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The Twilight Saga: New Moon
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A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
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Kitchen W8
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London,
Nick Kimberley's rating
Reader rating
Description: The composer and his band perform 50,000 Pairs Of Feet Can't Be Wrong - a piece inspired by long-distance running - and the premiere of I Sonetti Lussoriosi, featuring singer Marie Angel.
Phone: 0845120 7500
Website: www.barbican.org.uk
Email: info@barbican.org.uk
Trains: Tube/BR: Moorgate/Barbican 
Opening hours: Mon-Sat 9am-8pm, Sun 11am-8pm
Extra info: Parking, Food, Pub
Michael Nyman's film music has won a global audience, but much of his best writing has been for the voice. Text matters to him; so does the style of the singer he's writing for, whether it's the ethereal iciness of Sarah Leonard or the snarling raunch of Ute Lemper. The soloist in the London premiere of his song cycle I sonetti lussuriosi (The lustful sonnets) was Marie Angel, her delivery mixing sensuality and violence to thrilling effect. Hers may not be the most purely beautiful voice but she uses it with a rare imagination.
The poems, by the 16th-century Italian, Pietro Aretino, talked dirty; so dirty that the translations were kept, quite literally, under the counter, available only to consenting adults. The sonnets present sex at its most joyfully bestial, and, with the Michael Nyman Band (composer at the piano) by turns jaunty and brash or languid and lyrical, Angel had licence to let fly.
She scoured her chest register, curdled her intonation, made the consonants spit and caressed the vowels into submission. It was a virtuoso performance but, as usual with Nyman, the voice was amplified. Nothing wrong with that, except that instead of fostering intimacy, the amplification was cruelly harsh. With Angel singing from behind the band, the effect was distancing and reductive. The songs, some of Nyman's most expressive writing, and Angel's interpretation, deserved better.
His 50,000 Pairs of Feet Can't be Wrong was inspired by the Great North Run and scientific examination of the effects of sporting stress on the human body; echt-Nyman, in other words. The music made a good job of characterising the grind of exercise but the visuals had the feel of corporate promotion. The concert opened with the work that, 30 years ago, set Nyman off on his individual path. With guts and wit, In Re Don Giovanni deconstructs a tiny phrase from Mozart and after all these years still sparkles.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
