It was Stravinsky himself who suggested that, in order to preserve its difficulty, the opening bassoon solo of The Rite of Spring should be raised by a semitone every decade. And it was a performance by Birmingham Royal Ballet in 2005 that convinced me that he wasn’t entirely joking. The audience nattered away over the
According to his friend and fellow-composer Ernest Reyer, the last words Berlioz spoke on his deathbed were: ‘They are finally going to play my music’. It has taken time, but he was right. A century and a half later, Berlioz 150 is the watchword of the hour. That is as it should be. Berlioz was
Please believe that I try to give every production my full attention, to do due diligence, to blink and miss nothing. But when, halfway through Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch’s Since She, one of the male dancers appeared on stage with cowbells attached to his willy, I’m afraid I spent a fair few minutes looking hard
Grade: D Among the many reasons for moving to Iran is this vapid, talentless, derivative, hyperbolically oversexed drivel aimed at your 11-year-old daughter. The land of the mad mullahs is about the only place on earth you’ll be able to avoid this unmitigated crap, a collection of chemically processed ur-songs that make Taylor Swift seem
When reviewers call a work ‘important’ they mean ‘boring’ and ‘earnest’. And in those terms Shipwreck is one of the most ‘important’ shows I’ve ever seen. It’s not a play but a series of monologues and conversations spoken by a group of American liberals stuck overnight in a rural farmhouse. ‘It’s a red zone,’ they
Steve Coogan is back as Alan Partridge but frankly who cares? Like Ali G, I’ve long thought, he’s one of those ‘classic’ 1990s comedy characters funnier in recollection than ever he was in reality. He should have been confined to brief sketches — like Paul Whitehouse and Harry Enfield mostly did with their cheesy has-been
‘Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.’ If there’s an exception to prove Shaw’s rule, it’s Phyllida Barlow. The 40 years the sculptor spent teaching at the Slade, where her pupils included Rachel Whiteread, have not only left her creative energies intact, but completely failed to keep a lid on them. After turning Tate
Hannah stars Charlotte Rampling in a film where not much happens and not much happens and not much happens and then, finally, not much happens. One scene, for instance, involves changing a light bulb and that’s it, and as close to an action stunt as we ever get. (Unless you count doing laundry.) But. But.
Is it me or are we now faced (or perhaps I should say fazed?) much more often by stories in the news that test our moral and ethical principles to the limit, forcing us to question ourselves and what we think to such an extent that it becomes impossible to be sure of what is
