With a single dessert and just two glasses of wine our bill was kept in check - but the effort of doing so was not much fun
Babbo
Film
This is a film with beautiful performances and a visual style that urges you towards reflection
Bright Star
Theatre
Although the first half of Kwei-Armah’s production is pacy, funny and intelligent, the energy level then drops off
Seize The Day
I loved this film from start to finish. Take the girlfriend, tell your mum - I'd see it again tomorrow and will buy the dvd.
I saw this last night and can't remember the last time I was so moved in the theatre.
I have been to many of London's so-called best Japanese restaurants and none have been as good as the food that I've had at Aqua Kyoto
London,
26.11.08
The London Philharmonic's intense Russian conductor Vladimir Jurowski will continue to take the orchestra to new heights.
26.11.08
John Schlesinger's lavish 1980 staging feels magnificently antique in Les Contes d’Hoffmann, a quaint nod back at a time of plenty.
24.11.08
Valery Gergiev's take on Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet is music of bold emotion and high drama, rather than the deepest feeling.
19.11.08
Covent Garden chief Tony Hall is behind a new state of the art outpost that will help regenerate the Thames Gateway.
18.11.08
Emerson Quartet command a loyal and excited following at Wigmore Hall. And with the changing landscape of chamber music, their stock is ever rising.
10.11.08
The final catastrophe in John Adams's Doctor Atomic is as imaginatively conceived and devastating as the ending of any opera.
04.11.08
An attentive Kings Place audience burst into whoops at the close of an all-Stravinsky recital which launched this week’s Aldeburgh on Tour series.
30.10.08
The Brodsky Quartet play with familiar empathy. Three of them have been together since student days nearly three decades ago.
28.10.08
The evening was devised by tenor Mark Padmore who is gaining a parallel reputation as a programme maker of imagination and perception.
24.10.08
There was some panto-like silliness at Rossini’s Matilde di Shabran, but with a cast of this calibre, the thrills are in the music, says Fiona...
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23.10.08
The cream of London’s string players turned out to hear the Orion Quartet of New York in early and late Beethoven.
17.10.08
This concert built around poems of John Donne was electrifying, stirring and in every sense a revelation.
15.10.08
The Royal Opera's Jette Parker Young Artists presented a stylish Walton double bill at the Linbury Studio, consisting of Façade and The Bear.
13.10.08
Beaming as he strode on stage, Alfred Brendel might have been starting a career, not ending one lasting more than 60 years.
10.10.08
Crystallised through the stark imagery of French Surrealism, ENO's new staging of Partenope is packed with riches.
07.10.08
Andras Schiff, named today as one of the Evening Standard’s 1000 Influentials, opened the autumn leg of the Temple Festival 2008 with a recital of...
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06.10.08
John Eliot Gardiner's concert began with choral pieces by Brahms and his antecedents. The result was an episodic, but fascinating first half.
02.10.08
No need for balloons or fanfares. The new Kings Place provides its own architectural drama in Opening Ceremony.
01.10.08
Donatella Flick has little time for the BBC's reality show — her £15,000 competition for young talent, takes conducting seriously.
24.09.08
All animal magic and dazzling Deco cum Op Art, The Royal Opera’s new staging of Cavalli’s La Calisto is fabulous entertainment.