Damian Thompson says we can learn a lot about Beethoven if we look beyond the symphonies Beethoven Unwrapped is the title of the year-long musical celebration marking the opening of Kings Place, the new ‘creative centre’ at King’s Cross. But does Beethoven, of all composers, need unwrapping? The answer is yes, more than ever, if
A Countryman in Town: Robert Bevan and the Cumberland Market Group Southampton City Art Gallery, until 14 December The Women’s Land Army — A Portrait St Barbe Museum, New Street, Lymington, until 10 January The recent Camden Town exhibition at the Tate was a useful reminder of the originality of one of the few significant
Dean Spanley U, Nationwide Dean Spanley is a family film and a sweet film and a kindly film with the most delicious cast (Peter O’Toole, Jeremy Northam, Sam Neill, Judy Parfitt) but it is also a slow film — the first hour is almost unbearably uneventful — which could do with a bit of a
Riders to the Sea Coliseum Ascanio in Alba King’s Place Vaughan Williams’s short opera Riders to the Sea was to have been conducted by Richard Hickox, but in the sad event it was played as a tribute to him, and conducted by Edward Gardner. It had a kind of appropriateness, but my own abiding memory
The Sleeping Beauty English National Ballet, Coliseum Forgive me the lame pun, but although The Sleeping Beauty is performed worldwide, there are not that many great Beauties around. One exception is, arguably, the one staged under Kenneth MacMillan’s supervision, first seen in Berlin in the Sixties, then reworked for American Ballet Theatre in 1986 and
In a Dark Dark House Almeida I Found My Horn Tristan Bates Maria Friedman: Re-Arranged Trafalgar Studios What, already? Another Neil LaBute play? Here we go again then. This time his close-knit group of eloquent and stylishly tormented yuppies (he doesn’t do other types) are haunted by the aftermath of a child abuse episode. As
Over the years I have met some unusual obstacles to my self-appointed task of spreading interest in unaccompanied singing around the globe. The main one is that music without instruments doesn’t have any ‘musicians’ in it and therefore cannot be taken seriously. Another is that church music which is not by Bach falls into a
We have a super-efficient friend who has all her Christmas shopping both purchased and wrapped by the end of the summer holidays. It drives Mrs Spencer — who regards the approach of Christmas with the panic-stricken horror of a hedgehog who spots an oncoming truck — almost mad with jealous rage. In an attempt to
It’s not a job I could do now that I’m supposedly mature, let alone when I was in my twenties. To take charge of a prison full of angry young men plus a team of disgruntled, de-motivated staff officers. But on Radio Four this week and next we heard from four prison governors, most of
If I had been given a monkey for every time someone had told me knowledgeably that Boris Johnson was a comical buffoon unfit for high office, I’d be able to open a very large ape house. It annoys me not just because it’s not true but also because of what it says about the stupidity
