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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
Alex has a strong powerful voice and was faultless, she is far better now than she was on the X-Factor
London,
Uniting fronts: Daniel Barenboim, left, and artistic director Juergen Flimm during a press conference for Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, in Salzburg, Austria
Members of the West-Eastern divan Orchestra/Barenboim
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Fidelio/Barenboim
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Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in 1999 so as to demonstrate that young Israelis and Arabs could forge a creative co-existence, although both insisted that the orchestra would occupy a place on the world stage without allowances being made for its special nature. Said died in 2003 but Barenboim continues to extend the players’ boundaries.
On Friday, two dozen of them convened for a late-night chamber concert. The Albert Hall is on the large side for Mendelssohn’s Octet, and the string sound was somewhat recessed; interplay was sometimes blurred, the rhythmic drive occasionally slack.
Berg’s Chamber Concerto, with Barenboim conducting, was altogether more confident. It demands that the 15 players shine as soloists, even if only two of them are designated as such: violinist Michael Barenboim, the conductor’s son, and pianist Karim Said, distantly related to the orchestra’s co-founder. If that sounds like nepotism, their playing made it clear they were there on merit.
On Saturday, the full orchestra assembled for Beethoven’s Fidelio, in which freedom and oppression, darkness and light battle it out. In the theatre, the opera includes spoken dialogue; here we got a pre-recorded narration, written by Edward Said and delivered by Waltraud Meier, who also took the title role.
Barenboim had drilled his players well: crescendos were finely wrought, quiet passages had a superfine delicacy, with low strings giving off the dark shadows that Beethoven demands, while brass provided glints of light. As sometimes happens, it was the orchestra rather than the singers that proved the opera’s greatness.
Barenboim had a good rather than a great cast, although there were magnificent moments. Meier’s occasional harshness was a token of her total engagement, and tenor Simon O’Neill tempered Florestan’s Germanic angst with some radiant Italianate lyricism.
Rightly, though, the standing ovation was for the orchestra. It only abated when Barenboim gave a little speech praising his young charges as an example of how to live together, rather than back-to-back. He also suggested that great music can never simply serve a cause, even a good cause: food for serious thought there.
www.bbc.co.uk/proms
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