At every year's end there's a rush to nominate and then vote for the UK Critics' Circle Drama Awards, and every year I suffer from the same sudden memory failure. What and whom have I seen in 2009 that merits a gong? Good though my short-term memory is for the details of performances and sets, by a few days after the review has appeared I'm fortunate if I can remember the name of the play or its … [Read more...]
Archives for 2009
Colours: Hodgkin, Kapoor and poor Tchaikovsky
Tomorrow at the Gagosian Gallery at 17-19 Davies Street, London W1, my close friend Howard Hodgkin has a show of ]Seven New Paintings. I saw some of them in his studio, small, vigorous, and fresh, and so recognisably, uniquely, by Hodgkin, that I was able to spot what was in the envelope bearing the announcement from seeing the brush-work of one detail of Embrace (below). Another … [Read more...]
Fairy Tales of Birmingham
It's not every day that I'll take the trouble to go to Birmingham to hear a piece of contemporary music - or to do anything else, as the train fare is 20 per cent more than the fare from Oxford to London (though the distance is smaller), and as my wife refuses to drive in Birmingham because of its diabolical navigation difficulties. Despite having to share our carriage on the return leg with … [Read more...]
Incest without the Morris Dancing
photo credit: Johan Persson / ENOI've recently been to a performance in London where I imagine the audience reaction resembled that of the audience at the Paris première of The Rite of Spring on 29 May 1913. Indeed, the second half of the evening was a performance of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring; but this was a double-bill, and it was the conclusion of the first half at which the audience … [Read more...]
That Bloomsbury Voice
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could hear the voice of Boswell, or of Mme de Lieven. Or if we had recordings of the voices of Hume, Gibbon and Macaulay? Or, to enter the realm of the possible, of Lytton Strachey, who wrote about the others in Portraits in Miniature. Indeed, Strachey's recording might be the most interesting of the bunch, because all who knew him have remarked on his … [Read more...]
That boy’s magic horn
Tired of commuting to London for my daily culture-fix, it was wonderful to drive only as far as Oxford last week for the opening of the 2008 Oxford Lieder Festival, www.oxfordlieder.co.uk. This is the brainchild and labour of love of Sholto Kynoch, a charismatic song accompanist and chamber musician (the pianist of the new Phoenix Piano Trio, who will be performing the Beethoven trios in 2010). … [Read more...]
Brecht’s problem play
Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children is a problem play, and the National Theatre's new production has had more than its share of troubles, with a press night postponed because the actor playing the second lead, the chaplain, either quit or was sacked, and replaced by an excellent Stephen Kennedy. This diverted critical attention, for a few moments, from the fact that this production, in a … [Read more...]
Dies illa
I love going to what a former-debutante girlfriend used to call (generically) "the play" at the Almeida Theatre in Islington. The small, 325-seat auditorium is a warm, intimate space, the foyer and bars are welcoming, and it's located just off Upper Street, which has gone from slummy to chic in the past 20 years, and teems with interesting restaurants, making it an adventure to eat after the show. … [Read more...]
A high time in Auld Reekie
Edinburgh 2009 (2)Apologies are owed to Edinburgh International Festival director, Jonathan Mills, as this is his third, not second, EIF, which I jolly well ought to know, as I was here for his inaugural festival, and very fine it was, too. My Edinburgh host and I were both convinced it was number two; my host and I are the same age, verb sap.Very often in the past I have found the musical events … [Read more...]
The curse of the Counter-Enlightenment
Edinburgh Festival 2009 (1) Edinburgh, the capital of the devolved nation of Scotland, is the place to be this summer, partly owing to the fuss about the compassionate freeing of the convicted Lockerbie bomber, Mr Al-Magrahi. I've yet to talk to a Scot who thinks the Libyan actually did it; so much dinner-table conversation here consists of conspiracy theories, and the wilder they … [Read more...]