Music and Opera

Our curation of music and opera reviews

Thursday

Michael Hann

Kneecap are basic but thrilling

It was Irish week in London, with one group from the north and one from the south. Guinness was sold in unusual amounts; green football shirts were plentiful; and so, at both shows, was a genuinesense of joyful triumph – these were the biggest London venues either group had headlined. The Irishness was much more visible onstage at Kneecap, not least because, as a proudly Republican group, they can’t really not make a big deal of being from west Belfast. Their statements have prompted the inevitable fury from some quarters: Kemi Badenoch (as business secretary) refused them a £15,000 grant to help them tour, on the grounds that the British

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Wonderful comedy of manners: Kiln Theatre’s The Purists reviewed

A slice of the ghetto arrives at the Kiln Theatre in Kilburn. The Purists is set on the stoop of a crumbling block in Queens, New York, and the show declares its urban credentials as a boombox slams out a hip-hop rhythm and Mr Bugz, a DJ, enters, mike in hand. He urges the audience to commit arson and murder using a chant inspired by the theatre’s location. ‘Kill! Burn!’ he screams. ‘Kill! Burn!’ He invites the crowd to join in his riotous incantation. ‘Kill! Burn!’ they shout back with blood-curdling obedience. After this homicidal overture, the play settles down and turns into a surprisingly genteel comedy of manners. Mr

James Walton

We’re wrong to mock Do They Know It’s Christmas?

‘I hope we passed the audition,’ said an alarmingly youthful Bob Geldof at one point in The Making of Do They Know It’s Christmas? He was, of course, quoting John Lennon from the 1969 Beatles rooftop concert: an appropriate reference in the circumstances – because this documentary was a kind of Get Back for the Smash Hits generation. Like a far shorter version of Peter Jackson’s film of the Beatles at work, it mixed footage we’d seen before with stuff locked away in the vaults for decades. It was also equally unafraid of longueurs, equally determined to accentuate the positive and equally likely to warm the flintiest of hearts. I

Rupert Christiansen

Deeply impressive and beautiful: Akram Khan’s Gigenis reviewed

After taking a wrong turn culminating in the misbegotten Frankenstein, Akram Khan has wisely returned to his original inspiration in kathak, the ancient dance culture of northern India synthesising both Hindu and Muslim mysticism and mythology. The result is something deeply impressive and beautiful that held me enraptured for an hour. This is the work of a serious artist, without gimmicks or frills, and there isn’t much of that around at the moment. Starting with massive thunderclaps in primal darkness, Gigenis takes us through the cycle of creation, tracing the same epic path as the Mahabharata through fire and air, the birth of a hero, a courtship and marriage, a

David Sexton

Radio 3 Unwind is music for the morgue

Soon after the launch of Classic FM in 1992, the then controller of Radio 3, Nicholas Kenyon, asserted that his high-minded station was not in any competition with its commercial rival and certainly not lurching into ‘some ghastly descent into populism’, even as he hired Classic FM’s presenters and fiddled with the programming to create ‘access points’ for novice listeners. Classical music once had a higher calling than to be this subdued That argument is now over, the pretence dropped. The current controller of Radio 3, Sam Jackson – appointed last year – was previously the actual boss of Classic FM, as well as Smooth and Gold. Earlier this year,

Wednesday

Richard Bratby

A keeper: ENO’s new The Elixir of Love reviewed

There was some light booing on the first night of English National Opera’s The Elixir of Love, but it was the good kind – the friendly kind, aimed not at the baritone Dan D’Souza but his character, the caddish charmer Belcore. In other words, it was what opera snobs call ‘pantomime booing’, and which, as a peculiarly British phenomenon, they affect to deplore. If it happened in Munich or Milan they’d brandish it as evidence of an advanced opera-going culture – proof that an audience has been so completely transported by a performance that they’re reluctant to step out of its world. But any singer who’s remotely familiar with British

Thursday

Rupert Christiansen

A spectacular failure: Royal Ballet’s MaddAddam reviewed

Adapting ballets out of plot-heavy novels set in fantasy locations and populated with multiple characters is a rubbish idea. The profound truth of such a proposal is forcefully borne out by the wretched muddle of Wayne McGregor’s MaddAddam, an over-inflated farrago drawn from a triptych of visionary fictions by Margaret Atwood. McGregor – hugely talented and energetic as he is – needs to calm down and slow down and think small Where to start? Apocalyptic themes – political, environmental and ‘societal’ – are evoked in images and spoken narration without McGregor having any means in his hyperactive choreographic vocabulary to translate them meaningfully into dance. Only those who are already

