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New Moon is nothing if not an international advertisement for the hungry virtues of virginity and young people can’t get enough of it
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Theatre
A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
Cock
Restaurants
Kitchen W8 is a bargain for this area, if such sophistication is what you crave
Kitchen W8
Too long and drawn out but very entertaining with excellent special effects
This is a peculiar play and does not work for me. Some of it is very funny but there are real flaws
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London,
Barry Millington's rating
Reader rating
Description: Tadaaki Otaka conducts Grace Williams's Sea Sketches, Elgar's Sea Pictures and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No 6, Pathetique. With mezzo-soprano Christine Rice.
Phone: 0207589 8212
Website: www.royalalberthall.com
Trains: Tube: High Street Kensington 
, Tube / Bus: 9, 10, 52, 360 
Extra info: Food, Pub
There is no shortage of enigmas surrounding Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony. Was it intended as a requiem for the composer himself? Does it express a fear of or longing for death? Could Tchaikovsky have had any inkling that he was to die within a few days of its first performance?
But one thing, surely, is not in doubt: that it deals in neurosis and morbidity. And that is the one thing that Tadaaki Otaka’s account with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales never suggested. The dark melancholy and doomed passion of the first and last movement completely passed him by.
Such passion as there was veered towards the sentimental and prettified; there was little sense of living dangerously, on the edge of reason. The BBCNOW’s playing was well drilled to a fault: a bit more wild abandon would have been welcome.
Welsh composer Grace Williams was represented by her first major published work: the Sea Sketches. Especially effective were the cross-currents set up in the divided strings of Breakers and the closing Calm Sea in Summer. There was more marine imagery in Elgar’s Sea Pictures, with Christine Rice’s light, flexible mezzo sensitively supported by Otaka.
www.bbc.co.uk/proms
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
