Last year I was at the convention of the Association of British Choral Directors in York and, at the end of a long day and feeling tired…

After a morning spent mesmerised by Simon Abkarian's De Gaulle, a hero disappeared by his supposed allies only to bounce back, in Part One…

Given how relentlessly cheerful his paintings are, you’d have thought Pierre-Auguste Renoir would be a jolly cove. But his National Gallery…

Alex Gibney’s documentary Musk is extraordinary, scathing and very long. It clocks in at three hours and 55 minutes – the LFF allowed a 10-…

In April last year, Yoel Gamzou took over a BBC Philharmonic concert at short notice, conducting Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. He made a big…

It all began over a decade ago when Chris Lowe and Neil Tennant simultaneously read mathematician Andrew Hodges’ biography of Alan Turing,…

I have to confess I was deeply sceptical that Haruki Murakami’s 1985 magical realist novel would work on stage. The plot, after all, which…

The stars in this rating are all down to the musical quality of the performance and the abilities of the singers – a leading quartet all of…

To the casual eye, Robert Ryman’s paintings look white; but when I once asked him why he chose not to use colour, he got really annoyed and…

Every day, on the first day of the seventh lunar month, the Gates of Hell open and ghosts are allowed to return to our world. Because the…