Arts
Balkan brass
When brass instruments with button-operated valves were introduced in the second half of the 19th century, music-making changed. Once requiring…
What stopped Stoppard?
Two programmes this week presented two radically different world views, or rather ways of life. Aditya Chakrabortty’s series for Radio…
1967 and all that
As you may have spotted, the BBC is marking the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of male homosexuality with an…
Beethoven: Missa solemnis
When you first encounter it, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis can sound like the Ninth Symphony with more singing but no tunes.…
Strong stuff
The strings sweep upwards, the horns surge, and Leoncavallo’s Zaza throws itself into your arms. We don’t know it yet,…
Heavy-handed
Oliver Cotton is an RSC stalwart who looks like a man born to greatness. Google him. He has the fearless…
The Father
A co-production by MTC and STC of a new play which has been acclaimed in Paris, London and New York…
Tricky, and slightly sicky
The Big Sick is a rom-com that’s smarter than most rom-coms, which isn’t saying much, admittedly. It stars a Muslim…
Grace Cossington Smith, The bridge in building 1929
The viewer could treat this exhibition as an exercise in ‘compare and contrast’, or follow my preference and simply enjoy…
Ivory towers
Great novels rarely make great movies, but for half a century one director has been showing all the others how…
Visual, visceral, confusing
Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk has already been described as ‘a masterpiece’ and ‘a glorious, breathtakingly vivid triumph’, but we need to…
A game for two
Some art can be made in solitude, straight out of the artist’s head. But portraiture is a game for two.…
The joy of the Proms
Summer nights, hot and humid, mean just one thing — it’s Proms season again. Sore feet, sweaty armpits, queuing outside…
Dethroned by feminism
I’m a bit worried about Game of Thrones (Sky Atlantic). Not seriously worried: there’s too much money invested, too much…
Hadyn recreated
‘Rarely, rarely, comest thou, Spirit of Delight!’ wrote Elgar, quoting Shelley, at the top of his Second Symphony. He should…
New kid on the block
The new Grange Park Opera at Horsley is amazing, as everyone who visits it must agree. In less than a…
A genuine oddity
The most compelling pop singers in music right now — at least in the branch where pop singers still play…
Out of sorts at the RSC
The RSC’s summer blockbuster is about Queen Anne. It’s called Queen Anne. It opens at the Inns of Court where…
Yes sir, we can boogie
It’s dance — but not as you know it. A giddy mass of flying limbs, sashaying hips and pouty faces.…
This charming man
Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled is set during the American Civil War and is about a wounded Union solider, Corporal John…
Stitches in time
When Martha Ann Ricks was 76 she travelled from her home in Liberia to London to meet Queen Victoria. The…
Jay-Z: 4.44
Grade: B – All criticism is pointless, I suppose, given the sheer magnitude of the Shawn Corey Carter machine —…
Risk assessment
Someone at the Buxton International Festival had a wry smile on their face when programming this year’s trio of operas.…
A tale of two artists
Wherever one looked in the arts scene of the 1940s and ’50s, one was likely to encounter the tragicomic figure…
The good Palestinian
Shubbak, meaning ‘window’ in Arabic, is a biennial festival taking place in various venues across London. The brochure reads like…
