamber Orchestra. Kaploukhii is a rising star, a postgraduate at the Royal College of Music where he recently won the Concerto Competition, and I enjoyed his reading of a favourite concerto of mine.And although he isn’t yet the finished article – as I’m sure he himself would admit – he is certainly a pianist I will be keeping my eye on. The Fourth Concerto starts with a Beethovenian novelty, the piano alone playing a chordal Read more ...
Gilbert & George, 21st Century Pictures, Hayward Gallery review - brash, bright and not so beautiful
Sarah Kent
There was a time when Gilbert & George made provocative pictures that probed the body politic for sore points that others preferred to ignore. Trawling the streets of East London, where they’ve lived since the 1960s, the artist duo chronicled the poverty and squalor of their neighbourhood in large photographic panels that feature the angry, the debased and the destitute.
Scrawled on decaying walls, the racist, sexist and homophobic slogans they recorded on their wanderings, create an atmosphere of dread – of impending and actual violence. The streets were mean and, especially as gay men Read more ...
Sarah Kent
The title of Joy Gregory’s Whitechapel exhibition is inspired by a proverb her mother used to quote – “you catch more flies with honey than vinegar” – and her aim is to seduce rather than harangue the viewer.
It’s a good stratagem, especially if you are pointing to things your audience may prefer not to consider. And Gregory’s images can be beautiful (the seduction); but in order to avoid a diatribe, she often approaches her subject obliquely and quietens her voice to a whisper, requiring the viewer to pay close attention and hone in on the message.
If most photographers use the Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Hamilton may have helped the West End recover from The Covid Years, but it carries its share of blame too. Perhaps that’s not strictly fair on some of its spawn, but do we get Coven without that musical behemoth? If not, this one’s on you Lin-Manuel.
We’re back in the early 1600s, though not in music and speech, natch. Shakespeare had written the (literally) bewitching A Midsummer Night’s Dream 15 years earlier and The Tempest, with a necromancer as its protagonist, two years prior, but, in 1612 and again in 1633, children were denouncing their families for witchcraft. Of course, as is the Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
I have always been a bit ambivalent about the music of Arvo Pärt, recognising his achievement in crafting a new kind of choral music, while often finding it hard to love, especially in large doses. Which is why I welcomed the approach of the Carice Singers (with Christopher Bowers-Broadbent on the organ) and George Parris in making this concert, one of a series marking Pärt’s 90th birthday, also a celebration of a much younger Estonian composer whose music, although very different, made for an intriguing point of comparison.
Evelin Seppar (b.1986) (pictured below by by Sade-triis Read more ...
joe.muggs
It’s really interesting to see how Amy Winehouse’s legacy continues to reverberate – and not just through endlessly repeated iconography or the tragedy-for-sale machine that’s built around her but musically too. Even rapper Little Simz namechecks and musically nods to her, and her unique update of Billie Holiday’s tone has been passed on to one degree or another to singers like Lola Young, Yazmin Lacey – and especially Celeste.
Not that Celeste is a copy of anyone by any means: her voice is very much her own with its own strengths and mannerisms, and her gothic cabaret-tinged style and Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Alan Hollinghurst's 2004 novel The Line of Beauty finds a distinct beauty all its own in this long-awaited Almeida Theatre premiere, the play's linearity a decided jolt after the more jagged new writing in which this venue has specialised of late.Returning to the Almeida for the first time in over 25 years, the director Michael Grandage brings a shimmering melancholy to a theatrical bildungsroman that plunges us headlong into the often terrifying hedonism of the 1980s. Jack Holden's astute adaptation keeps pace with the societal savagery of the novel, but not before reminding us that Read more ...
joe.muggs
Twenty-five-year-old South Londoner and current Celebrity Traitors contestant Cat Burns is a charming performer. Her songs have a rare ability to present the most fundamental of youthful relationship ups and downs as fresh and real. They also make more modern expressions of hope and solidarity around sexuality and neurodivergence escape the twee, flowery framing of live-laugh-love Mum’s-on-Facebook-again posting.Maybe most important of all, sings in her own accent with her own mannerisms, with a rich tone. All of which makes me want to like her second album Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The return of this entertaining political drama is always welcome, though its soap-tinged mix of transatlantic politics and volatile personal relationships is beginning to look a little too genteel for our current age of ever-worsening crises.In the real world we have Trump on the rampage, the Middle East liable to blow at any moment and China surreptitiously taking over the world, but somehow The Diplomat is still fussing over the terrorist attack on a British aircraft carrier, HMS Courageous, that happened way back at the beginning of Season One. Delightfully, the show never stops believing Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Many orchestral concerts leaven two or three established classics with something new or unusual. The LSO reversed that formula at the Barbican last night, with three pieces written since 2000 offset by just one familiar item, Sibelius’s Third Symphony. The result was invigorating, challenging – and very enjoyable.The presiding artistic mind was that of Thomas Adès, featuring both as conductor and composer. His passion for the music he had chosen shone through, overcoming the rough-and-readiness of his baton technique, and his enthusiasm brought forth a range of sounds from the orchestra Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Before we get into it, reader, can you accept that The Last Dinner Party are a band born of privilege and high academic study? Of poshness, classical composition, private education, master’s degrees in music? No? Might as well stop reading then. That’s where they’re from. Let's have a valid debate somewhere else about the arts shutting out those with less money. Right now, though, The Last Dinner Party are fab live, look great, and, in From the Pyre, deliver a worthy follow-up to their vibrant debut.They’re preposterous, of course, but wonderfully so, their music Chantilly-laced through with Read more ...
Gary Naylor
The Globe’s authenticity is its USP, so don’t expect the air-conditioning, the plush seats and the expectant hush of the National Theatre some 20 minutes walk away along the Thames. There’s not quite Elizabethan levels of discomfort to endure, so no plague – well, not if you’ve had your jabs. It’s quite fun to roll with the open air vibe and wooden benches with poles in your eyeline like a Victorian football stadium or stand in the pit, looking up, like Baldrick in Season One. But does it need to be quite as much of an ordeal as my visit to the Troilus and Cressida Thursday matinee Read more ...