Graeme Thomson

What a remarkably bad electric guitar player Bob Dylan is

Finally, a taste of the authentic Bob Dylan live experience. On the two previous occasions that I’ve seen Dylan, in the early 2000s and again two years ago, he was disappointingly well-behaved for a man with a reputation for operating a scorched-earth policy towards his catalogue. Once upon a time, seeing Dylan live was a high-wire activity. Those days are long gone, but on the second night of two shows in Edinburgh, some little wildness crept back in. During the opening pair of songs, which were gradually revealed to be on nodding terms with ‘All Along the Watchtower’ and ‘It Ain’t Me, Babe’, it was like watching an old bar

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Dazzling: Marc-André Hamelin’s Hammerklavier

Grade: A When Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata was published in 1818, pianists were confronted with a mixture of ‘demonic energy and a torrent of dissonances’, as Charles Rosen put it. Only the most freakishly gifted virtuosos could tackle it. The first recording was by Artur Schnabel, whose heroic assault on the finale sent wrong notes scattering in all directions. Today, technique has improved so dramatically that most students can steer Beethoven’s juggernaut without obvious mishaps. Even so, some great masters wait decades before taking the plunge. In this sonata above all, getting the notes in the right order is no guarantee that you have anything to say. Marc-André Hamelin is now

Wednesday

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Why is Fauré not more celebrated?

It is 100 years since the death of Gabriel Fauré, a composer whose spellbinding romantic tunes emerge from harmonies and rhythms that nudge us towards the future. No other composer deploys such subversive mastery of the conventions of French music: again and again, if we look underneath the arches of his melodies, we find ambiguous chromatic shifts or disorientating spiralling arpeggios. For some critics, the musical argument of Fauré’s late chamber work is so understated it evaporates And – see above – no other French composer is so hard to describe without falling into a purple puddle. I’ve already used up spellbinding, subversive and ambiguous, but that still leaves subtle,

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

A flop: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, at Ambassadors Theatre, reviewed

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button carries a strap-line, ‘an unordinary musical’. Perhaps the word ‘extraordinary’ is simply too banal to capture the outstanding qualities of this unique show. The year is 1918 and a miraculous birth occurs in a remote Cornish fishing village. The newborn is not a baby but an adult pensioner, Benjamin, who emerges from the  womb wearing a three-piece suit, a pair of spectacles and a bowler hat. His shame-faced mother hastens away from the family home and takes a walk along the cliffs, which results in her death. Suicide, perhaps. And Benjamin’s angry father locks him in the attic and refuses to let him out.

Richard Bratby

Fails to ignite: Royal Opera’s Tales of Hoffmann reviewed

I couldn’t love anyone who didn’t love Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann. Everything – everything – is stacked against this opera. Offenbach left the score unfinished when he died, tormented with gout and pilloried by bores, at the age of 61. Some of its best-loved numbers were upcycled from his earlier hits, and at least one isn’t by him at all. Yet somehow, it lives. More than that, it soars: a tale of disillusion that glows with wonder and hope; a hymn to the sweetness of life and the miracle of art, held together against all logic by the sheer charisma of a composer who shot for the moon and

Deborah Ross

Is it meant to be a comedy? Gladiator II reviewed

It’s nearly 25 years since Ridley Scott’s Gladiator came out and you’ve probably been wondering what happened to the little boy in that film. I know I have. I can’t say it’s kept me up at night, but at the back of my mind it’s always been: where is Lucius, son of Maximus, nowus? Well, Lucius, son of Maximus, is nowus a strapping lad with thighs of steel who has been forced to become a gladiator and fight for his life just like his pop. This film borrows heavily from the first instalment. True, it does have some new elements. It has Paul Mescal, Denzel Washington, monstrous man-eating baboons, sharks,

