Morning:
14°c
Some fares could fall by more than a third when Oyster is extended to every national rail station in London, it has emerged
More...
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
Alex has a strong powerful voice and was faultless, she is far better now than she was on the X-Factor
London,
Fiona Maddocks's rating
Reader rating
Mark Padmore: Sings from the soul
Late in life, Handel is said to have wept when he heard his own Total Eclipse, from the oratorio Samson.
How overwhelming must the line “No Sun, no Moon, all dark amidst the Blaze of Noon” have felt to the elderly composer, now blind and eclipsed in his own world of darkness?
This short, hearfelt aria, with “Thus when the sun” from the same work, formed the emotional still point of a concert by the pioneering and talented Britten Sinfonia, loosely themed on night, dreams, sleeping, waking, death.
The evening was devised by tenor Mark Padmore who, after his explorations of Bach’s Passions, is gaining a parallel reputation as a programme maker of imagination and perception.
Katie Mitchell provided a simple, effective staging: lighting was low, musicians moved to their places with minimal fuss so each piece followed without interruption.
Few works are more melancholy than Britten’s Lachrymae, a plangent meditation for viola and orchestra on John Dowland’s lute-song Flow My Tears.
The Ukrainian Maxim Rysanov was the bewitching soloist, who also featured in John Woolrich’s Ulysses Awakes, an answering echo in atmosphere and colour to the Britten.
Playing close to the finger-board, or on the bridge, he achieves a tone quality that is ghostly, almost incorporeal.
At the start, Stravinsky’s tiny Fanfare for the New Theatre (1964) sounded a brisk, arresting reveille.
Two trumpets wrestled atonally in energetic dialogue, leading straight into Harrison Birtwistle’s Prologue (1971).
The agonised words are those of Aeschylus’s Night Watchman, exhausted and waiting for the return of Agamemnon from the Trojan Wars.
Padmore, surrounded by six solo instruments, gave powerful utterance to this plea for release from vigil, ending with the unaccompanied imprecation: “A man’s will nurses hope”.
Britten’s Nocturne, for tenor and ensemble, was written for Peter Pears in 1958.
This fine cycle sets contrasting poems by Wordsworth, Keats and others in magical dialogue with solo instruments — glissandoing harp, disturbingly chromatic timpani, urgent, explosive bassoon.
Padmore’s great gift, apart from his prodigious technical ability, whether to float a line with perfect legato or to enter pianissimo at the top of his range, is to sing from the soul.
Joviality has its place in music but its most life-enhancing consolations often derive from the darkest materials.
To be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Monday 3 November at 7pm.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
