Morning:
13°c
London faces a wave of bus and Tube strikes that could cause chaos for millions of passengers as unions walkout over pay and conditions
More...
An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Evening Standard rating
Reader rating
Vladimir Jurowski led a performance of exemplary and joyous clarity
This is a red-letter week for classical music.
On Wednesday, Kings Place, the new apostrophe-free zone just north of St Pancras, opens the doors of its concert hall with five days of musical feasting.
Wigmore Hall, sharpened by the arrival of an upstart chamber-venue, is parading full autumn plumage with a particularly alluring season.
And after the annual post-Proms hiatus, the symphonic season bursts into full life, each major orchestra displaying its glittering wares for the months ahead.
If Saturday’s London Philharmonic Orchestra concert is a portent, this may be a vintage year.
Chief conductor Vladimir Jurowski chose an illuminating programme of German repertoire, each piece throwing light on the other two.
Strauss wrote Metamorphosen in 1945 as a lament for the wartime destruction of Germany’s opera houses, specifically his local Hoftheater in Munich.
The LPO strings gave a translucent, virtuosic and impassioned account of a composition which, poorly executed, can sound muddy.
The endless falling motif, repeated over and over, breaks to the surface in fragments of urgent melody.
Special praise for the viola section, whose eloquent leader, Alexander Zemtsov, played with such freedom he seemed to know the whole piece off by heart.
Following on with telling logic came Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s rarely heard Gesangsszene (1961), with baritone Matthias Goerne as peerless soloist, wholly audible even against a massive, fortissimo orchestra — including six percussionists frantically thundering on an array of marimbas, xylophones, tubular bells and gongs.
The brass writing, heavy with tuba and trombones, creates a distinctive, bristling and terrifying sound world.
Whichever prophetic sybil or haruspicator chose this piece for the LPO, they were sly to schedule it in a week of economic collapse: the words, from Giraudoux’s 1944 play Sodom and Gomorrah, depict undreamed of apocalypse, with evils befalling the “mortgages of God”, a louse crawling “on the bald head of the billionaire” and “even the penny and the dime losing their value”.
It should be obligatory party conference entertainment.
Brahms isn’t usually the composer you turn to for cheeriness but his Symphony No 2, with its dancing, throbbing syncopations, came as light relief.
As ever with a masterpiece, one came away astonished at new discoveries — a rudely subversive bassoon solo in the Allegretto, a trumpet arpeggio figure in the finale so nearly banal as to be brilliant.
Throughout, Jurowski led a performance of exemplary and joyous clarity.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
[ 1 ] [ 2 ]