Michael Hann

Perfectly imperfect: Evan Dando, at Islington Assembly Hall, reviewed

‘Can I have a photo with you, please?’ It’s the most embarrassing question you can ask of someone you’re interviewing. But I had to. Not only because Evan Dando is one of my favourite songwriters. But also – vainly – because years of on-off drug addiction (mostly on) mean Dando is no longer quite the beautiful young man he was when he became famous in the early 1990s. Back then, I’d have looked like a troll standing next to him. Now, not so much. It was a night of beautiful imperfection – the kind that feels truer than a thousand arena shows He still, however, looks better than he has

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Goodbye to MC5, the holiest of rock’s holy cows

Grade: D+ Ah, the original Linkin Park, except even more spavined. MC5 came outta Detroit in the mid 1960s and their shrieking blues metal ur-punk was afforded unnecessary respect because of their agitprop politics. Sucking up to the Black Panthers and running a bit foul of the law can do wonders for a slightly below-average blues band whose songs had energy and attitude – but nothing else. Here they are, back with their first studio album in 53 years: thanks for the merciful interregnum, if nothing else. When I say ‘they’, I mean the half-decent guitarist Wayne Kramer and, on one or two tracks, their original drummer, Dennis Thompson. Both

Wednesday

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

An audacious and daredevil band: the Surfrajettes reviewed

For most people – once Brian Wilson had turned his back on the sea and started off down the lonely road to genius – surf music means either (or both) of two things: the Surfaris’ ‘Wipeout’ or Dick Dale’s ‘Misirlou’. Punchy, propulsive tunes, in other words, that make you feel like you’re on your way to the toughest party in town, or at least very much on your way to something – always driving forward, fast. The Surfrajettes are like that; their version of the Spice Girls’ ‘Spice Up Your Life’ is a revelation, turning an inoffensive (if admittedly banging) global dancefloor-filler into something that could plausibly soundtrack a rumble

Richard Bratby

One beauty – one turkey: Wexford Festival Opera reviewed

‘Theatre within Theatre’ was the theme of the 2024 Wexford Festival and with Sir Charles Villiers Stanford’s The Critic, that’s exactly what you get. Conor Hanratty’s production showed the interior of an 18th-century theatre, viewed from the stage. In the second act it flipped around to reveal the audience’s perspective. Were we now the audience? Clearly we were; which was awkward because where does that leave a critic? Obviously, one can’t be the critic because there’s already one on stage (the clue’s in the title), and as it turns out, The Critic isn’t really about critics, at all. Whatever – you get the picture. It’s all very meta; and more

Graeme Thomson

Terrifically good value: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds reviewed

A few years ago, I received an early morning phone call from Nick Cave’s former PR, berating me for not crediting his band the Bad Seeds in an album review. She was quite right. As Cave says, with a hint of paternal pride, during this powerhouse Glasgow show: ‘This band can do anything.’ It’s not just that the Bad Seeds’s task ranges from delicately enhancing the most nakedly exposed ballads to unleashing a raging firestorm of noise. It’s that supporting a performer as mercurial as Cave takes oodles of nous and empathy. He’s a wild thing, but they never once lose him. Cave brings to mind that volatile drunk left

Richard Bratby

The striking musical world of Welsh composer Grace Williams

Grade: A- There are neglected composers, and then there are Welsh composers. It’s just a question of geography. When Grace Williams’s Fairest of Stars was played at the Proms a few years back, it was hailed as a major rediscovery. That raised a few eyebrows in the Principality, where her music has long been standard repertoire. I grew up 20 minutes from the border and I’d played three of her orchestral works before I turned 30. Still, there’s always more to discover, and this new disc breaks over you with the force of a Snowdonia rainstorm. The BBC Philharmonic lives up to its reputation as the most brilliant of the

Friday

Max L. Feldman

How Arnold Schoenberg became the poster boy for the Viennese cultural-heritage industrial complex

Despite its prestige, Vienna can seem parochial. This is as true today as it was during its turn-of-the-century golden age, when it incubated a generous welfare state – that is still with us – and all those Austro-Hungarian Empire weirdos: glowering hypnotist astrologers in full metal evening dress, hysterical socialites howling at the help from threadbare chaises-longues, fiendish necromancers summoning racial purity in front of frothing cauldrons of goulash. Before 1938, Vienna also had a cosmopolitan intellectual culture. Its notables, often – but not all – Jewish, included Freud and Wittgenstein, radical figures in their own fields who became well-known beyond them. Arnold Schoenberg, the ‘emancipator of dissonance’ in music,