by Music Editor | Dec 6, 2018 | Music, Uncategorized
Weeping songs By Robert Thicknesse How many gloomy songs can you take at one sitting? The Spitalfields Festival invited its audience to test its mettle in this programme of downbeat (or even deadbeat) numbers by Purcell, Blow, John Dowland, Pelham Humfrey, and one...
by Karen Krizanovich | Nov 15, 2018 | Uncategorized
Gilles Lellouche and Rappeneau lined up to attend French and francophone cinema is celebrated UK-wide in 30 leading cinemas and arts venues from Shetland and Orkney to Southampton via Glasgow, Edinburgh and London on the occasion of the 26th French Film Festival...
by Film Moderator | Nov 5, 2018 | Film, Uncategorized
The UK Critics’ Circle Film Section is thrilled to announce six new members for 2018/19. Film Section Chair Anna Smith calls them “exceptional”. They are: Erika Balsom, Sight and Sound, Artforum and Frieze Philip de Semlyen, Global Film Editor of Time Out Simran Hans,...
by Lucien Jenkins | Oct 1, 2018 | Music, Uncategorized
Facing Tolstoy’s massive novel combining epic and romance, Prokofiev had to choose how far he was composing a war horse and how far a pony. Sadly, a Stalinist committee designed a camel for him. The novel’s Pyotr-called-Pierre (Mark Le Brocq), Natalya-called-Natasha...
by Amanda Holloway | Jul 20, 2018 | Music, Uncategorized
Recording angel Donizetti would have been tickled pink to hear Sir Mark Elder and the orchestra of the Royal Opera giving the world premiere of his opera semiseria. Elder has spent years championing little-known bel canto works, recording nine of them for Opera Rara,...
by Sebastian Scotney | Jul 16, 2018 | Music, Uncategorized
“Is there no ‘beyond?’/ Are we already there?” Ariadne asks towards the end of Ariadne auf Naxos. At the opening night, conductor Anthony Negus and the Longborough Orchestra were conveying exactly that sense of having suddenly stumbled across new and unexpected joys....
