London
Jasper Rees
The tally of Charles Dickens’s biographers grows ever closer to 100. The English language’s most celebrated novelist repays repeated study, of course, because both his life and his work are so remarkably copious: the novels, the journals, the letters, the readings; the charitable works, the endless walks; the awful childhood, the army of children, the abruptly terminated marriage, the puzzling relationship with two sisters-in-law, the long and clandestine affair.Vanishingly few of those biographers have been women. One of the many virtues of Claire Tomalin’s compact life of Dickens – it just Read more ...
David Benedict
“Mind that door.” With the hurricane howling outside it’s no wonder the locals gathered in Auntie’s pub are yelling... but there is no door. Instead, a stage-wide sheet of corrugated iron rears up to let in Stuart Skelton’s storm-tossed Peter Grimes. Enlarging naturalistic, close-up detail into full-blooded, expressionist drama is typical of this frankly electrifying revival of David Alden’s revelatory production of Britten’s masterpiece. The fusion of sound and stage action in the very first moment makes it immediately clear that this production is operatic in the best sense. With the Read more ...
theartsdesk
Poor David Bowie. He didn't win a Grammy for his album The Next Day, and he didn't win a South Bank Sky Arts Award today either. That honour went to Arctic Monkeys and their fifth album AM, as Melvyn Bragg hosted the ceremony at London's Dorchester hotel in front of a crowd of luminaries from all sectors of the arts. This is the fourth time the event has been staged in association with Sky Arts, and it featured live performances by Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Dame Evelyn Glennie and Imelda May.Comedians supplied a couple of the more eye-catching moments, with up-and-coming Bridget Christie taking Read more ...
David Nice
This is great news. It should have been great news back in 2006-7, when Wigglesworth – Mark, not to be confused with the young, photogenic Ryan, composer and, when I last saw him, barely competent baton-wielder - was among the contenders for the post of Music Director at English National Opera. As it happened, the then relatively unknown Edward Gardner sailed into the job with precocious assurance and versatility.Gardner leaves at the end of the 2014-15 season to take up a post with the world-class Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra. Only his Mozart has been uncertain; but he has given us, among Read more ...
Matthew Wright
The musical concept behind this constellation of international stars at Ronnie Scott’s last night was simple. Take a sextet of some of the world’s finest improvising jazz musicians, give them either a funky groove, gentle swing or a bass-fired post-bop beat, and ample space to improvise. Sit back and enjoy the sonic fireworks.Russian alto saxist Zhenya Strigalev is only half a dozen years out of music college, but has already played extensively in three cities, moving to London from St. Petersburg to study, then on again to New York in 2010, where he recruited most of Smiling Organizm. He’s Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Gwilym Simcock, pianist, composer, and jazz-classical crossover specialist, is releasing two albums this year, and at Kings Place last night, the audience had a taste of both. An evening billed as the launch of Instrumation, Simcock’s new album of original suites, became a kind of Simcock tasting menu. He played half of Instrumation, which was officially launched, and sections from his second album of 2014, Reverie at Schloss Elmau.There was also a first set from Simcock’s trio with French saxophonist Celine Bonacina and bassist Michel Benita, which was technically and musically intricate and Read more ...
judith.flanders
How silly is ballet allowed to be? It is a question that is not, well, as silly as it looks. English National Ballet’s director, Tamara Rojo, has set out her stall with a glitzy production of this 19th-century classic, her first full-length commission for her new company. What she’s selling from that stall, however, is moot. Le Corsaire has a great pedigree: choreography by Marius Petipa, with a central pas de trois that is (reduced from trois to deux) endless gala fodder for its spectacular swoony razzmatazz.But it also has the world’s most ludicrous plot – indeed, calling it a plot probably Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Love, Poetry and RevolutionThe subtitle “A Journey Through the British Psychedelic and Underground Scenes” – with “A” as the operative word – suggests this box set isn’t going to tell a familiar story. Most of the bands were and still are barely heard of. Twenty-four of the 65 tracks compiled were not originally issued.The opening shot is “Pretty Colours”, by obscure West Midlands band Deep Feeling which included future Traffic member Jim Capaldi. Although unreleased at the time of its October 1966 recording, The Animals’ Eric Burdon cocked an ear and declared it “ Read more ...
David Benedict
The great Marilyn Horne used to joke that she was going to release an album entitled “Chestnuts for Chest Nuts”. She never did, but that leaves the door wide open for Sonia Prina whose dark, thrillingly low sound marks her out as the real deal, a genuine contralto. But the excitement of Prina in performance isn’t just about her extraordinary skill at using her unusual range. Throughout this frankly dazzling recital of music Handel wrote for the superstar castrato Senesino, she wasn’t merely singing in front of the eight-strong Ensemble Claudiana, she was truly making music with them.Recently Read more ...
David Benedict
There’s a reason why many people think Handel and, particularly his Messiah, is dull. Relatively easy to play, his music is incredibly difficult to perform well. Take this Temple Winter Festival outing with choral expert David Hill conducting the immensely skilled BBC Singers who can, and largely do, sing everything; four soloists all banishing grandiose, wobbly vibrato from days of yore; and the accomplished St James’s Baroque. There was nothing wrong with the performance... Unless, that is, you wanted the intensity, passion and, yes, the drama that Handel wrote.Scale is the key factor in Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
We've already been casting a revisionary eye over Lord Lucan, the Cold War, the Kennedy assassination and the Profumo affair. Last year Sheridan Smith portrayed Mrs Ronnie Biggs for ITV, but what took them so long to get around to the Great Train Robbery itself? Just hours too long for the real Ronnie Biggs, as it happened.Scripted by Chris Chibnall, a man basking in bankability following his bustin' hit series Broadchurch for ITV, this two-part voyage round the GTR is stylish, well cast and easy to watch, but adds nothing much to the existing information-mountain about the crime. You'd get Read more ...
Matthew Wright
The Sons of Kemet’s peculiar forces of two drummers, tuba and reeds have been on the road for over two years now, their performances landing on an unsuspecting crowd like a petrol bomb on seasoned timber. With the tuba playing as part of both the rhythm and horn sections, the Sons can deploy both massive rhythmic firepower and potent melodic edge. It’s an intense and compelling sound, exploring the triangular musical dialogue between North and West Africa, the Caribbean, and New Orleans, in a musical language primed with exploding dance hooks and entwined with spiralling North African melody Read more ...